The Third Motion: Building Out High-Touch Service in an Automated Environment

February 24, 2026 - Law Practice Management

Lots of attorneys I talk to want to avoid automation – not because they lack understanding about its effectiveness; rather, it’s because they want ‘high-touch’ customer service. In other words, they want to be able to communicate with their leads and clients directly. What if I told you you could have both?

A great law firm process is like a symphony with individual movements. The way to have high-touch and automation is to save the high-touch work for your third movement in each phase. Here’s how it works.

Your first movement is to make a request from a lead or client. Your next movement is to apply a set of automations. Your final (third) movement is to follow up personally if the automation fails to drive action.

Let’s take a couple of examples to see what this looks like. In an intake context, you ask a lead to sign an engagement agreement. If they don’t, they get automated reminders via email or text. If that fails, you (or, the right staff person) personally get involved to make a request. On the client side, you may be asking for case-related documents. Repeat the process. High-touch is the failsafe because in many cases, your leads or clients don’t actually want to talk to you as much as you think they do. Your advice and counsel as an attorney should be reserved for high impact situations.

But not every lead or client interaction is an outgoing request from a law firm. So, when a lead or client reaches out to you personally, respond via that medium. Then set up an automation off of that if the need arises.

The notion of ‘high-touch’ is misunderstood and overrated by many law firms – though, it has its place . . . even if I don’t need to talk to my lawyer about booking an appointment.

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