The Sterling Family Law Show
The Sterling Family Law Show is where successful family law attorneys share the exact systems they used to build million-dollar practices.
Host Jeff Hughes scaled Sterling Lawyers from zero to $17M with 27 attorneys.
Co-host Tyler Dolph runs Rocket Clicks, the agency in charge of supercharging Sterling and other family law practices to success using revenue-first marketing strategies.
Together, they share the playbook for building the law firm of your dreams.
If you're looking to grow exponentially, generate revenue, and get good at business, this podcast is for you.
The Sterling Family Law Show
Why Bad Law Firm Intake Systems Kill Your Growth - #153
Law firm intake systems kill growth when paralegals handle calls while juggling case prep, collections, and trial work.
Most law firms fail because they treat intake as an afterthought. At Sterling Lawyers, we learned the hard way that paralegals can't be fully present on intake calls when they're managing trial prep and collections. That's why we built a systematic approach to law firm sales training and client consultation optimization that actually scales. Our legal intake staff hiring process goes through 800 applications to find one person because your intake team is your brand's first impression. The framework works: dedicated teams, systematic training, and measurable accountability drive law firm revenue optimization and predictable client acquisition systems.
This Sterling Lawyers' systematic approach solved the intake bottleneck that stalls firms at $2-5MM. Our 800:1 hiring ratio and proven training framework.
📲 Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@karls.anthony
📝 Schedule a FREE Family Law Firm Audit: https://rocketclicks.com/schedule-a-family-law-quick-audit/
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📄 CHAPTERS
0:00 - Law Firm Intake Systems: Why Great Staff Matter More Than Ever
2:03 - The Paralegal Problem: Why Multitasking Kills Intake Performance
4:34 - Sterling's Dedicated Sales Team Model: $250 Consultations That Convert
8:29 - Client First Impression Strategy: Making Them Feel Heard and Cared For
11:08 - The 800:1 Hiring Ratio: How We Find the Right Intake Personnel
13:28 - Systematic Training Framework: I Do, You Watch Method
18:27 - Professional vs Amateur Mindset: Taking Every Interaction Seriously
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Why great intake staff matter more than ever for family law firms. Check out this episode to learn how we at Sterling Law were able to build an incredible intake staff and take our firm to new heights. I'm your host, tyler Dolph, and with me today is Anthony Karls. He is the co-founder and builder of Sterling Lawyers, which is a $16 million law firm with 32 attorneys. They are our law firm here at this business and he's currently the president of RocketClicks, which is our family law firm growth consultancy.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to talk about selling in a law practice, whether it's non-attorney sales, whether it's paralegals or even the attorneys. What happens in that consult room, how to maximize those deals and those opportunities. Tony takes us through really five great points as it relates to maximizing this process. Tony, always great to see you. Thanks for coming back. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:So today we're going to talk about sales in a family law firm to sell to, not to sell, who's selling, who's not selling so much to talk about here. I know over at Sterling we've tried many, many things as it relates to selling in a law firm, but I'd like to start with just understanding the talent shortage in law firms as we talk to many of our clients and we're doing interviews on this podcast with law firm owners. They always talk about having to be the person to start out with. When they start their firm, they're doing everything right and then, as they grow, they're having to make strategic hires within the firm, and I think sales is often one that's a little scary, it's a little difficult and it's probably because there aren't that many great salespeople in this space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I would agree. It's definitely something we learned when we started. Obviously, I think I was the first person that was answering the phones. And then we hired our first attorney and paralegal and the paralegal was the first person in queue to answer the phones, and then it was me and we started seeing like oh hey, they don't really like that job, that's not what they're good at, what they are or what they enjoy, and that comes off to the potential client in the conversation.
Speaker 1:It's like it's not that they're annoyed that they're.
Speaker 2:the paralegals are annoyed it's that they have a lot of stuff to do for the attorney and like they want to make sure that gets done, because if it doesn't get done then the attorney is frustrated, because now the attorney looks like they don't know what they're doing and they're incompetent and it's just like it's the snowball. So like the intake call becomes the last thing that we're going to deal with.
Speaker 1:Hard for the paralegal to be where their feet are and be fully present in that conversation. Now you have so much to do feet are, and be fully present in that conversation.
