How Lawyers Can Take a Real Vacation Without Losing Leads

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 this holiday-themed episode, hosts Nick Werker and Tony Prieto share insights on how law firm owners can maintain client engagement while on vacation. They discuss the importance of having a plan for legal intake during holiday breaks, emphasizing the value of virtual receptionists and auto-responses in maintaining customer service. The duo offers practical tips for helping legal professionals relax and enjoy their vacations without compromising their business operations.

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

The Legal Intake Experts is 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 Werker (Co-Host): We are back once again here on the Legal Intake Experts podcast presented by Answering Legal. I am joined as always by my colleague, friend, and genius Tony Prieto.

Tony Prieto (Co-Host): I don't know about that last one, but you know, happy holidays.

Nick: It's in the holiday season, I suppose. Season's greetings. Uh it's great to be with everyone as we get ready to wrap up 2025. Um I had a good 2025, but we'll talk about that later. Now, Tony, I understand you have a fun story involving the Grinch. This came up during one of our morning meetings. I have not heard this story before and I'm very very scared of my reaction. But if there was ever a time to have you tell that story, it obviously… we saved it and it has to be right now for the holiday episode. So please tell me your Grinch story and I will try to have an appropriate reaction.

Tony: Yeah, I I saved the story to make sure that we got the live reaction here on the podcast. So, uh, before I worked for Answering Legal, before the pandemic in 2018, I worked, uh, for a bookstore in Miami, and I started, unfortunately, right before the holiday rush, which is a real trial by fire, you know. Uh, one of the things was I was my third day on the job. They had a readalong with the Grinch. Uh, my boss was going to read and my coworker was going to be in the suit and he was so excited. He loves kids. He was so excited to be the Grinch and act out, you know, he practiced it. The suit comes in. He doesn't fit in the suit. My boss doesn't fit in the suit either. That leaves as a three-person team. Two people are out. That leaves one person, me. My boss very apologetic. I'm sorry. You have to be in the Grinch suit. I said it'll be fine. How bad could it be? And it wasn't that bad. But the thing is, I hadn't practiced like my coworker had. So, I was just sitting there improvising. And while I was doing that in this bobble-headed Grinch suit that I felt the the the Velcro wasn't working on the head, so I had to move very carefully so the head didn't fall off and traumatize these poor children, there's these two older kids. They're probably like eight or nine uh friends or brothers. I couldn't tell. And they kept snickering through it. And I was like, "Okay, they know it's just a guy in a suit. They're going to ruin it for all these kids." whole thing ends and those two kids come up and they say, "We are such big fans of you, Mr. Grinch. Can I take a picture, please?" So, here I was jaded, you know, very uh I I identify with Grinch. I'm not a big fan of the holiday season. I don't try to ruin it for everyone else like Ebenezer Scrooge or I suppose the Grinch, but you know, I identify with the whole like ah what's everyone celebrating for? So, here I was grouchy in in a Grinch costume trying not to let the head fall off. I was very cynical. I thought these kids were going to ruin it for everyone. It turns out they just loved the Grinch and wanted to take a picture with me.

Nick: Do you have that picture?

Tony: I don't know. I did take a selfie without the head in the Grinch costume. I'll have to find it.

Nick: I need that in my life really badly. I'm not a Grinch. I like the holidays. I like to give gifts, but I'm a bad gift getter. It's not that I'm a bad gift getter. If you get me a good gift, I get really excited. Even if you give me a bad gift, I'm really good at pretending that it's not a bad gift. But inside, I just It's one of those like you know me, I love figuring out why people act the way that they do. It's this uh I don't feel worthy of the gift that you've given me. It makes me like very self-conscious. So, don't send me any or do send me gifts and I'll get practiced in receiving gifts better. Well, it's December. We're winding down. It's one of my favorite times of the year because it's like the only time that I'm able to disconnect and like enjoy time with family and sometimes a vacation. I do have a vacation planned, but I have the data. I know when law firm owners are no longer interested in purchasing products and slow down a little bit for the season. And that is happening right now. So, I know some of you are planning a vacation. Maybe some of you are listening to this podcast right now on vacation. If so, cheers to you. I hope you're enjoying a nice cup of uh hot cocoa or or coffee or or tea or maybe you don't like any of those. I don't know what else you're drinking.

Tony: Margarita on the beach.

Nick: Okay.

Tony: When I think of winter vacations, I don't think of going somewhere cold. I think of staying somewhere warm because I'm you down here where it's nice and warm. But um if you are on vacation listening to this, thank you. But also, we hope that you're listening to this because you're relaxing and not because you're trying to work. Because the whole point of this holiday season is to spend time with your family, etc. And it's also to hopefully have done all the preparation beforehand so that you can relax, to have planned for the new year so that when you get back you're not scrambling, to be able to be present, no pun intended, with your family. Um and and uh the way to do that is definitely not to leave your phone on while you're on vacation.

