Don't Panic, Prepare! After Hours Intake Solutions and The Situations You'll Need Them In

Welcome back to The Legal Intake Experts podcast! For more than a decade, Answering Legal has helped growing law firms ensure they never miss a chance to connect with new leads. Now, we’re pulling back the curtain to share our best strategies for strengthening your intake process and turning more callers into clients.

In our fourth episode, hosts Nick Werker and Tony Prieto discuss the challenges law firms face with after-hours calls. They cover the need for proper planning, managing expectations, and being adaptable to ensure potential clients receive timely responses. Nick and Tony also provide practical tips including using an accountability chart and setting up an empathetic auto-response to improve client satisfaction and law firm's efficiency.

Check out the episode below. You can also enjoy it on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The Legal Intake Experts is a part of the Answering Legal podcast network. Interested in learning more about Answering Legal? Click here to learn more about 400 minute free trial!

Check out the previous episode of The Legal Intake Experts here!

This podcast is produced and edited by Joe Galotti. You can reach Joe via email at [email protected].

Episode Transcript:

Nick (announcer voice): In a world where law firms constantly miss out on new leads due to sloppy legal intake—and often because they just aren’t answering the phone—two marketers aim to provide a glimmer of hope.

Tony: I thought we agreed we weren’t going to do the announcer thing.

Nick: Thank God, because that hurts my throat. You do the intro.

Tony: Gladly. I’m Tony Prieto, and this is my colleague, Nick Werker. Believe it or not, we’re marketing professionals.

Nick: Well, I think you’re the professional. But we are true experts when it comes to all things legal intake.

Tony: For over a decade, our company, Answering Legal, has helped ensure that growing law firms never miss out on connecting with new leads.

Nick: And now we’re ready to share our trade secrets and help make the legal world a better place—

Tony: —or at the very least, help our listeners shore up their lead-capturing processes and convert more callers into clients.

Nick: Welcome to the Legal Intake Experts podcast.

Tony: Let’s dive right in.

Nick: We are back! This is the Legal Intake Experts podcast, presented by Answering Legal.

And we have a theme today. We have a theme. We have a plan — a little bit of a plan.

And so, without any context, I’m going to tell you a very fun, endearing, disgusting story about myself.

I have what my wife likes to call night gummies.

Tony: No.

Nick: So, I am sober. I do not partake anymore in those indulgences. But I think I remember how this started — I really like those Albanese gummy bears.

Tony: Never heard of them.

Nick: Oh my God. Albanese. You’ve got to Google this.

Tony: Albany?

Nick: Albanese. I have absolutely no idea what the origin of the name is, but they’re these gummy bears that are much better than Haribo gummy bears. They’re a little softer, but they have the most insane flavors. There’s a peach one, there’s a grapefruit one — and you know I love grapefruit.

They just come in these amazing flavors. So my in-laws and I, we do cheap Christmas gifts — twenty bucks each or something like that. It’s usually a t-shirt or a pair of socks or an inside joke.

And so my wife, I guess one year, told them to get me these Albanese gummy bears because I was completely fixated — because I get fixated on everything.

And I kept them on my nightstand in our bedroom, and I would just eat a bunch at night. And my wife very endearingly calls them my night gummies.

And when people find out about that, they say that I’m disgusting. So I have had to kick that habit. I no longer indulge in night gummies.

Tony: So what we’re talking about here is eating a lot of sugar late at night, and then waking up in the morning and going to the gym. Is that what we’re talking about?

Nick: Well, I don’t do it anymore. It’s been—

Tony: Now it’s night granola.

Nick: I don’t want to talk about that either.

Tony: It’s healthier, but it probably has a bunch of sugar in it too, right?

Nick: I know. It’s like all carbs and sugar.

Tony: Listen, I never said it was a good habit. I said it was disgusting.

Nick: I admitted it was disgusting!

