Improve Your Law Firm with Small Client Intake Changes

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Legal Toolkit

Improve Your Law Firm with Small Client Intake Changes

03/15/2017

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Intro: Welcome to Legal Toolkit, bringing you the latest legal trends in business initiatives to help you manage your law firm with your host, Jared Correia. You’re listening to Legal Talk Network.

[Music]

Jared Correia: Welcome to yet another delightful episode of the Legal Toolkit on Legal Talk Network. If you were looking for the Lego Batman movie it’s out in theaters now, so check it out. And yes I think we’ve reached the point in our history where the Lego Batman is better than the live-action Batman.

If you’re a returning listener, welcome back. If you’re a first-time listener hopefully you’ll become a longtime listener. And if you’re Danny Ainge do not trade to 2017 Nets pick, don’t give in to the temptation. As always I’m your host Jared Correia and in addition to casting this pod, I’m the founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, which offers subscription-based law practice management consulting and technology services for law firms.

Check us out at redcavelegal.com to find out more. You can also buy my book Twitter In One Hour for Lawyers from the American Bar Association on iTunes, at Amazon and probably even at Gabriel’s Bookstore in Duluth, Minnesota, if you’re so inclined.

Here on the Legal Toolkit, we provide you each month with a new tool to add your own legal tool kit so your practices will become more and more like best practices. In this episode, we’re going to talk all about the client intake process. But before I introduce today’s guest let’s take a moment to thank our sponsors.

First off let’s welcome our newest sponsor Answer 1. Answer 1 is a leading virtual receptionist and answering service provider for lawyers. You can find out more by giving them a call at 800-Answer1 or visiting them online at  HYPERLINK “http://www.answer1.com” www.answer1.com.

Scorpion delivers award-winning law firm web design and online marketing programs to get you more cases. Scorpion has helped thousands of law firms just like yours to attract new cases and to grow their practices. For more information, visit scorpionlegal.com/podcast.

This podcast is also brought to you by Amicus Attorney, developers of Legal Practice Management software. Let Amicus help you run your practice so that you can focus on what you do best, practicing law. Visit amicusattorney.com to learn more and get started today.

Today for your listening pleasure, we’ve invited to the show Michael Chasin, who is the CEO of Lexicata, a CRM and client intake software for law firms. Michael is also the co-founder of LawKick a marketplace for connecting lawyers and clients. He is an MBA from the Loyola Marymount University and his law degree from Loyola Law School.

And at this moment, I would like to pause to say R.I.P Hank Gathers. The dude is a beast, if you remember that basketball player. Michael’s undergraduate degree is from the University of North Carolina which suffers from not being Duke while we’re talking about college basketball. Michael welcome to the show.

Michael Chasin: Yeah, thank you for the warm welcome and taking multiple shots at all my peers. I appreciate that.

Jared Correia: I do really like Hank Gathers, I just hate UNC, I’m sorry.

Michael Chasin: I’ll trade Hank Gathers for a Carolina love. Obviously you know Alma Mater is a lot different from where you went to law school or your MBA.

Jared Correia: All right, I’ll be better about that next time. All right can I ask you some questions?

Michael Chasin: Yeah sure.

Jared Correia: All right, so we’re going to talk all about intake today. So lawyers I think understand that marketing is important, that’s been established, but what they don’t do so well is like automating their marketing or tracking its effectiveness. So let’s start like at the very basic level of what’s the CRM and how does it work?

Michael Chasin: Yeah, so before we jump to the CRM thing I just want to say that maybe your listeners are very well versed and educated about the importance of marketing, the vast majority are because obviously they are educated by you, but the problem is that a lot of people don’t actually know that that’s important.

The vast majority of leads that are sent around the system so to speak, most of them are referrals. So the vast majority of firms, especially ones that have been around for more than five years were predicated and built off of referrals not marketing. So a lot of people don’t really understand the importance of marketing.

That being said, the importance of a CRM and what that is, is going to be relevant to everyone whether they’re a marketing type of firm or not. So CRM as it core stands for Contact Relationship Management. So basically it does exactly what it sounds like, manages the relationships between you and your contacts.

