It's Time To Declare Independence From Your Law Firm's Phone

Welcome to Episode 19 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.

Summer is in full swing, and hosts Nick Werker and Tony Prieto kick things off with an extended (and extremely competitive) debate about hot dog eating contests before turning to the real theme of the episode: freedom. Even though we live in "the land of the free," plenty of law firm owners feel trapped by their own intake process — every ringing phone is a tradeoff, every caller is high stakes, and it never seems to end. Our experts walk through how solo and small firms can build systems — from a well-scripted voicemail greeting, to a properly customized answering service, to a clearly defined Ideal Client Profile (ICP) — that shift the burden of intake off the attorney and onto a trained team.

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

Topics Covered:

-Why batching videos is a smart content strategy for lawyers

-Feeling "trapped" by golden handcuffs as a law firm owner

-Writing a professional, honest voicemail greeting when you're a solo practitioner

-Choosing and customizing an answering service to match your firm's niche

-Defining and training your team on your Ideal Client Profile (ICP)

-Giving positive and constructive feedback to an intake team

-Leadership as a cultural habit: intercepting problems instead of forwarding them

-Why the "scrappy underdog" mindset holds growing firms back

-Delegating ownership so the business isn't dependent on the owner

People & Resources Mentioned:

Chris Earley — host of The Earley Show (Answering Legal podcast network)

Delisi Friday— founder of First Call Friday

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 on the Legal Intake Experts podcast, presented by Answering Legal, produced by producer Joe. I am Nick Werker, joined as always by my co-host Tony Prieto, and I get to ask my favorite question. Tony, how are you today, buddy?

TONY PRIETO (CO-HOST): I'm doing well. One of the funny things about this podcast is we batch these episodes and we're always very upfront about that. It's great, um, advice for content production, right? Like if you're a lawyer and you're making 10-minute videos on explaining a legal topic, make five of them. Takes you an hour and a half, you'll be good. That also means that we always date our episodes. So, we are recording these episodes, uh, a few months ahead of time, but this one is going to be dropping, uh, right around America's 250th birthday, July 4th, 2026.

NICK: At the risk of sounding like— what is her last name? Jennifer Coolidge. At the risk of sounding like Jennifer Coolidge in what I believe is the American Pie franchise, I feel like I should be eating a hot dog right now.

TONY: Me, too. I mean, I- I- I am a hot dog person over burgers. I- I, if you put a burger or a hot dog in front of me, I'm taking a hot dog every time. Uh, I, however, am— as much as I love food, and I will always talk about food on this podcast, including— I'm not very good at eating a lot of it. How many— if you were at the, you know, Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, how many hot dogs do you think you could eat, 10 minutes on the clock?

NICK: First of all, I'm very proud of myself for not attempting my first Jennifer Coolidge impression ever.

TONY: Don't worry, it would have gotten cut.

NICK: I love impressions. You know me. I love a good impression. I like to do a good impression. I'm not going to…

TONY: Listener, the cutting room floor is full of impressions.

NICK: That's true. And I have been a part of this debate before here inside this building, and Joe alluded to the fact that we were going to talk about this. So are we talking— like, you asked me how many hot dogs do I think I could eat in the contest itself?

TONY: In 10 minutes.

NICK: In 10 minutes.

TONY: Yeah.

NICK: In 10. That's tough. In 10 minutes I'm gonna say six. I think I could eat six hot dogs..

TONY: Six? Six hot dogs?

NICK: Yeah. I think I could.

TONY: There's a local burger place around here that has a burger eating competition, and the record was like 15 burgers.

NICK: In ten minutes?

TONY: No, no, no, there's no time. The rule is you can't get up.

NICK: Okay.

TONY: You could sit there all day. Eat as many burgers as you want. The rule is you can't get up. My friend said, "That's silly. I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to eat 15 burgers as fast as I can." He got four burgers in. It took him— it was like, I mean, less than a minute per burger. It was like one, two, three bites, done. And then he said, "I'm done. I just can't do this anymore.” Because it's the bread.

NICK: 100%. Absolutely. I tell you what, I have this— it's not a joke. I shouldn't say this— a joke. I told Delisi this, uh, before the show, in— what do you call that, pre-roll? I don't know, I'm not a producer, Joe will tell me. But this mustache was supposed to have been eradicated a long time ago. And, uh, a few of the people who work here roped me into running a HYROX race, which I begrudgingly accepted the challenge for because they goaded me and they peer pressured me and they badgered me until I said yes. And then once I accepted and paid my— my fee, my exorbitant fee to run this race that I don't want to run, they said, "Oh, we're growing mustaches— mustaches for this HYROX race." And I don't know what the correlation between a mustache and running a HYROX race is, but I again accepted it. And so that is why the mustache is here. Why am I telling you about this mustache?

