Law firms are now looking to hire employees who work solely on intake.  This could be an ‘intake specialist’, or an ‘intake manager’, or an ‘intake coordinator’.  Whatever you call this person, the job is to focus entirely on managing intake.

Everybody wants more clients.  It’s a good problem to have.  And it invites additional opportunities – to become more efficient so you can accommodate even more work, or hire some great people.  And there are a couple of super basic numbers you can look at to determine what your current success rate is with respect to adding clients – including whether you can improve it.

One of the things that came out of the pandemic was that it was clear that law firms needed to think more granularly about their intake processes.  The convenience economy was accelerated by the pandemic, which means that any business intake process must now be tight as a drum.

So, if you focus on a specific practice area by leaning into a niche, that’s a great way to add efficiency because you’re gonna get particularly good at that particular thing.

There’s been lots of talk about law firm efficiency of late.  And so, some folks address the value of workflows.  And others talk about how important it is to generate metrics around efficiency.  And then there’s the pressure coming from clients fed up with the inefficiencies inherent in traditional law practice and law firm billing.  So it makes sense that every law firm out there is looking to work faster, and smarter.

And the way to make sure that the right people get the right message is to create specific, segmented lists of your contacts. 

My dad, like all dads, had some choice phrases to impart.  One was that I shouldn’t step over a dime to pick up a penny.  (Not sure why I would do that, but . . .)  And that you have to spend money to make money.  It’s actually pretty sage business advice – especially for budget-conscious lawyers.

You see it all the time, but if you get too buddy-buddy with your employee and you try to act like somebody’s friend, the next thing you know, your work “friend” is taking three-hour lunches, or bagging at 3 p.m., without any kind of notice.  This kind of thing is particularly fraught in a remote work environment.