Now most CRMs focus on just clients. Since we’re a law firm focused CRM, we don’t just focus on leads and clients, we also focus on professional relationships as well. So really at its most basic level a CRM is supposed to enable you to connect effectively and maintain your relationships between you and whoever that contact maybe.

(00:05:08)

Jared Correia: Yeah that’s pretty good, not bad. I think maybe you should write the Wikipedia page on the subject.

Michael Chasin: I do like that.

Jared Correia: Alright, so along a similar track, why is it important for law firms to improve their management of the intake process specifically and can you describe some consistent mistakes that you see lawyers making in terms of intake?

Michael Chasin: Yes for sure. So first off why is it important for them to improve their intake management process, right? What it comes down to is it you don’t want to live a better life, you don’t want to live an easier life you don’t want to make more money then don’t bother improving your intake process because it’s just a waste. But obviously I would assume that nobody fits in that category, everyone wants an easier life, like make more money with less time or make the same amount of money with less time, not everyone looking to grow.

But the fact of the matter is that’s like, I don’t have a good analogy for it, but it’s building what I always suppose building like a sales funnel, that’s something what intake is building a funnel and like with any funnel if you want at the end of the day every like molecule of water that you throw into that funnel or whatever to actually come out the other side as serviceable or revenue, like serviceable people or revenue, you need to make sure that funnel is as the least amount of leaky as possible. Everyone that comes out means you’re less efficient along the way, either less efficient with time or less efficient with money that you’re spending on marketing.

So at its core the reason why it’s important for them to improve their processes because not only you’re spending more time that you’re wasting but you’re also losing out on potential revenue which will allow you to get to where you want to be or be where you want to be just with less time.

So that being said, what are some common mistakes? I’d say the most common mistake is not having a process at all. A lot of people, I see this a lot of with my friends that I went to law school with who are jumping in and doing their own practice I see it all the time with our clients that are coming to as well, is people come in and they don’t have a process at all.

We didn’t go to law school to be business people or else we would have done the MBA like me, but we went to law school because we wanted to practice law and a lot of the times we blur the line between running a practice and practicing law because they’re not the same thing.

So I think the biggest thing is people don’t look at their intake process like a sales process and lawyers hate the word sales because like I’m not a salesman I’m a professional, I’m a professional. You are not, you are a Salesman you have to sell your services. You’re just selling a different commodity than you would otherwise be selling if you were a different type of salesman, but you’re still selling something.

So once they get that through their brain that I need to sell you need to think about constructing your sales process in a certain way because when you walk into an Apple store, imagine if you walked in and said I wanted to buy a computer and they were like, okay, uh yeah we don’t really know what to do now, right? You’ll be like what the hell kind of organization is this. So that’s I think that’s the first thing is not having a process.

Now the most common mistakes when someone actually has a process I think there’s a combination of two things. I think they either try to automate too much or they don’t try to automate anything and they’re usually at two extreme ends of the spectrum. The problem with automating too much is you take the human element out of it and the second you take the human element out, you take the trust element out and for people who don’t know they have done tons of studies on this and the number one factor why people decide to or to not hire a certain lawyer is based on trust, trust factor is number one.

So if you automate too much, you could still build trust but it’s harder to do it without any physical relationship with a human being. The alternative is not trying to automate enough, trying to do everything by hand, trying to track everything on a piece of paper or spreadsheet, try to do every upload and every scan and it ends up taking too much time and what that ends up taking away from is one the client experience because they can’t spend as much time, a little TLC and they end up losing track of people which is just a bad thing for everyone not only from a revenue but obviously you don’t contact a lawyer and they contact me back six days later, never you’re not going to hire that person.

Jared Correia: Very well said. I think there’s a plumbing analogy to be made with the leaky funnel.

Michael Chasin: With the leaky funnel. Yeah, it’s like why bother installing a drain on your patio if the water doesn’t funnel towards the drain. Just to have a drain with nothing and how do we do on that ones I guess.

Jared Correia: That’s good I’m feeling like something maybe with like 09:26, call me we can work on that.

Michael Chasin: It’s your podcast, so you can have whatever.

Jared Correia: That’s right for this half-hour I can do anything I want. All right, so in terms of improving those improving upon those mistakes that lawyers are making, what basic tips do you offer to the lawyers you service who are seeking to improve their intake procedures, other than like buying a subscription to Lexicata which they should obviously do?

