Is Your Intake Ready When It Matters Most?

Welcome to Episode 17 of 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 episode, hosts Nick Werker and Tony Prieto dig into one of the most critical aspects of law firm intake: time sensitivity. If your practice handles arrests, car accidents, DUIs, family emergencies, or anything that demands an immediate response, this episode is required listening.

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

Topics Covered:

-Why the phone call remains the most urgent form of client communication — even in 2026

-The $10 million 2 AM call story: a real Answering Legal customer who captured a massive case because he signed up for the service hours before the call came in

-The "duty to advertise" mindset — and why availability is part of that same duty -How different legal emergencies (DUI arrests, car accidents, divorce triggers) happen at specific times, and how to prepare your intake accordingly

-Why intake isn't just about what you say — it's about knowing the process and communicating it clearly to callers

-The web form vs. phone call communication preference debate

-How to arm an answering service like Answering Legal with the right information so they become a powerful first step in your intake chain

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 (CO-HOST): We are back once again on the Legal Intake Experts podcast presented by Answering Legal. I am also presented by Answering Legal. My name is Nick Werker. I am joined always, uh, by my co-host Tony Prieto. Tony, how are you today?

TONY (CO-HOST): I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. If, if, uh, um, if you notice anything different about my voice, I'm just coming off a cold. I think I sound fine, but just so you know, Nick refused to do this podcast without me. Um, so that's why I'm here. Uh, even though I'm sick.

NICK: I would never do this podcast without you and I think you have a wonderful voice, and I, I'm a crazy person and I watch this one YouTube channel about CrossFit. Um, and they go live a lot and somebody said something about someone else's voice and they were like, "I love his voice. It's very soothing." And I commented, it's like, "I hate that guy's voice, but I love your voice." And so I think that I am a, I don't know what you would call that, like an audio file for voices. I consider myself to have good voice judgment. You sound great. I am sorry that you didn't feel good, but you sound great.

TONY: Maybe I'll be like one of those jazz singers, you know, who, uh, they, they smoked three packs a day so that they could, uh, have the perfect voice for their, for their music.

NICK: Fun fact about me, I used to think that me smoking cigarettes before I would play very small acoustic college shows also helped my voice. Uh, and that is how I justified my smoking habit, which I no longer do. So, today I don't get to be as silly as I want, and we're going to be a little bit more serious because we're talking about time-sensitive things today. And, uh, hopefully I can practice my humor, but I don't think that I will because I will have to turn that off for the nature of what we're talking about. So, if your practice deals with arrests or accidents or family emergencies, anything that really requires, I won't say immediate response, but I'll say with immediacy, um, you're going to want to stick around for this episode. But before we get to that, I do have a question for you, Tony.

TONY: Yeah, make it quick. We got places to be now.

NICK: How are you when it comes to managing time? Are you an always-ready person? Are you a running-late person? Are you like, does it depend?

TONY: So, uh, in my professional life I am often one minute late to meetings and constantly made fun of for it. But, uh, that is my attempt to be punctual. It drives my girlfriend crazy. But I, and many people in Miami, uh, live on what is called island time. Uh, if you want an example, uh, my brother, uh, recently got married about a year ago. His wedding was held in Miami, featured a lot of local people. Uh, the invitation said that the ceremony started at 4:30. This was wrong. The ceremony started at 5:30. So what you had was all of my sister-in-law's family, guests, etc. They showed up at 3:30. All of the people who were, uh, from Miami showed up at 5.

NICK: Oh my god.

TONY: But we had accommodated for this. So, we had plenty of things in between. Uh, that's all to say that I am constantly running late. It is, uh, congenital. My dad's always running late. And, uh, uh, but I'm still not the worst that I know. There's people who, you know, uh, we call it Miami time, island time, whatever it is. When something starts at 7, you say something is starting at seven because people are going to show up at 8. That's just how it works. What about you, Nick?

NICK: I am an early person. I wasn't always, but I am a person who struggles with anxiety and one of my anxieties comes from if I'm going to be late for something. And I'm not a perfect person. Obviously, uh, there are times that I am late for things or forgetful. I am forgetful. But let's say I have a, a softball game with a bunch of, uh, the guys from the team. I am the first one there. I'm not the first one there because I'm the hardest worker. I'm the first one there because I'm crazy. Doctor's appointment early, which is a bad idea. Work early. I wake up early now. I'm early to all the CrossFit classes that I go to.

TONY: That's the best way to live. You would not be able to survive down here. Not because you would show up early. It's that you'd show up early everywhere. When you show up early and everyone else is late, you spend a long time in the not-doing-anything zone. You know what I mean?