Nick: Yes, I apologize to all the people who are most likely going to go on a tropical vacation because I'm egocentric and I planned a trip to Vermont, but that's just me. I just want to go to Vermont and my wife and I… Yeah, I'm a polar bear. Let's talk about this. You're out of the office and like this should be such an easy layup topic for somebody uh like us. But if you're not really familiar with like virtual reception to service, answering service or you want to get better at intake, what we want to do is help you go on this vacation a little more relaxed and also empower you to still be a good business owner while you, I don't know, do the things that you need to do in life, right? So, there's definitely a right and a wrong way to handle new leads while you're out of the office. I think we should start by discussing what the wrong way looks like.

Tony: Yeah. So, what we're going to do is ratchet up the tension so that you start thinking, "Oh, no. I I can't take a vacation." And then we're going to ease you into the fact that yes, in fact, you can take a vacation. So, to ratchet up that tension, here's the thing. We've talked about it on this show, is that legal issues, there are some legal issues that are less present than others, right? But most of the time they're pretty stressful for a legal lay person like ourselves to handle. As a law firm owner, you're very versed in in what it takes to resolve certain legal issues. And you know that most people aren't I mean most legal professionals aren't working that much in December anyway. But here's the thing is that the people who are calling those legal professionals are working and they expect maybe not on Christmas day but on almost every other day they would expect the same level of service from your office that they would provide at their office in the holiday season. And that means that you can't expect people to call you on December 17th while you're in the Yucatan maybe and then say, "Okay, he'll circle back in the new year." Because guess what? If that person had an accident, if they've been arrested, there's a lot of legal issues that are pressing or at the very least pressing in the minds of the people who are having them and they're just not going to wait. They're going to keep calling law firms. They're going to Google uh personal injury attorney Minnesota in the freezing cold or in Minneapolis and they're just going to keep clicking and calling until they find someone who answers their call and makes them feel like they can enjoy their holiday season without thinking about this issue.

Nick: You just unlocked a memory for me because you're talking about and I'm going to go off the rails forever. Try to keep me in between the lines. It's just never going to work. It's part of my job. Yeah. Anyway, so Christmas Day, I don't remember what year, but I'm like younger than 15, I would say. Probably like 13 years old. And I think at this point in my life, because families evolve and people pass away or move or divorce, I believe my family and I were on our way to my cousin's house either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. And we're not off of our street on Long Island. There's snow on the ground. There's like 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground. We turn around corner and in the middle of the road is a car like kind of like uh diagonal in the middle of the road. There is a man's body half uh outside on the snow on his back. Half of his legs are in the car. My neighbor is running out of his car. He must have got there like just before us. I guess we were leaving at the same time. and he runs over and starts giving this guy CPR uh who is very clearly almost deceased in the middle of the street. Somebody must have called Yeah, actually somebody must have called 911 because this guy runs over. He's giving him CPR. So many things happened all at once and I'm like a kid. I'm trying to process this. I'm like, "Holy cow." So he's giving him CPR. As this guy kind of like comes out of it, wakes up. I don't know if the CPR worked or if the guy was just on drugs and woke up and to the alarming physical act of being chest compressed. Uh the cops like drive right up at like the same time and they arrest this guy. He's going to call a lawyer on Christmas for a lot of reasons.

Tony: Um the paranoid personal injury attorney listening to this is thinking if he didn't need CPR and that guy cracked a rib doing it, he could he could get sued.

Nick: Good Samaritan laws. I'm PPR certified.

Tony: But what we're presenting is that's a nightmare scenario, no matter how you slice it. And in that nightmare scenario, your nightmare scenario is let's say you have kids, you're gathered around the Christmas tree and they are unwrapping presents. The nightmare scenario is they open up a present and you you miss the look of joy on their face because your phone rings and you because someone got launched out of their car. It's some sort of Christmas morning drugfueled rampage. So, in a world where answering legal doesn't exist, those are your two options, right? You have either you turn it all off and you say goodbye to any business that comes in and basically all of December until January 3rd, depending on where New Year's falls on a weekend, or you say goodbye to family time in between. And neither of those are great options, are they, Nick?