(00:09:52)

Michael Chasin: Obviously, right. So there are tons of little things that they can do like I said I think stepping back and again I think it always comes down to the core of like thinking about your law firm like a business and thinking about it as actually setting up a process. I think a lot of — like what do they say when you first start spending money as a business is a way to justify overspending, but would they say, they say don’t plan for the life you have, with the life that you want.

Jared Correia: Like don’t purchase.

Michael Chasin: Yeah, same type of thing — yeah exactly so it is the same type of thing with intake. You don’t want to build an intake process that’s going to work for two employees if you’re trying to grow your firm eventually to 10 people with five lawyers and three staff and paralegals or whatever they may be. So don’t build your processes around that.

So I’d say the basic tips are a couple things. One, implement like a checklist, whether it’s on Lexicata or on a piece of paper or on your wall, whatever it is, come up with a workflow. Like in your head let’s say let’s take the example of like let’s say a family lawyer, someone comes in through a divorce they have in their head from step A to Z what’s going to happen through that entire life cycle of the client.

Forget steps or whatever let’s say steps 1 through 10, forget steps 1 through 3 of like being in the intake process but steps 4 through 10 are like, I need to come in for a consultation, then I need an engagement letter, then I need payment, then once I have payment I need to collect their tax information, then I need to draft a settlement agreement, then I need to get them to site, there’s all these steps and everyone has them in their head but they never write them out.

And the problem with not writing them out is a couple of fold, number one, is you can never improve on something that you don’t concisely put on paper. That’s like trying to write an essay in your head, it just doesn’t work. So you always say even like a speech, you’re always going to write down your speech and then speak it and you are not going to be, you’re going to put on paper first, so putting on paper helps.

Number two is building for the future. That head of yours only extends to one brain which is yours. Everyone else besides that that’s going to work in your law firm is just going to be guessing what the hell you want. So again, building it for the life you want, not the life that you have So putting it down on paper is going to be a big thing and in the process of putting it down on paper just like with that speech writing, you’re going to figure out there’s some grammatical mistakes, there’s going to be some workflow errors, there’s going to be some things that just don’t flow right and then once you put it down on paper you can continue tweaking and tweaking, tweaking, so at the very basic level, the one tip I would tell lawyers besides think like a business and think like a sales process is put a checklist down on paper and figure out exactly what your workflow should be.

Jared Correia: Very nice, I think the modern strategy for speech writing though as I’ve seen in politics lately is like collecting anecdotes from Fox News Channel, at least –

Michael Chasin: Fake news, fake news.

Jared Correia: So lastly before we leave this first part of the podcast, so what are some of the tangible advantages that lawyers can expect to see coming from an improved intake process utilizing these tips that you just talked about?

Michael Chasin: Yes, so obviously it goes back to, you touched on this to some extent already is the advantages of an improved intake process is going to be a million things. I can literally list a bunch of them tangible and intangible. I’d say at its core more money, so this isn’t for everyone. I talked to a lot of firms especially ones that are like estate planning or stay-at-home mother type of speak or like you know a stay-at-home father too where they just want to spend more time with their family, they don’t want to make any money, they want more time.

So both of those are going to work together, you can make more money with an improved process because less leaky funnel which means more revenue and you can make more time because you don’t have to spend as much time patching up those funnels as you go, or trying to manually collect stuff later, or you could do both.

A lot of lawyers also like to look at things and say I need to make more money, but again, they’re not thinking like businesspeople. A business person would say, I don’t need to make more money. I need to make more profit and profit is all about efficiency and lowering your overhead and making the same amount of money or more with less expenses. So you’re going to find some of those advantages of this.

And then obviously just intangibles like happiness, you can’t put a dollar amount on that, so you’re going to be like okay, I’m just more organized and more efficient, and then also employees. One of the – we know so much turnover happens within a law firm, a lot of times people try to find cheap labor, but on the top of that it’s just not that pleasant usually to work at a law firm, it’s a high-stress environment, it tends to not be that high paying for everyone except for the lawyer or maybe a couple of high-end paralegals.

So they’re getting like because they’re cutting a bad, a bad in the bargain, but if you can make their life easier, your life is going to be better and employees are going to be happier. So overall just satisfaction across the board and then probably the biggest thing that I care about and I think law firms should care about more is client experience.