Tony: My late-night habit is just reading. I’ve had it ever since I was a child. I’ll sit in my head and say, “Okay, it’s almost midnight, I’ve got to start getting ready for bed, I’ve got work in the morning.” And then I’ll go, “Okay, well, just one more chapter of whatever book I’m reading.”

Then I look up and it’s 2:00 in the morning, and I say, “Well, I guess I’m just going to be tired tomorrow.” Because I don’t drink coffee. So when I don’t sleep enough, I’m just exhausted the next day. I don’t get the chemical remedy of caffeine.

Nick: I get the chemical dependency on caffeine.

Okay, so we’re talking about night stuff. Night. Is it Nightcrawlers from Always Sunny? I would love to play Nightcrawlers with you. Darkness comes.

Why am I always doing voices?

But okay, I want you to picture this.

Tony: Okay.

Nick: Because we have a theme, we have a plan, we have topics — we’re professionals here.

I want you to picture this: you’re a lawyer, running your own firm. It’s 2:00 in the morning. You finally shut the chapter on your book and you’re ready for sleepy time.

You’re, of course, rocking your aqua-colored satin Miami Dolphins pajamas. And suddenly, the phone rings.

You’ve got a potential client calling you with a brand new case.

What do you do?

Tony: Uh… panic.

Probably answer the phone, unfortunately. But I’m not really going to have a plan when it comes to that — other than handling it like I normally would.

And quite frankly, that’s just going to lead to me being up for another hour while I discuss this case with this client. And I can’t imagine that that will lead to a very good work-life balance, like they say.

Nick: I agree. That’s obviously the problem, right?

Too many law firms either miss out on valuable clients or they sacrifice their sanity because they don’t have a system for handling leads that come in outside of regular business hours.

But I also want to make this point — lawyers aren’t even planning for those phone calls to come in.

And here’s a story that backs that up.

I have a very good friend who owns a legal SEO company. And one time, I get hit up by someone from their organization — a contact I have a great relationship with — and they say,

“Oh, one of our clients is trying to dabble in running Google Ads outside of their normal business hours. So, we want phone coverage for outside those business hours.”

And I said, “Sure, but do you think the only time people are going to call you is when your Google Ads are running?”

Tony: Yeah.

Nick: Exactly. You need a plan.

Tony: Yeah, and it really does come down to — for most lawyers — it’s going to be: Do I get this case, or do I get some sleep?

And you just can’t take that on a—no pun intended—case-by-case basis. Right? You need to have a real plan in place.

Nick: Did you just come up with that off the top of your head?

Tony: Yes.

Nick: That was pretty good.

So, we’ve established the problem. Like you said — they either miss clients or they miss sleep, which needs to be patented, trademarked, and put on a billboard somewhere… with money that I don’t have.

Tony: Exactly. And so, the reality is that it seems like that’s a choice you have to make.

And so the first thing we have to address is — is that really a choice you can make?

Can you afford, as a law firm, whatever size you are, to ignore people calling after hours?

Because one of the funniest things about that anecdote you told earlier — that firm that said, “People are only calling when our Google Ads are running” — is that most lawyers, it’s a documented issue, don’t just work 9-to-5s.

They work Saturdays and Sundays. They work constantly.

And yet, they still think people are only going to call them Monday through Friday, 9-to-5. But if you’re not working a 9-to-5, think about how many other people also aren’t working 9-to-5s.

It’s this myth of the standard clock-in, clock-out 9-to-5 job that doesn’t really line up with the modern work environment anymore.

Nick: Yeah, I get sucked into that trap too, because I always talk about this with, like, everybody that will listen.

Two things I talk about to everybody who will listen: number one, my obsession with LinkedIn — which has grown — and number two, the kind of content I interact with there.

A lot of what’s so popular on LinkedIn — because of thought leadership, engagement, and how the algorithm works — is about productivity, systems, and balance.

Tony: LinkedInfluencers.