NICK: I went to a coffee shop recently. It's a very good coffee shop right near my house. It's owned by a young woman, uh, who I adore and respect and I went in the other morning to get, it's like a, it's a really nice, you know, like crafty coffee shop. And I went to go get something for my coworker who had had an operation done. Small operation, but I just wanted to, you know, cheer this person up. So, I get them a coffee. And the barista was the slowest man I have ever seen in my life. And he was on what you call island time. And I'm a nice guy and I'm very patient. But all I could think was, how are you like… Coffee! Coffee is fast. We want coffee now, how we want to drink our coffee and get the effects of the caffeine. I listen, I digress. I will not derail us any further. I said that I wouldn't be silly. I am being silly. So, I want to start with the obvious. If your firm wants a real shot at securing clients with urgent legal needs, you have to be ready when the phone rings, or, or when a web form calls in. But we'll, we'll talk about the phone, um, because the phone is our expertise. Time sensitivity. What do you think?

TONY: Yeah. So, first, uh, your, your team has to be ready, but you also have to, to have a way in place to receive these calls, right? Like obviously we here at Answering Legal work for an answering service and I can actually tell this story. Uh, one of our customers, um, when he was, uh, on the free trial, got a call. If you, I, if you remember this, we, we interviewed him for a testimonial. He got a call from a woman who had been in an accident or her husband had been in an accident. I don't remember the particulars. It was, you know, he's a personal injury attorney. It was like a $10 million case. Um, and it was a call that came in 2:00 in the morning, something he would have missed and possibly lost to a different, uh, attorney if, uh, he had not just signed up for our service to try it out the day before or that same day. And you know, that's just an example of a massive success story, but it doesn't have to be like that, right? Even if it's, if it's smaller practice areas, uh, things like, uh, you know, family law, the argument that leads to a divorce, let's say, happens early in the morning, early at night, you know what I mean, and if you aren't, let's say, uh, you know, to use a baseball analogy, if you're not in the outfield you're just not going to catch that ball.

NICK: I saw somebody post this recently and I love this, like, abundance mindset. I'm really trying to get into it because I don't know why I have like a scarcity mindset. I do and I work on it and this person posted, they're a lawyer, really great lawyer. Well, I don't, I don't know that this person is a great lawyer. I imagine they're a great lawyer because they seem like a good person. And they said that if you're a good lawyer, it is your duty to advertise because if you are not advertising, you are not helping as many people as you possibly could, and that is like a waste of your talent. And I thought that was really cool. And what I also think is you have a duty to make yourself as available as possible to the people that you could, that you could potentially help. Now, I know that that is a shameless plug for a company like Answering Legal, but I also think that we talk a lot about intake and we don't really talk that much about like answering services in general. We, we talk about intake and part of intake is knowing how available you are and what to do with that availability and how to, how to make sure that the people who need your help are going to come to you for help instead of, uh, we're not educating lawyers on intake and I won't be specific because I think that this could get morbid really quickly, but somebody has an urgent need and it's 2026. They go to Google, Gemini, Claude, uh, Chat, Perplexity, whatever, and they look for a lawyer, and the tool returns them three law firms, and they call the first law firm, and no one answers. They have an urgent need. And they call the second law firm, um, and no one answers. Um, and they call the third law firm, again, like met with like a, a weird, maybe we'll get back to you, maybe we won't, kind of cold. And that person gets so discouraged that they just drop the entire thing altogether, right? And, and for the sake of morbidity, sure, it's an accident and they can't get the help that they need and, and like they're going to lose their job or it's an employment thing and they're struggling at work and they're being retaliated against or discriminated against, um, and they have to like suffer through that now. So, I think it is our duty to, to make people feel good about hiring lawyers and getting the help that they deserve.