And I think when I talk to firms all the time they’re like, you know what, I don’t need this right now because I don’t have high volume and I’m like, well, you’re completely missing the point because it’s not always about volume for you, it’s about client experience.

It’s like the analogy I always give and we could talk about LawKick in another conversation but when we started this marketplace to connect lawyers and clients, a lot of the clients were coming to us and saying, I didn’t hire this lawyer, because I came through a tech website and found them and then they sent me a PDF and Word doc.

(00:15:08)

That’s like getting in an Uber that you order on your phone and asking them to pay with cash at the end, it’s just not a good process. So it’s all about the client experience, and that matters a lot towards not only your relationship with the client, but your likelihood of building your practice off of referrals. So I think there are a lot of ancillary advantages but efficiency time and client experience are probably the top three I would say.

Jared Correia: Very nice, I could put a dollar sign on happiness by the way and if Warren Buffett is listening to this podcast, he should contact me to find out. All right so we’re done with the first half of the show, we’re going to need a moment to take this all in, see what I did there, but we’ll be back soon with more from Michael Chasin, CEO of Lexicata.

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Oh! Hello. Thanks for sticking with us through the break. So let’s now continue our discussion with Michael Chasin, CEO of Lexicata. So Michael getting back into this, at what stage during the intake process should law firms start to engage a conflict check?

Michael Chasin: Yeah, so I think age-old answer that we always got through law school that piss us off that we consistently say overtime is really it depends. You’d be amazed how few firms that are not over a hundred attorneys or fifty attorneys even do conflict check like very few. When most people talk to us they are like do you have a conflict check system and will be like well we don’t really call it a conflict check system, but you can search by notes and stuff like that and they’ll be like, oh, I just want to search last name. I’m like, okay, well that’s not a conflict check system, that’s just searching the last name so most firms don’t even have a conflict check.

I think it’s going to depend on their practice area. So there are a lot of firms that just like don’t really run into that many conflicts. So like business or something like that, if they’re doing like basic business transactional work, there’s not going to be a lot of conflicts that come up. If they’re doing divorce work, that’s where you start to run into trouble, so I think it really depends on the practice area.

I’d say always the sooner the better from an ethical standpoint and this is really where some of these lines start to be blurred between like are you a business or you a law firm because the law firm ethic side of things would say the first second you start talking them you should do a conflict check, but the business side of yourself is like, well that’s the easiest way to disrupt rapport and not allow you to really build a relationship.

I’d say, hey let me put to you on hold while I make sure that we can talk to you. It’s not the best experience so I think finding that middle ground for what you’re building around your system and remember how I told you about putting that checklist system down this is a perfect example. You do remember even though that was before the break and long time ago, you do remember.

So basically the point is, see it goes back to that point being like you need to put it on paper and you need to fill out a time that works well in that process, like for instance if your normal flow is they talk to a receptionist then they schedule a consultation, well you should probably do the conflict check maybe after they schedule their consultation or before the pain of the pros and cons of whether you want to do it.

I’d always say like get them into the system, don’t give them legal advice or really take down much information and then schedule a follow-up call or something like just say hey we have to make sure that we’re not, that we’re allowed to talk to you whatever it is. So find your process. Honestly, I would just be spinning your wheels if I told you there was an exact space to do it, it’s really going to depend for every practice and how you want to do things and how closely you want to follow the letter of the law really is what it comes down to.

(00:19:56)

Jared Correia: That was a curveball, you handled it pretty well. What people don’t know is I like curl up and take a nap during the break and then like 10 minutes later I start up again.

Michael Chasin: Yeah, I’m like four beers deep after the break. No I was going to mainly say it was to hide the pain from the bringing up the Hank comment and then to dude comment, especially in sensitive time of the year of the basketball.

Jared Correia: It’s tough being a Tar Heels fan I know.

Michael Chasin: Two championships in 10 years, I don’t know it’s not that bad.

Jared Correia: So, this is a topic we have covered on the show before that actually has nothing to do with college basketball believe it or not, where do you stand on initial consultations? Do you think attorney should charge for those or do you think they should give them away?

Michael Chasin: Can I pass since it’s not a basketball question.

Jared Correia: Oh! Very nice. Nice pun. You can.

