Playbook 02: Intake Automation
Stop Losing Leads at 9pm: an Intake Automation Playbook for Law Firms
If you advertise at all, this is the playbook with the fastest payback. Read this one first.
The problem: speed to lead at a law firm
- Leads call after hours and reach voicemail; most never call back.
- Web form leads sit in an inbox until someone checks it.
- Speed to lead: the firm that responds in five minutes wins the client far more often than the one that responds in five hours.
- Staff juggle answering, screening, and conflict checks by memory.
Every lead gets a response in minutes, 24/7, with screening questions that respect bar rules. The plan does not start with software. It starts with your intake questions.
The five-step plan
- Write the 12 screening questions
Incident date, statute concern, jurisdiction, opposing party for conflicts, matter type, contact preferences. Keep it to what a paralegal would ask in the first three minutes. - Define the after-hours path
What happens at 8pm on a Friday: instant text acknowledgment, chat that collects screening answers, and a booked callback slot for morning. - Route by matter type
PI to the PI team, family to family, conflicts to a review queue. Rules, not memory. - Automate the follow-up sequence
Every unanswered lead gets a polite sequence: text, email, call attempt. Stop the moment they reply. - Automate last, choose software to fit the map
This is the software step. The map above decides what to buy, not the other way around.
The software we use
The software we use for this is Smith.ai. Visit smith.ai. Trained receptionists plus chat handle the after-hours and overflow load, and the screening rules you wrote in step one become their script.
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Which practices this fits
Highest payback for personal injury, workers comp, criminal defense, and family law, where the first firm to answer usually wins the client.