Nick: LinkedInfluencers! I like that. I want to be one someday.

Tony: You already are.

Nick: No, I don’t think so. But the people that I follow are strong voices and advocates who help other attorneys achieve what we’re talking about — things like work-life balance, systems that run smoothly, good work culture, keeping employees happy, maintaining cash flow.

And so I read all these posts all the time, and I forget that they’re talking to people who are experiencing that issue — lawyers who are ignoring new leads that call after hours, or who are trying to do everything 24/7 by themselves.

So how can lawyers set up an intake process that helps them capture these clients who call outside of office hours? What does that look like? What does that entail?

Tony: The first answer is usually something people turn to because they like to feel like they’re in control of their lives — which is, “I’ll just do it myself. I’ll answer the phone when it rings.”

But it’s not going to take many nights of the phone ringing at 2:00 a.m. before you realize that’s not sustainable.

You understand that the call represents someone who needs help — and also represents revenue for the firm — and yet, you’re still not going to want to answer that phone call.

So there has to be another way. A middle ground between, “I’ll just get back to them in the morning,” and, “I’m going to answer every single call that comes in.”

That plan also has to account for the fact that if you don’t talk to them, they’re just going to find another attorney.

They probably found you through Google, right? Let’s say you’re that firm running Google Ads. Well, guess what — there are two more ads right underneath yours.

If you don’t answer the phone, they’re just going to click on the next one.

And we live in a world where, in certain parts of the country, you can order something on Amazon and it shows up at your doorstep in two hours.

People have that expectation for almost everything now — including, at this point, legal services.

Nick: I actually think you’re partially right, and I disagree only with one point.

I think the Amazon instant gratification example is a good one, but I don’t think people are looking for instant gratification when it comes to lawyers.

I think most people are realistic enough to know that court systems move slowly, that responses and insurance companies will hold you up on purpose — because that’s their policy: deny, delay, and… I forget the third one, because I forget everything.

What people do expect from their attorney is instant answers. Right?

Tony: Right.

Nick: And here’s some of the bad advice I’ve heard, and then some of the good.

I always go back to marketing agency advice, because I think that’s where a lot of people get their guidance on how to run their law firms — which is good!

Getting business advice from someone who understands running a business and the ins and outs of a law firm is a smart move.

However, I once heard someone say, “All you need to do to capture more clients is go into your voicemail and record a new greeting. In that voicemail, say: ‘Thank you for calling the Law Office of Tony Prieto. I will call you back in five minutes. Leave me your name and number.’”

That is the most disingenuous thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

You’re not realistically going to be able to call everyone back in five minutes. You’re leading with a lie.

I don’t like to be a liar. I like to be transparent — as transparent as possible — and I like to help set and manage expectations for what can actually be delivered.

So that’s not necessarily the worst thing you could do, but it’s definitely disingenuous. Don’t do that.

Tony: Yeah, starting any sort of relationship — business or personal — with “I’ll call you back in five minutes” is… well, if you do, that’s great, but you’re not going to be able to do it for most people who call.

And in that case, you’re starting off on a failed expectation, which is going to set the bar really low in terms of client satisfaction.

Even if it’s just your first impression, that’s a bad place to begin.

And I think you’re right, but I also think you mischaracterized what I said a little bit.

I don’t mean instant gratification like ordering from Amazon — I mean the instant relief of, “Okay, I reached someone. I’m being taken care of.”

Like, say you run out of shampoo. Sure, you can go get it from a store. But if it’s in the middle of the workday, you can just hit a button, order it, and know you’ll have it tonight.

Now imagine it’s, “Oh my God, I’m getting a divorce. I just threw my husband out of the house. It’s 2:00 in the morning. I need to call a lawyer.”

That person is anxious and looking for reassurance — to hear, “Listen, we’ve got you. We’re working on it.”

Then you can follow up in the morning. But that bridge between the 2:00 a.m. phone call and the morning callback is what the plan is for.