Michael Chasin: There you go, you like it. All right, well I’m glad someone’s listening, right.

Jared Correia: My mom listens to the show, so don’t worry.

Michael Chasin: Hi mom! Hi Mrs. Correia, I am a big fan of your child, okay so basically initial consultation. So again, this is going to be one of those like it depends. Certain practice areas really lend themselves well to paid consultations and some of them don’t.

I’m a pretty firm believer that you should or should not be charging based on how you want to build your practice, meaning, if you want to build a volume practice where you’re going to get a lot of “s**t” through the door and you’re going to have to funnel through that crap, then you should not charge for consultations. You should talk to everyone that you can and scrape off the bottom of your boat every barnacle and crap that you can find and you know what, you’re going to end up finding gold, but you’re going to have to sift through a lot of crap to get through it, which is fine if you have good processes and you have good softwares in place to help you do that, it’s not going to be that bad.

So for those types of people I would say not necessary to charge because you’re just going to be getting a lot of crap and you’re going to scare a lot of people away creating that really large top part of the funnel, that’s going back to that funnel having a very large drain not everything can funnel into. Now the alternative is being like I’m hot crap and my drain is nicer than yours, I am not copper I’m actually brass or I’m actually whatever is nice stuff so basically the point is I don’t want crap going through my funnel unless it’s good crap.

And so basically with those types of people if you’re like a one, two, three person shop and you’re like we work mostly off referral and we don’t want to deal with these people who aren’t serious, who aren’t like really interested, those are the people that should be charging for consultation because you know what our time is money and even though I’m talking to you Jared for free, I don’t know why, but I’m doing it for free, I am giving away free information, but it’s okay to give away some stuff for free like white papers and blogs, you’re giving them a taste but not the entire entree. You’re giving them a little sample or a little appetizer, but not the whole thing.

The problem is a lot of lawyers who are desperate and a one or two person shop will give away free consultations because they think that they have to, but you don’t. So it has to be I know I’m good and you have to show it to them and by not giving away free services that I think will end up being like a value add, but like I said I think you needed to find yourself as a firm and figure out are you a volume firm or you a quality firm and you could be both to some extent, but you’re quantity or quality, if you are quantity you have to do free consultations. If your quality, I don’t think you should do free consultations.

Jared Correia: That was absolutely the most fecal related references ever, ever in an answer on this podcast.

Michael Chasin: I was going to keep the profanity limited and then you start talking smack about Caroline or something.

Jared Correia: Yeah well that’s fair, that’s fair, I knew we should have put you on like a three-second delay. So Michael what’s the best method for in taking potential law firm clients, do you take them in whatever way they come in or do you try to direct them somewhere, like phone calls, emails, fax website chat, telepathic link what do you think is the best way?

Michael Chasin: Well you know what if you got that telepathic link then you might have picked gold on that one so I’d say go for that. But I think you have to go with this in multiple strategies. I think your end goal should be shoving people, not shoving that might be a bad word, directing them towards the funnel that you’ve created for them.

So like for instance with Lexicata, we don’t care if you call, email, text us, send us a message through the website, it doesn’t matter, because at the end of the day you’re going to end up going through the same sales funnel whether you went through one of those mediums or not.

Now that being said, I went away from the word shove because I don’t want people to think that you have to force them into a certain direction. If you sat down and created this “funnel” that I’ve been talking about so much and having your checklist and your workflows laid out in front of you, they’re going to naturally drive towards completely going into that funnel.

(00:24:56)

But just because if they call you and say hey, I’m interested in talking to you about protecting my IP for Lexicata, like let’s say I call your law firm Jared and say, hey Jared I heard you on this podcast, you are guys are awesome, can you help me with IP. And then you say, hey, sure. Let me send you an email that’s like what the hell are you talking about, like that doesn’t make any sense.

It’s just like be human. A lot of people just forget to be human and do what’s natural. If it feels unnatural, you are doing it wrong. So what you might want to do is, like hey, yeah, sure, let’s talk about it for a minute, I’ve got about five minutes, I always like to do this just like kind of put like a like a stopper so that they don’t take up 45 minutes your time without being a paid consultation or without having some sort of like serious, like follow up type of thing.