TONY: Hot dogs.

NICK: Because as soon as this race is over— because I am taking the training seriously, I'm eating right, whatever— I am going to Costco and eating as many Costco hot dogs as I can.

TONY: Those are pretty big hot dogs.

NICK: They’re huge.

TONY: Yeah. I think I could take four of those hot dogs, which I think translates to like…

NICK: Four Costco?

TONY: Four Costco hot dogs

NICK: In 10 minutes?

TONY: In 10 minutes. I could eat four of them in five minutes and then I'd be sick.

NICK: You can't do that, dude. Stop it.

TONY: I— I love a hot dog. I genuinely love a hot dog. I think eight regular Nathan's hot dogs in 10 minutes.

NICK: You're a bugout. There's— an old, me and my friends, in, uh, like middle school— he, his dad used to like watch this. If anybody can write into the show and tell me what sketch comedy show this was, uh, I would greatly appreciate it. My friend Ian, his dad would watch this sketch comedy show, and around St. Patrick's Day he would show us this clip, and it's these like three comedians, and they're talking like, "What are you going to do for St. Patrick's Day?" And they're doing their Irish accents, and one guy is like, "I'm going to eat three loaves of Irish soda bread." And the guy's like, "You can't eat three loaves of Irish soda bread." And the second guy's like, "I'm going to eat four loaves of Irish soda bread." And the other two guys get so mad and they start screaming, "You can't eat four loaves of Irish soda bread." And I just was transported back to that in time because you think that you can eat four Costco hot dogs in 10 minutes. You're kidding yourself, dude.

TONY: I can eat four. When I go, I get two, you know what I mean? And it doesn't take me 10 minutes to eat two of them. So multiply that.

NICK: But it compounds, dude. You run out of room when you eat the first one.

TONY: I got so much room.

NICK: There's no way. 10 minutes?

TONY: Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong.

NICK: I would love to attempt this with you on FaceTime.

TONY: Unfortunately, our podcast isn't about hot dog eating, although that would be an interesting niche. Our podcast is about intake. So we do have to move on from the hot dogs and into intake. Our theme this week is Fourth of July— uh, letting freedom ring, etc. And, uh, even though we live in the land of the free, sometimes lawyers can feel trapped in their jobs.

NICK: I do agree with you. It's like golden handcuffs. Um, I think you're right. I think you can feel trapped, and I— I don't know why— this metaphor, you're— you're like tickling my anti-capitalism, like, stuff that I have going on here, which I should not get into on this podcast.

TONY: About how to run a business better. Absolutely not.

NICK: Yeah, I guess, because it's about capitalism. And listen, I'm cool with capitalism, don't get me wrong. It's just, like, I have many, many crazy-person opinions that we don't need to cover. And what— I think you're saying is that, like, the entrepreneurship, or the entrepreneurial journey of a lawyer into law firm ownership, is like this very bootstrapped— I mean, unless you, like, inherit a law firm or something like that, I don't know.

TONY: Sure does happen.

NICK: But you start by yourself and you have to do everything. You have to be the lawyer. You have to be the person answering the phones and doing the intake and evaluating leads and corresponding— like, you have to do all of it. And that, I think, is a little— let's, I'll call it daunting— and to, to go alongside of you and your trapped metaphor, I will call it claustrophobic, and I will not tell the story— story of my wife getting trapped in an elevator.

TONY: I got trapped in an elevator once with my mom. It was great, we had a great time. Um, and she's claustrophobic. I— my job was just to keep her— keep her entertained while we waited for the— the fire— the fire rescue people to come and take us out of the elevator. It was— she worked in an old, old building in downtown Miami at that time. One of the reasons that you can feel trapped in your job as a lawyer is that every single phone call, every single potential new client, for many law firms— though not all of them— just represents so much money that there's— there's this urge, you know, you have to be productive, you have to bill by the hour, but also the more clients you get in, like, each one represents so much money that each of them feels so important, and they are important. They're people with legal problems that they're— they're, you know, uh, struggling, and your job is to help them. But, uh, there is a line between doing that and hurting yourself. And we could talk about how your intake process can help you push out of that claustrophobia and create more freedom in your life.