Speaker 2:Now I have so much to do. Yeah, exactly, and it's so. It's. You know, it's really what we found is it's really imperative for us to have a team and like so we have a dedicated team, two teams actually, so it's one big sales team with a sales manager and we have people that do intake and we have people that actually do consults that are not not attorney consultation folks, and they're. They both do a great job and you know where we are in. Our model is all of them are paid consults. So our I believe our attorneys charge 250 dollars for a one-hour consultation and for a CLA that's what we call it a non-attorney salesperson to do a consult, it's 150 bucks. So our intake team needs to be salespeople and they need to be taught how to do sales and they need to be held accountable for sales and we need to recruit for sales. We need to do all of these things that are like it's a little different than what you would potentially expect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so not only are we helping our audience understand the importance, how essential it is to have great salespeople, but we, you know, we have the experience, boots on the ground where we try doing free consults, we tried doing having the attorneys do everything and we found this our listeners to to take this leap and make their first hire.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think the I think it's actually one of the most important positions in the firm is your intake people, because that's the first, that is very likely the first human they've been engaged with, that's associated with your brand and, like, if that's not a good experience, they're just going to go back to Google or wherever they're sourcing their list of potential attorneys to work with from and they're going to call the next one.
Speaker 2:And it's super imperative that that first interaction has a lot of quality because, like, if you're treating these conversations well, you're not trying to sell something. You're trying to get the potential client to tell you their story and your goal as the salesperson or the intake person is make them feel heard, make them feel like you we care, make them feel heard, make them feel like we care, make them feel like what they're saying matters, so that we can then move them to the next step, which is like, okay, we've built a little bit of trust. Now I want you to meet someone on our team, one of our attorneys or one of our non-attorney salespeople, so that we can help you understand what the next steps are going to look like, so you can move forward through this really traumatic life experience.
Speaker 1:That's such an important point. You know, if you're doing this every single day, it may become a little numb or you may not realize like this is one of the worst days in someone's life and being able to have the presence of mind and be empathetic is so crucial to being successful in that role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is probably the first time that they're talking to a stranger about all of this very personal stuff and like that's a, that's a monumental like move from a all right, we're in the research phase and now like we're going to transition into, like now it's going to happen that's, and that that's a. That's a hard emotional state to go through. So if you do it really well, like you make your whole process better, because people don't want to do that multiple times, like that's the actual reality. So the better you are at this, the less likely they're actually going to call the next person on the list because they don't want to do it again.
Speaker 1:I keep thinking about the importance of having someone who can live in that moment and be present with that person. And again, just back to the like if you're a paralegal and you have a million things to do, as as great as you may be, it is going to be impossible for you to be, like, fully present.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, cause you're I mean, oftentimes you have some of that on your plate as a responsibility. You're also in charge of doing some of the collection work, in charge of doing a bunch of the document preparation and you know, trial prep and all of those things and you're really busy. You're kind of like in all of these different realms and like this one um conversation, you kind of want to get it done if you're in that seat because, like you have a lot of other things to do. So like I don't want to spend 15 minutes on the phone hearing betty's story about how bad her jail where her husband is and how she's scared for her kids and she doesn't know where she's going to live, and like all of those things. Like so it feels clinical and it feels like very um, just transactional and you set the attorney up now to not have a great console right.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really important piece is sometimes, I think if we talk about sales, sales can be a lot of things right. You have your used car salesman persona. That is very transactional just buy, buy. You never see him again. This to me, this sales role, is very much relational. It is connecting with someone and ensuring that they have a great experience throughout this transaction, as opposed to like just go close another deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah this transaction, as opposed to like just go close another deal. Yeah, I mean the, our, our best sales folks. They actually care, like they really care about what they're hearing and it shows up in their activity and their followup because they're not. So we, when we, when we do our, our intake process here at Sterling, how we think about it is if I'm doing a good job as the intake person, I care enough to make sure I know that you move forward in the best way possible. So, even if you didn't sign up with me because I'm going to charge you $150 to meet with my non-attorney salesperson, I'm going to follow up with you to, like I'm going to charge you 150 to meet with mine not attorney salesperson, I'm going to follow up with you to make sure, like you move forward and like you're doing some marketing there and like you're actually not trying to push, you're just trying to have a relationship, you're trying to care.