So I say you know what, I’ve got about five minutes until I am walking into a meeting, I love to chat with you, let’s get something on the calendar. Let’s say my next thing I want to do is set up a phone consultation or in person say, let’s set up like an in person thing and then let’s talk for a couple minutes and then that way when we have to go, we can end it right there, but at least we have something followed up. So that’s what it always goes down whatever funnel you have.

So the next thing is you want to get them into an email campaign, then you say, okay, you don’t have to tell them email me, you can say, hey, let me take down your email, I’ve got some really good information, I think it will be useful for you for IT related stuff, I think you’ll find it really useful while you’re evaluating whether finding a lawyer fits you right now and they’ll say, okay great. If you tell them I’m going to send you marketing materials, they are like, please don’t, but if you tell them I am going to send you helpful stuff they’re happy to do it.

So again, do whatever is natural and they will eventually funnel into whatever flow you’ve created because that’s what you’ve built for yourself and that’s where you want them to go. Kind of like in basketball, if you create like a trap for them in the back court, let’s go back to about it. You create a trap in the back court, you want them to go to the north side of the court not the south side of the court, so you basically even though you don’t tell them where to go, you basically through your actions direct them where you want them to be.

Jared Correia: Very nice. I like how you brought it back there, it was impressive.

Michael Chasin: Thank you man. This is I’m like I feel like we’re vibing right now Jared which is good.

Jared Correia: I know, unfortunately this is the last question.

Michael Chasin: Oh! Man.

Jared Correia: Maybe we’ll do this again sometime. Let’s talk a little bit about software. So is it appropriate to use a standalone intake program or is it more advisable to integrate that system with other programs? You guys integrate with Clio. Now if integration is the more advisable method, which types of systems should an intake tool be linked to?

Michael Chasin: Got it. So there aren’t that many intake tools on the market. We’re one of the few. I’d like to say we’re number one. We have a lot of great partnerships with the ABA and different things that I will kind of show you that we’re the most popular. So, obviously I’m going say use us as an intake tool.

Now hat being said, there are plenty of tools that you can use. Like if you’re a new solo starting out and you have zero client, zero money to spend, maybe you don’t need software immediately. That might be overkill for you. That being said again, plan for the life you want not the life that you have. So don’t wait too long to implement solutions until it’s too late.

And like, find something that works for you, if it’s a combination of Google Spreadsheets and Google Docs and this and that or Lexicata, plus Clio, plus this, plus that, whatever it is find out what works for you and a lot of putting down that stuff that funnel and writing down what you want your funnel to look like, will kind of help dictate what kind of softwares you need to fill those gaps.

Now it’s not the worst thing in the world if you have a standalone product, but it’s also not the best. Ideally you want your software to happen to be able to integrate with a number of different ones. That being said, for lawyers it’s pretty easy to do that because they’re just, it’s not like you’re running Lexicata where we literally have like 25 different softwares that we use, that we all serve completely different purposes.

You’re running a law firm, you could pretty much get away with using something like a Clio or any of their competitors. Something like a Lexicata and then maybe like one or two other tools like QuickBooks and things like that. For the most part you can get away with that with the barebones.

So you want them to integrate, now, the word integrate can kind of be misconstrued. When I say integrate I’m not talking about, it doesn’t have to be 100% seamless integration where it’s like, you add someone on your iPhone, it adds it to your Apple contacts, that adds it to your Google contacts that calls them immediately and does this, it doesn’t have to be that crazy. But they should be able to at least talk to each other a little bit like for us.

So like it’s all about building that funnel or that workflow to get them from step 1 to 10, like for instance, if you buy a lead online like we have some integrations with some like lead generation services, if you buy them online it should funnel into Lexicata, that’s a really nice, it’s not a must-have feature, but it’s really nice, especially if you are 29:32.

We also have integrations with things like Ruby Receptionists and different Answer, well I don’t know if we have with Answer 1 or not, I can’t remember, but we have different integrations with different answering services. So that way the leads get pooled in, and then same thing, that’s part of the reason why we connect with Clio is because it’s funneling from step 1, 2, 3, 4 and then pushing into 5 through 10 in Clio and then Clio connects with QuickBooks, with LawPay and all this stuff. So you want to create that seamless 1 to 10 process.