NICK: Yes. I do want to highlight one thing, because you said, like, they make so much money— and it is true that, like, uh, a lot of the case values for law firms, especially those who work on contingency, are so high. I just want to give one shout-out to law firms who do work on contingency. Do you know how generous that is, and how generous a lot of law firms are with people who can't afford it? There are so many law firms out there doing so much work for free. It would blow your mind, and they should probably brag about it more. But, um, I should not go on that tangent, because I can. What I do want to talk about is, like— because this is kind of what we're talking about, right? You want to obtain your freedom. How am I going to work this metaphor into it? Okay, so you are, uh, in colonial America. This is you. You're just starting out. You are— what's the first— what's the first, uh, colony? Help me.

TONY: That would have been Jamestown.

NICK: Yeah, okay. You're— you are Jamestown. You are a fledgling colony. You, uh, you don't have a receptionist, you don't have a paralegal. It's just you, a phone, and, uh, a desk in an office space, right? And every time the phone rings, you meet and encounter a new cash crop. You've discovered corn.

TONY: This metaphor is going to get real tied up. Okay, keep going. Corn.

NICK: You've discovered corn. And every time the phone rings, you're going to— you get more corn, dude. And you're going to send that back to good old, uh…

TONY: Jolly old England.

NICK: Yeah, jolly old— I'm losing it over here. Anyway, to me, the whole overwhelming thing about law firms who are just starting up is that every time the phone rings, it's this enormous tradeoff. I have to stop what I'm doing. I don't know what's on the other end of this phone call. I really hope that it's a really good case for me, and that, like, I can sign up this case. But it's also going to be a lot of work for me to talk to this person. And what if it's not a good case for me and I have to, like, be nice and either refer it out— we were just talking to Delisi— or reject the case outright. It could be any number of things, right? And so that task is— so, what's the word?

TONY: Daunting.

NICK: It traps you. Yeah. Daunting.

TONY: Absolutely. Now, here's the thing— not all of that requires you specifically, the attorney, the law firm owner. There's a mindset that, especially for smaller law firms, you're in charge. The buck stops at you, and at the end of the day, you do have to get involved at some point, because you're running a law firm, you're the lawyer. You have to dispense your advice, practice the law, and usually secure the client, as you're, you know, the last step in the intake process, usually. But you don't actually have to be that much more involved than that step. There are ways, even on a budget, even for a tiny law firm, to build intake systems that shift the burden of responsibility— the burden of turning that phone call into a client— away from you and toward your intake team, whatever it might look like. What are some of those ways? Nick, pop quiz.

NICK: Hm. Are you just starting out? Are we in the same metaphor?

TONY: Sure.

NICK: Are you Jamestown?

TONY: It's Jamestown.

NICK: What are some of those ways? I got to tell you some of the better advice that I've heard. I'll start without an answering service, and then I'll progress, right? I'll go chronological. You just start out— change your voicemail greeting to be super professional, uh, script it out, right? And give the person who's calling you the exact message that you want to convey about what's going on. If you've called me and I've missed this call, it is— "I'm in court, or I'm meeting with a client, and I will call you right back. I am a one-man show. I really want to help you with your case. If you would be so kind as to wait until I could call you back in the next hour or so, I would greatly appreciate it. Leave your name, your phone number, and what you're calling about, and I will get back to you as soon as I can, and I can't wait to speak with you." Some of the best advice I've ever heard. Tell the truth. The truth is awesome. If I heard that voicemail and I stopped long enough to listen to it, I would absolutely wait for that person. I would at least hear them out. The second thing is, when you're just starting out, your case volume is obviously pretty lean, you're working off of referrals. There are— I would say "answering services," right, that term applies to a bunch of Answering Legal competitors— non-specialized, outsourced, anything, right. Whatever your threshold of tolerance is for quality— I obviously think that, um, a highly trained answering service will do a good job, but we're all on budgets, I understand. I would find an answering service and work to find one that can customize your script enough to do what you need it to do based on your needs. So, understanding that— um, say what you're focused on a lot is— uh, I actually know a person who did this. She had started a law firm in California and went out on her own, and her big thing was, uh, she wanted to acquire cases from people that did not want to take anything to court. They wanted to settle and get a good offer for their, like, insurance claims. And she was like, "I'm the settlement lawyer. If you don't want a whole drawn-out process and you want this to end quickly, I am the person for you. I will help you accomplish that goal." Very specialized. She has an answering service because she's so busy. Why is she busy? Because she's helping people and negotiating these things so that she could just get them out. And her intake looked like that— it reflected, "Why are you calling? You don't want this drawn-out process. If you are unhappy with your settlement, you know, we'll refer you to somebody who can negotiate that, but that's not what we do here"— and take your name, right, and, you know, what you're trying to obtain. And so you can kind of work alongside the people who are going to be answering your phone— who are effectively your intake team, if it's just you and an answering service— and make sure that you are both being transparent and honest while setting the correct expectations. You don't have to instruct the people to be like, "Oh, they're going to call you back at this time and this is the process"— no, just, "Oh, a few next steps— somebody's going to be calling you right back based on what you've just told me."