Nick: No. And as my friend Becky Howell would put it, there's the sort of like sentimental or existential approach to that, right? Is that like even though you might be there and you may not be missing a call, you're worried about missing the call because you don't have the right process in place. And then are you really there? Are you really present? Let's actually talk about the solution that you can deploy. And you know, I'm so bad about like self-promotion. I was just talking to Delisi Friday about this. But what are some of the things that we can implement or deploy so that we know at least like what we're going to miss out on or forfeit on purpose? What we can do to let people know that we're out of the office? Like what are some things that we can implement in law firms that will I don't know assuage fears and actually uh work toward a solution?

Tony: So, like we're not sitting here saying don't go to Vermont, don't go to the Yucatan, but you can absolutely set up protocols that will at the very least alleviate your anxiety about having to handle this, right? Like imagine, I'm not recommending this, but imagine you are the kind of person who can't let go. A good sort of middle ground would be like let's say you're I'm going to keep bringing up the Yucatan because it was the random place on.

Nick What’s with you and the Yucatan?

Tony: I want to go see all those uh all those the jungle and the and the pyramids. But uh if you pick it's because I picked a random place near the equator and and that was the first place that came to my mind. But let's say you don't have cell service there but you do have Wi-Fi at the hotel, right? What you can do is if you know that in advance, which hopefully you do, you've done your research, you can let people know, I'm going to be checking, you know, my messages at 7:00 p.m. Yucatan time, whatever time zone that is in. And, you know, you'll be able to, if this is some you're someone who can't let go, you could set up like a daily time for you to just check up on those things. And so, you can hopefully compartmentalize all of the thought that you're putting into, oh my god, I'm missing all of this business. You can compartmentalize that thought into that time period. You can review it and then start planning on how to follow up with these leads. That's just like off the top of my head. That's a system that you can set up like a calendar almost. That is the most hands off that you could be while still being hands-on, you know?

Nick: Yes. Here's my take on going away on vacation. And again, this comes from my early days here in sales, uh, working with law firm owners who would often like they did the smart thing, right? They would call us and they want to use an answering service because they're about to go on vacation or because they know the holidays are coming and they need to take some time off or something like that. So, here's what you want to say something because intake is sales.

Tony: This is good advice. And on top of that, this is coming from someone who didn't take a vacation for 10 years.

Nick: No, that's not true. I take some vacations. I'm not a good vacation takerer mostly because of my professional anxiety but I took a vacation this year I went away.

Tony: Yeah, but before that it had been a while.

Nick: I blame COVID. It had been a long time.

Tony: This is someone who did not find time for vacation and was involved in the intake process of convincing people to take a vacation.

Nick: Fair enough you have established my authority for me. I appreciate you there. So, here's what I would recommend because obviously lawyers are cognizant of this as business owners. You want to make sure that you're capitalizing on every opportunity. And two things. Number one, I think people make the mistake of trying to like turn down ad budgets and turn off marketing at the end of the year so that they can like go away and not worry about anybody calling them or like wasting money or opportunity. That's largely not how it works, right? First of all, there's like consequences to turning down ad budget and then trying to turn it back up because algorithms are a thing and ad service is a thing and so on and so forth. I won't get into that. Your marketing doesn't turn off and all of those opportunities for you to do a good job and help people don't go away, right? Like your brand recognition that you've worked so hard for. What I recommend is first I would set the standard with all of the existing cases that you have going on. I would communicate with them via email, text, whatever uh method that you have to communicate with them. Let them know I will be away from the office from this day to this day. I will be checking emails intermittently. So, email me if you have a problem. So, it starts with that communication up front. The next thing I would do is any contact form that gets filled out on your site, and we recently spoke to Christopher Earley about this. I would change the response that people get. You should have a response from when somebody fills out that form to let them know what's going on at that current date. Right. And then you have to change it when you get back. Yeah. Uh to say, "Thank you so much for your inquiry. We really look forward to helping you with your case. We are uh out of the office for X, Y, and Z. Uh we will return on this. So we'll be checking emails intermittently. If you do want to call them back, you should uh to help them. If you have no plans on doing it, you should also communicate that in the email like, "Hey, we're happy to refer your case out. These are lawyers uh that we think could do a really good job that we know are not on vacation because maybe you communicated that with them so that you could like continue helping your community which I think is a great idea. Shout out to Lisi. Again, I always go back to the plan for the phones. Have a plan. Are they going to leave you a voicemail and you're going to call them back? In the voicemail, let them know when you're going to call them back. And if you're going to use an answering service, here's what I always always always use to recommend. We can go through any number of things. We can ask your potential new clients any questions you want so that you don't have to ask them again. We parse them and send out the information. But the most important thing with regard to this is setting the expectation of when this person is going to hear back from you or your business or your office in general. And we can do that because you give us those instructions and we'll say, "Hey, Tony is out right now in the Yucatan. He is exploring the jungles and he is climbing pyramids and he is…

Tony: Being hunted by jaguars.