Speaker 2:So, like a lot of the follow-ups are, you know what I'm? You know I'm still not sure I want to do this. That's the client's going to say I got to talk to my mother and I got to talk to my sister about you know what's going to happen. So, like, I'll call you back next week. If they don't call you back, the followup should be how did you talk, how did the conversation go with your, with your mother and with your sister? And like, how was the? The? How are you feeling? Like, are you? Are you in a good spot? Do you have resources? Do you need all that stuff? Like it's all from a point of care help.
Speaker 1:First mindset yeah, hey, you got that credit card ready, I'm ready to take your money now, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, like you, see that in the performance people that are sales, people that we've had to coach out of that they they don't do as well and their commissions are low.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so funny how important sales is to every industry, but it's so different per industry based on what that interaction and transaction process is. And, uh, I think it's important that our audience understands that this hiring, this role is crucial, but being able to find the right person is going to take time.
Speaker 2:It's going to take time and like, uh, it's better to not have them than add the wrong person because they're the first person that your brand, your brand, is now speaking to that client with. They're the first person that your brand, your brand, is now speaking to that client with. And um, so we've gone through, you know, we've spent a lot of time figuring out how to do that at the law firm with how we, you know, we get, I think, our throughput on on intake team members that we hire um, it's about 800 applications to one hire. So, like we go through a lot of applications to find the right person, cause, like they're representing our brand, they're the, they're now like the first voice and face of this interaction, and like that's a big responsibility. So, like, take your time, do it right, get a good salesperson that truly wants to do this and cares and is aligned with your mission.
Speaker 1:How does a law firm even find this kind of person? Like what is attracting and finding this talent look like? How did we do it at Sterling?
Speaker 2:I don't. I mean, I don't think it's any different than normal recruiting, like if you don't have a compelling mission, compelling story, you don't have things about your culture on your team on your like about us page, if there's not a sense that what you're doing is actually helpful, like it's going to be harder and that 800 to one might be 12 or 1500 to one. And like now it's like, oh my God, how am I going to review all these resumes? Like that's crazy. Like now it's like, oh my God, how am I going to review all these resumes? Like that's crazy.
Speaker 2:But we've we've put in place a bunch of different personality tests so we know, like are are these nurturing type people or are they over? Or are they driving type people? Are they? Do we have? Do they have experience doing sales in the first place? So we don't typically hire a lot of people that haven't been on the phones before, cause these are hard. These are from my experience being involved with call centers. This is one of the more difficult call center jobs that I would say exists, because you're you're not getting a lot of happy stories on the other side. You're getting a lot of like super raw People are crying. Sometimes there's deep domestic violence involved. Sometimes there's, you know, there's real situations and like that can be super heavy. So you know, what we found is, you know there's a personality profile that does really well here because they can care, but they don't bring it home with them because that's really important. We've seen like people bring that, like take it home, and then they're they're feeling depressed and upset and stressed and um, so there's like a there's a lot of different components to what we've put in place to try to figure out what that is.
Speaker 2:And then our process for bringing him on is pretty regimented. So the first two weeks all they're doing is shadowing our best person, like literally watching them. So Mary will have her screen up, mary's taking calls and then you know, john sit next to her and just literally watching her do it and listening to the call and like learning that for two weeks. And then the third week they'll start taking, they'll start actually taking some calls and after every call they're debriefing and then they're kind of starting to get their sea legs. And we found there's been lots of instances where in those first two weeks they're not attentive, they're not taking it seriously, like okay, this isn't this. You know we missed something in the interview process. This isn't the right person. So we take the job very seriously because it means a lot. It means a lot to the business and it means a lot to the clients.
Speaker 1:Love it. I'm sitting here thinking like do these, do the normal candidates for this role have prior sales experience? Do we even want them to have sales experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have. They typically have previous call center experience. So that'll be where, where it'll come in, because part of this team is they're actually they're off, they're actually offshore. So like they're not even US based. So like part of the reason we have such a high application to hire ratio is the first step is they got to submit a video selling me on why I should have a conversation with them, like that's their first step and like a bunch of people won't even do that.
Speaker 2:They'll submit their resume. They'll get the auto response to submit a video. They won't submit a video or they'll submit a video and it's not very good. It's like okay, so now we've weeded out a whole bunch and you know that allows us to like find the ones that have the right personality and like intention for the job right away. So that's been, that's been super helpful. And then, obviously, when we get into the interview process, we are asking them we don't care if they have tons of sales experience, it's just we want to. We want to make sure they've had the experience of like being in a call center where they're taking calls and executing like that every single day, 100%.