(00:29:56)

What system should be linked to the intake tool? I think an answering service should be and we integrate with I think over a half a dozen of them, most of the ones that are used in the market. So that’s important.

I think your website should hook up so again it depends if you’re like doing no referrals or whatever it is, it kind of depends on whether you need it or not, but it’s ideal if your website can hook up, like we integrate with WordPress and some other different website companies. So that way leads can get pulled in. So I’m going to recommend this last piece with a caveat.

So we obviously, we would ideally have Lexicata or any tool that you’re using connect to your practice management software, but there are two main problems with that. Number one, is most of the softwares out there just don’t have the technological capabilities to seamlessly connect with softwares like us. Unfortunately Legal is just it was built like there were some awesome softwares that are built 10 or 15 years ago, but they’re kind of a little bit past the game now, and they’re kind of like time to put them to sleep because they just have to move on to the new ones like Clio and some of the other ones that allow other softwares to plug in.

So that’s something that you should look at when choosing your practice management software, does it integrate with other softwares like, unfortunately MyCase I think is very good software, but they just don’t integrate with anything and you’re kind of stuck in between a rock and a hard place like what do I do with this information.

So that’s one thing is look at that, and then also, and the last thing I’ll end with is, an overarching thing is be careful not to try to find a software that does everything. I think that’s one of those things, it’s like a rookie mistake, like, oh, this sounds really easy. I found the gold mine, they do everything. But a Jack-of-all-trades is an expert at nothing and if you do everything, you do everything not that good. So you want to find different softwares that are siloed, that are experts in different areas like Clio for Case Management, Lexicata for Intake Management, whatever Answer1 for your phone service and this and that and the other, right?

You want to find ones that talk to each other but are siloed because if you find one that does everything, they’re not going to do everything well and you’re going to be stuck and chances are they’re probably not going to survive long-term, because in the history of law, I don’t think you can point to one company aside from maybe LexisNexis that’s been able to do like a lot of things at a high capacity. Most of them die off pretty quickly.

Jared Correia: Boy, nice job mentioning the sponsors. It looks like, it looks like I might finally be able to buy that private jet this year. Excellent, sadly, I know right that’s going to do for another episode of ‘The Legal Toolkit’. I will be back on future shows though with further insights into my soul, the Soul of America and the Legal Market.

If you are feeling nostalgic for my dulcet tones, however you can check out our entire show archive anytime you want at  HYPERLINK “http://www.legaltalknetwork.com” www.legaltalknetwork.com.

So, thanks to Michael Chasin, CEO of Lexicata for dropping by the Virtual Studio this afternoon. Michael, can you tell folks how to get more information about you, Lexicata and LawKick which we hadn’t talked a lot about yet.

Michael Chasin: Yes. So, LawKick which is L-A-W-K-I-C-K, it’s just a marketplace to connect lawyers and clients. Good resource for finding clients, it doesn’t cost anything so you can definitely check that out. We’re not as active on that platform as we are on Lexicata, so if you submit an application you’re not necessarily going to hear back that day or anything like that.

But, more importantly for Lexicata you can email me directly at  HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected] or you can feel free to go to lexicata.com, there’s tons of information there, also feel free to Google us, there’s tons of reviews online, obviously you want to make sure you do your due diligence and for people who are still listening this podcast and got to the Holy Grail at the end, if you mention Jared’s name and you do an annual subscription then you’ll get an additional $50 off. So make sure to mention that you heard about us on this podcast and you will get an additional discount applied to your invoice, make sure that the person who does the demo with you knows about that.

Jared Correia: Nice. Just don’t make people spell my last name. Thanks Michael, we really appreciate it, good time today. Michael Chasin, CEO of Lexicata and thanks to all of you out there for listening.

In closing, I just like to remind all of you, including Sound Engineer Adam Lockwood that you should never ever, ever f**k with Tom Brady.

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Outro: Thanks for listening to ‘Legal Toolkit’, produced by the broadcast professionals at Legal Talk Network. Join Host Jared Correia for their next podcast covering the current business trends for law firms. If you would like more information about today’s show, please visit  HYPERLINK “http://www.legaltalknetwork.com” legaltalknetwork.com. Subscribe via iTunes and RSS. Find Legal Talk Network on twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google Play and iTunes.

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The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

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