Nick: I really hope not. And he is going to call you back when he gets cell reception. If that time period is not suitable for you, we totally understand. We are happy to help you by connecting you with one of our referral partners and we just hope that you have a great experience and that you get the help that you need. Right? That protects your reputation. It helps you set expectations and it may land you the client.

Tony: But it's also about sort of understanding the perception of what's going on, right? My mom has been a court reporter now for 40 years. Um, and I know simply from knowing when she was working really hard and when she wasn't that December to like the beginning of January, there's not a lot of work coming in because everyone's on vacation. And the same is true in you know uh July and August. There are periods especially outside of the constitutional requirement to a speedy trial in the criminal uh sector of law. The judge is on vacation 3 weeks out of December. They're simply not going to be that many judges and they all go on vacation in December. Nothing's happening. But even though you know that the people calling you may not. You need to explain it to them. You don't have to say it out upfront. Hey, the judges are all on vacation. I can't help you. But you can say things like the legal calendar slows down in December. Whatever you think is urgent. It isn't as urgent as No, you don't use those words specifically. You don't, but you could say like you can you can set expectations. You can educate potential clients and you can do that with an email that comes after you fill out a form on the website. You can do that in messages that virtual receptionists can pass along. Whatever it is, it's about setting expectations and doing so in a way that makes people feel even though you're not there feel like they got a question answered, right? They call a lawyer and the lawyer says, "Take it easy. It's December. Don't worry. We're not ignoring you." etc. And what Nick said about referral partners is also great. Maybe, you know, you have a colleague who doesn't have a wife and children, right? Maybe they're they're single or something like that and they're happy to work during the the Christmas season, but then in the summer they really like going on a nice vacation, you know, and so you can very easily set up it doesn't have to be so much quid pro quo like I vacation in the winter, you vacation in the summer, but you you can have friends that you you refer clients to and they refer back when they themselves are out of town and it will all even out.

Nick: I know we're supposed to be talking about phones and I know I'm supposed to be talking about sales, but I have two points. The longer that we do this and we talk about this, the more that I feel I no longer believe that my soapbox stand screaming at lawyers intake is sales is 100% true. I now believe that intake is customer service.

Tony: Which is also sales.

Nick: I was going to say also sale. Yeah, intake is is a is a lot of different things and it has a lot of different jobs and the better the experience you can make for the person who is calling your firm, the more likely they are to want to work with you because like why would I want to work with uh someone that I know I'm not going to have a good experience with. But I do want to say this is I am a B2B marketer. In my tenure alone, I have worked with I want to say well over 12,000 firms indirectly, directly, and I send because I'm I'm I like to think I'm a decent marketer, a customer newsletter, and I send a newsletter to people who have subscribed and engaged with us. Compliance, of course, but I send newsletters. I send emails periodically. And when I am the return email address in a catch all or anything like that, I invariably receive a ton… hundreds and hundreds of autoresponses. And some of these autoresponses are not very good. So, I know that there are plenty of you out there who are not using communication effectively to let people know when you are going to get back to them, what the auto uh response is about. So, let's talk about that. What improvements can lawyers make in their… et's just talk about like auto responses because I think we've done a good enough job to let them know that if clients are calling them that answering legal can uh answer your phone calls, do the intake, let them know when you're going to get back to them, if you plan on getting back to them at all. But I just want to talk briefly about auto responses.

Tony: Uh before we get there, I do want to say that like what we've talked about a lot in this episode so far are basically free ways to vacation worry less or with less worry than you would normally. And hiring an answering service, the sort of age-old role of the answering service is just to pick up the phone when you are not in the office. This is like the first reason that answering services exist is to pick up the phone when you're not in the office. Hiring an answering service costs money. Yes, it's an investment. And what you will find is that being able to communicate clearly with people that, hey, I'm going to be back January 3rd. I'll get back to you on January 3rd. Making those promises, etc. You those do cost money. But autoresponses don't. and people sending, you know, they find your email on on your website, they they fill out a form. Uh it's very simple to have an autoresponse that says, "Hey, if this is an emergency, call this number." You know, if you're an existing client and this is an emergency, call this number. If you're a new client, I'll be back in, you know, I'll be back after vacation. I'm monitoring this email intermittently. If you leave a message uh on my phone number, I will get back to you. something like that. Like the beauty of this is that it's entirely under your control. If you want to just go dark for a month and and say and just and just disappear, that's a really bad business decision, but you know, more power to you. But setting up methods of communication with clients and potential clients while you're out is something that is super easy to do and it's entirely within your control. And that means that you get to sit there. Maybe you don't have time. Maybe you have, you know, an assistant, someone who who does this for you, but you get to sit there and think, what do they need to know? When are they going to need to know it? How do I communicate that the best? And I think that's fun because I like to write. That's a lot of fun for me is like trying it's taking an idea and trying to communicate it. But if you don't think it's fun, it's very it's very simple. I'm going to be out of town from here from from X date to Y date. Call this number if it's an emergency. I will get back to you as soon as I can. Boom. Done. That's like the most basic one that is still providing enough information that someone gets that auto reply and they think, "Okay, I have a date. I know that this person's coming back. I have a phone number I can call. There's actions, steps I can take that will relieve their anxiety without transposing it onto you."