TONY: We're going to talk a lot about emergencies and urgency here. The benefit of being a lawyer and not a doctor is that you don't have to answer to the emergency yourself. All you have to do is make sure that that person knows that you are on the case. Someone calls in at 2 o'clock in the morning, you don't have to, unlike, let's say, night shift emergency room doctor, you don't have to be there to treat the injury or whatever it is, but you do have to make sure that that person knows that when they wake up in the morning, you are going to call them back. You are going to get on their case. You're going to tell them, "Hey, there's something here. We can help you and move forward." That is your duty as a business owner, obviously, which is something we talk about a lot on this podcast, but as you were saying also, if you can't, you know, there's a lot of ways in this world to make money, one of them is to be a lawyer, but one of the advantages of being a lawyer is usually, especially if you are of the kinds of lawyers we often deal with, which is client-facing, uh, you get to help people, uh, and one of the benefits of this specific way of helping people is that you get to do it at their worst, at often some of their worst moments, without the, the, as it were, lifesaving urgency of say medicine. But it's still your responsibility to make sure that, let's say, you have the systems in place to catch that ball when it, when it comes into your side of the, of the field, as it were. Now my analogy is falling apart. Let's say it's a grounder. You need to throw it to your intake team. You know, whether your, your receptionist or whatever solution you have for catching for fielding the grounder needs to throw it to second base. You need to, they, the, you know, athletes, in order to pull that off, train over and over and over again so that it is muscle memory. You need to make it muscle memory for your law firm.

NICK: That was a good — see, you saved it. You saved it because I was going to tease you. I was gonna tease you and say, "Have you played much baseball, Tony?"

TONY: I haven't played baseball in a long time. However, I got there eventually.

NICK: I have the unfortunate for you advantage of I just played third base the other night and I was really good except somebody made me look really silly 'cuz they hit a knuckleball at me and it danced and I looked like an idiot when it sailed right past my glove.

TONY: You didn't have the answering, in this, in this, in this metaphor. You didn't have the answering service in position.

NICK: You're just, you're knocking it out of the park right now, dude.

TONY: Yeah, I'm on the ball, as it were.

NICK: Thumbnail idea. Um, I am the ball and you are hitting me out of the park. I think that would be very funny. So let's talk about this, right? I, I find this, uh, this phenomena, phenomenon, to be very interesting, right? Luckily for you and I, we are employed because, um, there is data that not suggests but confirms that the widely accepted and most utilized way of reaching out to a law firm is, uh, phone call. But how do, how do intake strategies need to sort of adapt to, um, the ever-changing way that people can reach out to law firms and also the availability of just like search, right? Imagine hanging a shingle — I don't know what year is it, 2026 — there was SEO in '96, like what, what year? Like pre-Google, you know what I mean.

TONY: The '80s.

NICK: The '80s.

TONY: The '80s.

NICK: You probably could like walk to a, a law office and like knock on the door. Knock on the door and go in and, and like, I don't even know. You know what I mean? Like there's so much availability.

TONY: Well, yeah, absolutely. That, that's, that's the magic of, of, uh, uh, I mean, I guess back then you would have the yellow pages in the pay phone and if you just got into an accident, you would stumble over to the pay phone, flip through to find an injury attorney. But I mean the reality is that things were less on demand at that point. But it still came down to phone calls, right? It's that's sort of the, uh, magic of the medium we work in, uh, in terms of, of the, of the telephone is that even 130 years later, it's still the number one way where if you want to get into contact with someone right away, you call them. Even for younger people, uh, you know, let's say Gen Alpha or whatever, who mostly communicate through things like text, if they get a phone call, I know that, that, my brother who's a little bit younger than me, people that I know who are younger, they get a phone call, they think, oh, the world is ending. It's still the most urgent way to communicate with people. But, you know, someone fills out a web form on your website, they engage with your chatbot, you have, you should have systems in place, you know, you get an email, that, build a, you know, integrations, etc. that build a profile for this person in your CRM so that when you get to work in the morning, you see, oh, I got an email about this thing. And, you know, your email has an auto reply. Hey, if this is an emergency, call this number right now and we'll have someone talk to you. And you know, there are other ways for people to get in contact with you, but you have the system in place so that when you get there in the morning, you see that this person has an urgent case. And often, you know, I always bring it up, schedule it. Maybe the first thing you do every morning is call those leads so that you can, you can get them, you know, if they didn't schedule a consultation or whatever, you can make sure that you move them along. It could be a three-minute phone call. Call them up. They tell you their side of the story. You say, "Okay, go to my website, book a consultation." Your job is to, make sure that, rather, intake's job is to make sure that you are pushing this person down the next step on their path to be your client. Sometimes it does have to come from you. That last step, usually it does have to come from you, right? The consultation. But, you know, depending on how much time you have, uh, the more personal touch you can get into it, the better someone's experience will be.

NICK: I found this so interesting and you know me, I'm, I like, uh, I'm a very big mindset guy. I like to have a mindset shift. I like to expand my understanding of things and, and remove biases, but I have an obvious bias, uh, toward phone calls, uh, when it comes to law firms. And then I look for things to confirm that, right? Confirmation bias. I was talking to, uh, a lawyer who's a good friend recently and I was like honed in on phone calls and I'm just, I'm, I'm like a dog with a bone about it and he said something and I actually accepted it. Like I didn't give him any push back. I was very proud of myself that I didn't do this. He said when people submit web forms on his site that he emails them.

