Why your client intake processes matter

Acquiring new clients is the lifeblood of any law firm. Having a strong client intake and client onboarding process is essential in this regard.

What is client intake/client onboarding? Simply put, it’s the steps a law firm needs to take to turn prospective clients into paying clients. It’s the means of ensuring that those who are interested in your law firm’s services, and who you see as a fit for those services, are retaining your firm to perform legal work on their behalf.

Yet despite its importance, few law firms put much energy into improving their client intake and onboarding process. That’s a mistake that can be costly for the following reasons.

The benefits of strong intake processes

You wouldn’t leave a potential client waiting in your office for three days – but as statistics included in How to Grow Your Firm with Legal Client Intake, Clio’s brand-new client intake and onboarding guide, show, that’s exactly what a majority of firms do when it comes to telephone or online enquiries.

That sort of slow follow-up and poor attention to client care is not just irritating to potential clients – it’s likely costing your firm money.

A poorly-developed process can result in disorganisation, wasted time and lost revenue as potential clients slip through the cracks. It can slow lawyers and other firm staff down, not to have all the relevant information about a client to hand as needed. In some cases, it could even lead to complaints of professional negligence.

By creating a systematic approach to intake, including calendaring all important dates, collecting and storing your data and files in an organised manner, centralising where emails are stored, and creating prompts for follow-up, you’ll drastically minimise the likelihood of incurring an otherwise avoidable negligence complaint.

The benefits go beyond compliance and good practice: a strong client intake process can increase a law firm’s efficiency, and ultimately improve the number of new clients a firm takes on. This also means a better return on investment from any marketing efforts, and improved client satisfaction at the same time.

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of optimising your client intake and onboarding process – and the concrete steps you can take to improve today – Clio’s free guide can help.