Services
Referrability Audits. This is a dive into your interactions with your clients and the language
your staff uses to talk about referrals. There are language patterns and mindsets that kill
referrals and others that promote them. Your Audit Report will deliver a series of
recommendations that will make the biggest impact with the least effort—little hinges that
swing big doors.
Intake Analysis and Reconfiguration. This is a deep dive into how you catch a case, and
what your client thinks and feels, hears and perceives at each step. Are you efficient? Do you
catch all the cases you want? Which ones do you not catch and why? Do you catch them
fully? What more can be done? Do you set yourself on a path toward “forever” with every
client? Do you catch the small case in such a way that if a big case occurs in a year or two or
five that you will definitely get the call?
All these questions are addressed and recommendations delivered in consultation with you and
the managers of your intake process.
Disbursal design. Disbursal is an often overlooked opportunity to deepen the relationship with
your clients at their victory party; to create a meaning for the relationship from your client’s
perspective and to set them up for being in relationship with your firm forever. Ideally, five years from now if that valued person has a legal need—or someone in their social circle—you will still be the “go to source”. Disbursal is critical to all of that because it’s the emotional climax of the ‘Journey to Justice’.
Client events—Creating a Gaggle of Golden Geese. If you do nothing else, do client parties.
Make it a priority to master them and they will bring you cases in bunches for years to come
and fund all your other marketing efforts. Take a deep breath, crank your brain and attention to
’10’ for thirty seconds and let me explain:
Most clients never refer, even if they love you and even if you did a superb job. Some will refer
and some you can induce to refer with better practices. Once someone refers they might refer
again, but only if.
It’s a big if. Regarding referrals from clients, most firms get one or none, usually none. Almost
always none. Do you have a lot of multiple case referrers? Client parties—referrer recognition
parties—turn single case referrers into double digit referrers. Did you get that? Client parties
take your referrers and turn them into golden geese.
In your referral efforts and activities, there is no higher priority.
Let me say it another way. When that miracle occurs and an appreciative person sends their
loved one to you for legal care, the best thing you can do is create the most powerful,
emotionally affecting acknowledgment you can. The client party does all that while training all
your other clients to crave that recognition.
Employee referral programs. Employees are like clients. They like you and want you to do
well and say of course they would send their loved ones if they encountered an opportunity to
do so. By communicating to the group mind and conveying the emotional rewards—you can
create referrers where there were none and you can turn internal referrers to multiple case
referrers. Yes, there are double digit referrers hidden in your staff. Since they could be working
for you all week while not sending cases or working for you all week and sending cases, why
not get the extra cases?
Auditing the ‘Journey to Justice’. Your beloved client’s ‘Journey to Justice’ is the sum of all
the interactions and messages they encounter from before intake to disbursal and beyond.
Each interaction is a “before and after” which forwards the action or fails to do so. There is an
overall strategic arc to it. And each interaction has objectives to fulfill. Your Report will advise
you of the gaps and weaknesses in any particular interaction and suggest powerful additional
events—like Client Parties—that depend and extend the relationship.
Messaging. Assisting with and crafting messages and communiqués to clients—possibly to
include emails, letters, cards, postcards, invitations, newsflashes, videos, fireside chats and
other. Improving tone and accessibility. Eliminating the “dear valued client” tone completely.
Ensuring consistency of voice and establishing appropriate tender warm familiarity with these
lovely people who will be sending cases for the next ten years…instead of getting their check
and moving on, forgetting all about you.
‘Forever Plans’. Structuring the message sequences for clients whose cases have closed so
that three or five years from now a catastrophic injury in their life or social circle will definitely
involve YOU getting the call. Frequency, tone, content of message, assortment of media and
methods of calibrating engagement.
Training staff in persuasive frames. Do you conduct a weekly training hour in all departments? Do you constantly improve key skills? The law firms with the highest referral percentages are all continuous learning environments.
Coaching lawyers in applying persuasion techniques, language patterns, Authority frame,
Compliance frame, Referral Contract™.
There are two mindsets to consider. “I’m not a robot and I’m not a telemarketer. I’m a lawyer. I
have to be free to spontaneously articulate my thoughts at all times.”
That’s one. And yet every master has “set pieces”, perfect phrases that fit their personality and
style which they deliver the same way every time—perfectly.
Which of the two do you think will take you farther? To benefit from coaching you must have a
strong mandate from the top and a culture of improvement.