Speaker 1:So if I'm a small attorney firm and I'm thinking about you know, doing this process, I think your point about shadowing is going to be paramount right. They're going to have to watch you go through the console, have the conversation, build the muscle and repeat that over time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean that's been we had. We went through multiple iterations of that. At first we had tons of documented SOPs and a whole bunch of material that we would like bring them in and give it to them and then we'd test them and do all this stuff and that would take our. Our ramp time for those people was so much longer. Because then they get on the phones and like I don't remember everything I'm supposed to remember and like I don't even know how the phone works, like what happened about the phone, and like I passed those, those tests, but then I didn't use the phone for a week, like how do I make a phone call again? Like how do I pick it up? Like how do I try, how do I make a transfer? So we found pairing a new person up with someone that's doing it really well. You're going to pick up a lot of the nuances and then after the call you just debrief this when you heard this. This is why I did this, this is you know, so on and so forth. So it's really accelerated the process.
Speaker 2:But that modeling, I think, is so important. So I think you know internally, we call it, I do you watch, I do you help? I'm like so week one is I do you watch? So you're just watching me the whole time. Week two is I do, so I'm running the call, but you're entering everything into the call center or into the call flow application in Salesforce. So that's what we call I do you help? And then we turn into you, do I help? So now you're on the call and I'm putting everything into the Salesforce.
Speaker 2:And then the final step is you're doing it independently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you do. Iwatch, yeah, which is a great delegation tool that we use across our organizations here For sure. So, as we're kind of coming to an end here, I think I'd like to shift gears a bit and talk to the salespeople. Right, if you're a, if you're a sale, if you're in a sales role at a legal organization and you're looking to level up or you're looking to take that next step, what advice do you have for them to continue to hone their skills and become great?
Speaker 2:So what I'd say is you know, depending on I'll just take it from like, assuming you're you just started, you're kind of in the space, and how you want to grow um, like, take it super seriously. And, like, you know, there's a, there's a video that we give our people in the call center, called professional or amateur. And if you're a professional, like, you're going to take all of these interactions seriously and what that means is you're going to take good notes. You're going to take all of these interactions seriously and what that means is you're going to take good notes. You're going to know every single person that you talk to you. You personally want to know what happened to them. Did they, did they go forward or did they not? If they didn't, did they get resources that they need to move forward? And like, take a lot of care for the clients coming in Cause you're going to build a really strong muscle. And then the next opportunity is a non-attorney sales role where you're actually executing the consultation.
Speaker 2:But that only happens if you've mastered what you need to master in that first role and we've seen. You know, I think we have six non-attorney salespeople now on our team at Sterling. They do a bulk of the consultations probably 60 or so percent and they perform just as good, if not better, than, our attorneys sometimes. So when you compare it, it's kind of fun to see how do our attorneys perform and how do our non-attorney salespeople perform. Attorneys generally will perform better if they need more files, but as soon as they're full they will then actually start performing worse. And the deltas aren't very significant, they're like three to five percent. Um, so it's back to uh, being where your feet are there. Yeah, exactly, it's exactly that. Because you attorneys will get real busy, their candles will get super full if they get a trial or stuff comes up and now it's like I don't really want to do that counsel today. You're busy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and it makes sense, like it's not a bad thing, it's just a human thing.
Speaker 1:I love it. This has been so helpful. Really appreciate your time and insights. Obviously and I think if you're listening to this and you're thinking about you know do I take the leap and hire a non-attorney salesperson? You can use some of the advice here. If you're already doing it, you know, continue to double down on on empathy and being present and being able to hear people's stories and and add some care into those interactions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I a hundred and add some care into those interactions. Yeah, I 100% agree. I think it's great advice, super important and patience is the key here. So going fast and getting a button to seat is not a good strategy.
Speaker 1:It's not going to work long-term for sure. Thanks everyone, really appreciate your time. If you liked the conversation today about selling in your law firm, make sure to check out this video. We'll make sure to post it in the comments as well. We host and interview law firm owners every single day. Help them tell their story as an opportunity to give back to this great community. Thanks everyone and we'll see you next time.