TONY: Yeah.

NICK: And I was thinking like, oh, why don't you call them? And he emails them because that's how they want to communicate. If they wanted a phone call, they would have called. And I found that so interesting. And I'll blow right past that because we have, uh, other things to tackle. But it is so interesting that like if people want to call you, you should talk to them on the phone. You know what I mean? If you miss their call, you have to call them back. But if you miss their email, you email them back. You don't call them. That would be a weird disconnect.

TONY: Well, often someone fills out a web form, or maybe they can't talk, or maybe it's not as urgent, right? Like the most urgent will usually be a phone call, right? Someone stumbling away from an accident, someone, uh, you know, packing up their things at their home in tears. Those will usually not be the kinds of things where they will, uh, where they'll fill out a web form. Often those people will call a friend. "Hey, you got divorced last year. Who did your divorce?" Call someone who's been in an accident. Often, often the first layer of that is referral or an online search. But like, in, I would, I would say probably in the most immediate moment, someone's calling someone that they know and trust and saying, "Hey, who do you know and trust?" Um, which is why, you know, your reputation is so important. But again, once that call gets to you, you need to make sure that that person knows that you are on it, because otherwise they're going to keep freaking out about whatever issue they're having and keep looking for other solutions. And like you said, if you think you're the best solution out there, then it's incumbent upon you to make sure that the person who reaches out to you for help gets the best help that they, that they can get, which, you know, if you are a confident attorney, is you.

NICK: So, here's where it gets really interesting, is, like we said, this lawyer said that he, uh, that they had a, a duty, right? It's incumbent upon him to reach as many people as possible because he believes so much in the firm's ability to really help people. And then you get into, well, when do you have that much abundance? Um, you obviously, uh, cannot answer every call or, or email yourself. So, you need to have the right support people and team in place in order to have those conversations with those, uh, callers, potential new clients, people in need. And they need to know what to say, how to say it, how to handle the stress of that moment, and how to be, like, assuring. And it's not that they need like a caller. I used to, I used to go so far. I'd be like, "You need to be so empathetic and so — you need to practice mirroring and, uh, you need to be a good conversationalist. If they're jovial, you make them laugh. If they're sad, you commiserate." It doesn't even really need to be that deep. You need to be competent. You need to be understanding. You need to be, I guess, confident and sure of yourself, um, is a good thing. But if you know, I think the best people at intake, um, at a specific law firm, know how the law firm works, know how the process of what the client is going through is going to work, and, and obviously are empathetic and human and not distracted or dismissive of something. You know what we should do, Tony, in the future? We should roleplay an intake call. I think that would be a really cool exercise. We just like roleplay a bunch of intake calls that we imagine.

TONY: But there's two, you know, uh, two roads diverged from me. Yellow wood. You could go down the one where you answer the phone and the person explains to you their problem and you take them through your intake process. You say, "Yes, okay. Uh, I hear you. This is what we're doing. This, this is your problem. We're on it." That is a decent job. There's also the version where you do all of that and then you say, "Okay, here's what this process looks like. We've handled cases, uh, we've, we've handled, uh, car accidents before." Usually what happens is, you know, we're going to get you on the calendar for a consultation. Then, uh, the attorney is going to present you with a representation agreement. You sign that agreement and then here's what that process looks like. And you put all of that information up front because that is what tells a person who probably, hopefully, has never been in an accident before that they're with someone who knows what they're doing. Um, because yes, every case is different. Everything can change. You can't make promises about outcomes. But what you can say is this is what this process looks like. And generally speaking, you could say this is what this process looks like at almost every law firm because these cases often work out in certain ways and this is, and then this is what it looks like for us. If there's a difference there, a meaningful difference, a differentiator between you and your competitors, that is another place where you can slide that in.