It’s setting up that bridge.

Because we’re not saying you have to do it yourself — in fact, we’re saying that would be disastrous.

Nick: Totally fair. I definitely mischaracterized what you were saying.

The example you gave actually goes beyond just the phone call — it’s a strategy for handling new prospects after hours.

Everyone knows how much I love my friend Christopher Earley. He has this… I don’t know if I’d call it innate, but he has a very solid grasp on client communication, communication in general, and time management.

He’s just a great example. If you’re not following him and you want to be better at systems, systematizing things, referral marketing, and networking — you’ve got to follow Christopher Earley.

I should probably mention, he has a show on the Answering Legal Podcast Network. Why am I not talking about that?

Anyway, I have correspondence with him from time to time. And sometimes when I send him an email, he’s got this autoresponse on — and he must be able to toggle it on and off. He probably has specific settings for it.

If you email him, it says something along the lines of — and I’m paraphrasing here — but something like: “Thank you so much for your email. For personal reasons, and due to the nature of a busy law practice, I am unable to check my email all day. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about your message. I’m going to respond as soon as I see it. There’s a team of people who review these messages and will get back to you. Worry not. We’re here for you.”

What does that do for your community? How does that make a customer feel?

Like, you could send a cold, cookie-cutter auto-response that says, “I’ll get back to you soon,” or you could be super caring and empathetic — purposeful with your time — and set expectations in a way that builds trust.

Tony: And this is a guy who, if you go and listen to The Earley Show, will often reiterate that his proudest achievement is being a father.

So, if you think about it that way — he has a busy law firm, and he’s structured it in such a way that he can be present for his family.

The way he’s able to do that — and the only way that things get done — is by building systems.

Knowing what happens when someone calls in late: What are we going to do about it?

What happens when someone emails late at night? What’s our plan for that?

Whatever the scenario is, you have to start with the plan and make sure that the execution is solid.

Nick: Okay. So I like everything you said.

Let’s outline how to outline a plan — and then provide some examples of solutions.

So, I’ll go first, because if I don’t, I’ll lose my train of thought.

My first example is something like an accountability chart.

And I never had the words for this before — I just didn’t know the terminology — but I think the concept of an accountability chart comes from, again, my friend Robert Williams.

It’s like an organizational chart that shows who’s accountable for what.

You should know where your phone is going to ring 24 hours a day.

It’s simple — there are only 24 hours — and you can literally write it down.

From midnight to 8:00 a.m., maybe it goes to your voicemail. Write that down. Now you know.

From 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., it rings on your desk phone. Write that down.

From 6:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m., maybe it forwards automatically to your cell phone, and you’re taking calls there.

Okay, now you’ve outlined it.

When you know where your calls are going, you can start making decisions about where they should go.

So there are a few things you can do:

You can change your voicemail greeting to set expectations and deliver an empathetic message.

You can hire an answering service to handle those calls 24/7 for you.

You can add an AI voice solution — which is very real now.

What else am I missing?

Tony: An IVR phone tree.

It’s similar to a voicemail, but more interactive.

For example, if you’re a personal injury lawyer, you can set it up so that it says, “If this is an emergency or you’re calling from a hospital, press one and it’ll come through to me personally.”

Or, “If you’re an established client who needs something specific, press two.”

You can set all that up — as long as you know, like you said, where you’re starting from.

And the reality is, a lot of people who are having this problem — lawyers — they don’t know where they’re starting from.

Even something as simple as: voicemail from midnight to 8, office phone from 8 to 6, cell phone from 6 to midnight — that’s a plan right there.

Now, is it the best plan? No.

But it’s so much better than what most people are starting with.

Nick: Yes. The thing that I want to talk about here is that there are different solutions — and then there are different ways you can employ those solutions.

So, obviously, I want to talk about Answering Legal, right?