Nick: My last thought is I don't own this company. Um, but I do run a department and uh and I have a team and one of the things that I'm heavily invested in is my team's well-being, morale, happiness, uh, goals, personality, you know, like I'm deeply invested. I believe that it's my job to facilitate and encourage and I don't know, like do all that stuff, right? My great hope is that for all the law firm owners out there listening to this that have great teams, because I know that they do, can feel a little better about letting their team also take a well-deserved and earned vacation during the holidays. Doesn't have to be the entire month. Um, like I understand we live in a capitalistic world. I believe in it um to a certain extent and I hope that this helps you also treat your team the way that I know you want to treat them.

Tony: There's a lot of great things about working at Answering Legal. One of the great things is that it's a family-owned company. So when when the holidays come along, we all get time off to spend with our family. It's a load off your head for like the whole year. You don't have to plan the rest of your time off around making sure you have enough time off for the holidays. It is such a boon to be able to take that week, week and a half off. And one of the benefits of something like answering legal, for example, is that it takes the load off of your staff as well. If you have staff, right, you don't have to have them come in on the 23rd and 24th. They can take the time off and your business will not suffer for it. And so you and they are able to just remove that anxiety from your shoulders. Your clients will thank you. Your staff will thank you. Your bottom line will thank you. It's just reasons to do it, you know.

Nick: Yes. I feel like we have given the gift of the holiday season. I really wish I sang a song. Okay, here's my Can I have it on my closing credits so everyone can just press next episode? Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Can I say Christmas? Uh, I am half Jewish, so I don't know any Hanukkah songs. But my grandmother is going to be very disappointed in me.

Tony: Because there’s only one, right?

Nick: What do you mean?

Tony: Adam Sandler?

Nick: Oh, no. Uh, what is it? Grab your harmonica. It's time for Hanukkah. See, I know. I know.

Tony: My dad's favorite Christmas song.

Nick: It would be. I've seen Adam Sandler lie that I do believe he performed that even though it was in like July in the rain. Um my grandmother would be very disappointed to me because as a young child she plays the piano and loves to sing albeit not very well.

Tony: Wow.

Nick: And she would she would like get us all like all the kids around and we would sing Hanukkah songs but I don't remember any of them.

Tony: Well, what language were they in?

Nick: I don't know. Yeah.

Tony: So that probably helps.

Nick: I don't know. There's dreidel, dreidel, dreidel. That counts.

Tony: Yeah, sure.

Nick: All right, I'm done. I'm done singing. Anyway, uh soapbox moment again from the same inspiration as when I yelled and said that intake is sales and I give you a license to do sales. I hope that all of our listeners are planning a vacation. It doesn't have to be for the holidays. You can work during the holidays, that's fine. Um, but I do want to encourage and empower law firm owners to take the time that they deserve away from the office. And I hope that regardless of the thumbnail of uh us in like Grinch attire, that we have provided you with some information that will help you rest a lot easier while you're away from the office.

Tony: And hey, you know, if you're scrappy, you don't care about you don't care about the holidays and you want to work while everyone else is taking a vacation, take your vacation at the end of November in the middle of January. Just take some time off. You know, the Grinch worked on Christmas Day and see how that worked out for him. And don't forget that you can, you know, always stay home as well. You don't have to go to the Yucatan to be hunted by jaguars. But if you wanted to get Answering Legal and uh make sure that you are covered during the holidays, you can head to answeringlegal.com to learn more about our virtual receptionist service and check out the link in the bio of the episode to get started with a 400 minute free trial.

Nick: Thank you for sharing that, Tony. I love when you do the plug so that I don't have to even though I I one of my New Year's resolutions will be to improve in that regard.

Tony: You can also make another New Year's resolution to listen to more of our podcasts. Uh you can check out every episode of Legal Intake Experts and our other podcasts on the Answering Legal Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel.

Nick: We'll see you next time everyone.

Tony: And happy holidays.