NICK: That's interesting. So, I do want to make a recommendation, right? Because I can't really speak to other answering services. And I'm going to take up the spirit of this person that I am quoting who said that it is their duty to help as many people as possible because they think they do a good job. And I do believe in what we do here at Answering Legal. Obviously, I don't think I would continue to work here. So, I do think that it is my duty to explain what we do here at Answering Legal and what one of the solutions we would have for a scenario like this is. We're obviously not going to do the most in-depth intake ever. We are still at the end of the day an outsourced, uh, solution. What I do recommend to most law firm owners that do have a robust intake, uh, system in place or a robust intake team in place is figure out what information that, that team needs us to get and then tell us what your process is so that we can communicate that back to the caller. Now, here's what that really looks like because we're talking about urgent cases and urgent calls and things that come in, you know, at, at odd hours. And I really do hope that all of you are asleep at 1:00 in the morning. But the reality is that police and drunk drivers are not asleep at 1:00 in the morning and these things happen and somebody who needs representation will call your office and in this scenario hit Answering Legal. And your team has briefed us that we answer specific questions. We get specific information. Where are you? Are you able to make bail? Do you need us to connect you with some sort of bondsman? We have a referral for that. All of these things. And then explain to them, we're going to pass this information along to the team who's going to call you as soon as they wake up. I'm sure that they, like, a criminal defense and a, and a DUI firm, probably has protocol in place to handle, like, late at night matters. And, and so if you arm us with that information, we're armed with that information. We can, uh, we can tell your callers that. And I think that instead of, 'cuz this is not B2B, right? Like no one's calling up, I don't think, I don't think with an urgent matter to a law firm and be like, well, why should I not hang up on you and call Tony Prieto Law Firm down the road at, at 2:00 in the morning from, from the precinct? I don't think that they're necessarily doing that, but I do think that when you explain these processes, it is your differentiator, and you don't, you don't address like the, the, the objection in the same way that like you and I would, where it's like, why wouldn't I go with your competitor, and then we explain why, what we do differently. But that will set you apart in that you are the person who has the system in place that is better than a competitor.

TONY: Yeah. We always say that intake a sales, uh, it's not exactly a sales call. You know what I mean? But what you, what you do have, and this is, I think, what we've been saying this whole time. The most important thing is to have a plan. If you have someone like Answering Legal handling your calls so that you don't have to have a team of 24/7 receptionists — which if you were doing that in-house, uh, good luck. Uh, it's very expensive — let's say you outsource that to an answering service like ourselves. We are the first step. What comes after is intake. And the better you prepare us on that first step to push someone along, the more effective we'll be as a tool. Whatever your first step is, whether or not it's, it's Answering Legal, you want to make the most out of everything in your arsenal. So you make sure that that first step of someone answering the phone at 2:00 in the morning is in place and prepared to pass it along to the person at third base, etc., etc., so that you can make sure that you are always on top of anything that comes in urgently after hours, because, you know, there's statistics in place, uh, you know, you're a defense attorney, most crime does happen during the daytime because, like, let's say you're going to, uh — so crazy — let's say you're going to rob a house. You do it in the daytime when they're not there. You don't do it at night when they're there. You have thought that out, haven't you? That's just statistically speaking, that's, that's how burglary works. But the kinds of, you know, it depends obviously on, on what kind of law you're, you're, you're practicing. DUIs, a lot of car accidents. A lot of these things do happen at night when it's dark, it's hard to see, or when people are driving home from a bar, you know, and if you know your practice, you know, okay, I do motor vehicle accidents, you know, statistically 60% of them happen at night, then you know that statistically 60% of your calls are going to happen after 5:00 PM. And that means you need to have something in place to handle it, because, you know, as, Nick has brought in this, this metaphor of talent, and I believe the person you're referencing is referencing, uh, the parable of talents in, in the, the Gospel of Matthew where the master leaves his house and leaves some property, some money, to his servants. What did you do with it?

NICK: That's right,

TONY: You know, the, the, the, the master comes home and berates the one who just buried it in the ground. Like, I didn't want to lose any money, so I just, I just hid it. If, if you're burying your practice in the ground at night, then you just aren't going to have the, the level of success, or fulfill the, uh, shall we say, uh, social duty of making sure that people who need help get it, which is part of why we're in this business in the first place.

NICK: That's right. And in the spirit of my growth and, uh, abundance mindset, I am going to do the plug. Tony, I am the plug. So Tony, I know we referenced Answering Legal a few times during today's episode. And so I just want to let our listeners know that they can head to answeringlegal.com to learn more about our virtual receptionist service, which we have presented as a solution to some of these intake woes. Um, there's also a link in the bio of this episode to get started with a 400-minute free trial of the service.

TONY: Thanks for taking the plug and, uh, thank you all out there in your cars, doing the dishes, wherever you're listening to us, for listening.

NICK: Be sure to join us, uh, for the next episode of Legal Intake Experts. All, all episodes of the show can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, Amazon Music, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel.

TONY: Shoutouts to producer Joe getting us on Amazon Music. We'll see you next time, everyone.