What we do — and I don’t think people fully grasp this, which maybe is a product of poor marketing and communications on our part —

Tony: We’re the marketing department. If they don’t grasp it, it’s our problem.

Nick: The buck stops with us, right.

One of the best things we can do is — first of all — we can take the call on your behalf and answer as if we’re a part of your firm, because we really are an extension of your firm.

That’s what we try to do. We train our receptionists to answer specifically for your firm and follow your protocols.

However, one of the things that I think really increases your likelihood of converting a client who calls you after hours — while you’re sleeping, when you’re a one-man show or a two-person operation —

Our receptionists can tell your caller when they can expect to hear back from you, or explain the process for how they’ll get started.

So, I don’t know what your specific process looks like. Maybe we do a full intake for you — we ask a bunch of qualifying questions, send that information over, and then schedule a consultation.

That way, when you wake up in the morning — hopefully early enough to review your calendar — you’ll see that you’ve got a consultation booked for 10:00 a.m.

You walk into the office already knowing what’s coming, rather than being blindsided.

We can tell callers what your office hours are — for example, “Tony will be back in the office at 7:30 a.m., and after he plays squash, he’ll give you a call.”

I don’t know if you play squash. I don’t think you do.

If you do, though, we should play squash together. I’ve never played, but it sounds fun.

Anyway — we can help set expectations so that callers fall right into your intake process and become clients.

Not just from that first phone call, but through all the touchpoints that follow — all the little moments that help you convert them into actual paying clients.

Tony: Yes. And that comes back to even a solution like Answering Legal, which is a 24/7 solution that will make sure every phone call gets answered.

It does require a little bit of buy-in on your part, right?

For example, the attorney can tell us, “Hey, I call back every missed call I get at 8:00 in the morning.”

Every morning, they’ve got half an hour or an hour on their schedule to do callbacks while drinking coffee — whatever works for them.

And that right there is enough.

All you need to do when someone calls at 2:00 a.m. is have someone there to say,

“Hey, we’ve got your information. The attorney will call you back in six hours.”

Be awake, be ready, and hopefully they’re not at work when you call.

That’s the only tricky part — sometimes people are at work and can’t answer, so there’s a little bit of phone tag.

But the fact that you’re trying — that you’re reaching out — is usually enough.

Because what these people really want is to call an attorney, feel the weight of their legal problem lift off their shoulders, and know that someone is going to help them.

The next day, they can take action and move forward.

Because having a problem you can’t solve on your own — that’s one of the most stressful situations a person can experience.

Nick: I want to touch on something that we talked about earlier that I think we sort of shirked, but you just reminded me of something that I've been wanting to talk about like forever, and I just never get around to it, and it's not a popular topic, but it's— I think marketing agencies and like intake help and answering services, we provide solutions for lawyers.

And what we do is we dress up this ability to capture cases and have a thriving law firm and help you save time so that you can focus on doing this and doing that. But what we fail to do is set expectations of what we're talking about.

And that is that you are not going to convert every client even with the perfect system because timing won't link up or sync up. There's a number of reasons that somebody— like maybe they didn't like your proposed solution or they don't like your fee structure or they don't like your process, and like that's okay.

Somebody can call you and you can say, “This is the time that I get back to people,” like what you're saying, and they can have an adverse reaction to that and be like, “No, I need help sooner,” and they might thank you for setting expectations and call somebody else who can help them quicker.

I don't know that anybody can help them quicker, but I imagine the scenario of— I'll be personal for a second. I love to tell personal stories. Tony knows this about me. Right now, my animals have fleas. I hate it. They are bugs. Bugs are gross.

And I have this guy. His name is The Pest Paisan. And his truck is his face. And he calls himself The Mosquito Guido, a.k.a. The Pest Paisan. I love it.

Tony: A master of marketing by the way.

Nick: Master, master, master, master, master. He's such a good kid. He's really, really good at being a business owner. And I respect this kid. He's— I shouldn't call him a kid. He's a grown man, but he's in his early 20s, and I'm envious of that.

And he helped me. He scheduled his time. And then I needed him to come back and do my yard because I have this lingering suspicion that the fleas are somehow in a nest in my yard. This is how my brain works. Forgive me my whimsies.

So I call him on Sunday, and he answers the phone— actually, he didn't answer the phone. I left him a voicemail. He called me right back, and he's like, “My friend.” I'm a friendly guy. And we're chit-chatting, and I'm like, “Listen, you did a great job in my house, but I think they're in my yard. Can you come back and like spray my yard?”

And he's like, “Yeah, but I gotta be honest with you. I don't know what's going on in the pest control world, but I am slammed. Is it okay if I come Tuesday?” I'm like, “Yeah, I can manage until Tuesday.”

But if I said, “No, my wife is bugging out— like good pump— you know, and like we're freaking out over these bugs, these fleas, we need somebody to come sooner. Do you know anybody?” then it's a referral. You know what I mean?

If you're communicating at every step of the way, you are helping people. You're not for everybody, and that is a good thing because that means you are for the people that you're going to connect with.

Tony: That's the thing, right? I mean, attorneys know all about referral networks hopefully, but like you can't be available 100 percent of the time.

And even if you have a 24/7 solution like Answering Legal, it's still not, you know— it's not a concrete sieve, you know what I mean? There's still going to be one, two people— people who aren't right fits, people who need help immediately.

But the difference is you're going to increase the amount of leads that you bring in and hopefully that convert to clients.

And at the same time, you will be increasing your sanity and state of mind because you won't have to answer the phone at 7:00 p.m. during dinner with the family. You won't have to wake up at 2:00 in the morning because someone's calling you.

If that's what you want to do, fun fact, we can do that, right? We can handle the phone call and then text you or call you and say, “Hey, are you free to handle this call? Someone wants to talk to you right now.”

And if you are, let me use the word industrious enough to do that, then absolutely— you know, more power to you.

But you don't have to. And that is the advantage of this.

That this is a positive for your business and for your life.

And there are very few of those in life— especially when you're running a small firm and you are the firm essentially, or you think that you are.

There are places, decisions, strategies that you can set up that will make it so that you can go to your kid's piano recital and also not miss any calls that come in during that piano recital.

Nick: Or, in my case, you can go play slow-pitch softball at night with a bunch of your degenerate friends and try to hit home runs even though you're old and washed up.

Tony: Or, if you have, you know, as our boss Mike says, “champagne problems,” and you're just full and you refer to someone that you know, then that person refers back, and what you have is set up an ecosystem like The Pest Paisan that will help make sure that your business is healthy and strong in the long run.

Nick: Shout out to Pest Paisan. Go check out his Instagram. It is Mosquito Guido. It is hilarious.

I love this kid, man. I really love him. We’re actually going mountain biking together. If you can imagine that, I made friends with the guy who sprayed my house for fleas.

This ran long, so we’re going to have to cover more topics in the next one. But role reversal. Ready?

So, obviously we reference Answering Legal all the time. We work for Answering Legal. This is our full-time job. Believe it or not, they pay us to be ridiculous on the internet and wear a Yankees hat. Go Yankees.

It’s the first night of the playoffs. I don’t know when you’re seeing this. I don’t know if I’m embarrassed about this or not, but I am putting it out into the world.

I just want to let our listeners know that they can head to answeringlegal.com to learn more about our virtual receptionist service, how we do things, and maybe why we’re a good fit for your law firm.

There’s also a link in the bio of this episode to get started with a 400-minute free trial of the service.

Tony: The plug was immaculate, Nick. Well done.

And thank you to everyone who’s listening. You can always join us for the next episode of The Legal Intake Experts.

All of our episodes can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel.

Nick: It was so cool to hear somebody else say that. We’ll see you next time, everyone.