TONY: And that's kind of the key of it— whether you are, in this metaphor, the Jamestown colony just starting out, you are the established colony of Virginia, or you're the, uh, the great nation of the United States of America facing its bicentennial plus 50, whatever the word is for that— your ability to enjoy the fruits of your labor is contingent on being able to replicate the things that you do, by making it so someone else can do it when you have more important stuff going on, right? So, one of those things is, um, client qualification, right— is this person a good fit for the firm? When you're just starting out, you're the only one who knows that. But as your firm grows and hopefully accumulates experience, niches down, identifies your exact client profile, you can train people to recognize those things. Or, in the case of an answering service, you can construct an intake protocol that identifies whether or not this person is a good fit, so that you can, at a glance, know, "Okay, this person's a good fit, I'm going to— they're going to schedule a consultation, and I'm going to make a representation agreement available to them," whatever it is, right? There are always ways to do that, right? So, like we just said with the answering service, you construct your intake questions. So it works like that. If you have an intake team, whoever's in charge of that team, whoever is responsible for it, should— each person on the team should know what your ICP looks like. But at the end of the day, you should have someone who is the final authority, and it should not be you.

NICK: Can you explain ICP for somebody who might not know what that is?

TONY: Uh, ICP would be, um, "ideal client profile," or, you know, "customer profile," whatever your C-word is. And you should have someone on your intake team who knows what that is as well— if not better than you do— because the more you're able to do that, the more you're able to, A, focus on what you're good at, which is the law, and B, not have to worry about it— it's someone else's job to handle. And if you trust that person, you trained them, you've known them for a while, then you can go home and enjoy the fruits of your labor with your family, you can go to a fireworks show and not be thinking, "Man, that guy who called in, he's like a really good fit for the law firm, I think that— that would be a great case, I wonder if we're going to get it." You just don't have to worry about it, because you have set up the systems, and people, most importantly, to handle that for you.

NICK: Here's something that I really love. I truly love feedback, and my friends make fun of me because they say that I love validation, and I do. I love to be validated. If I do something nice, I want you to tell me that I did something nice. Is that selfish? I don't know. If I did something cool, like I hit a home run, I want you to be like, "Dude, that was a bomb." You know what I mean? I want to hear it. I want you to tell me. Right— what I do, I really do— even love, um, like, I guess it's not criticism— criticism is negative, but— sure, constructive criticism, I really do love it. Here's how I like constructive criticism, though, because I've seen it work: we very often will have customers of the answering service, and I'll get to my main point— I will intercept transmission between a customer and the answering service, and they'll send us a message and they're like, "This message is wrong for X, Y, and Z." I love that. That's why it's wrong. So let's talk about how we're going to fix it, instead of just sending some crazy thing— or write positive feedback as well: "This call went so well, I wonder if one of the things that your receptionist did on the phone, while talking about this thing about our process, is like— what we're going to do is, I'm just going to ask you a few questions, and then, based on your answers to those questions, we're going to offer you a consultation and schedule it on your calendar. I don't make that determination, I'm going to send it to the person who's going to review it and they'll get back to you, it happens within X amount of time, usually," and they see that and they're like, "Oh, that worked really well, I really liked that communication, can we build that into how we handle all the calls so that everybody has that information," and it goes all over the place. And what that actually looks like is the person who's responsible for it, right— if you are the owner— Tony often says this, the buck stops with you. I'm going to take it a step further: as a leader, it's your job to intercept everything that's going on. You may not have caused the problem, but it is your problem to fix. And so, um, I don't often like to toot my own horn, I'm really not good at talking about myself in this way, but I'm going to— one of the things that I do, as one of the head honchos over here, is I intercept a lot of communications that happen. Obviously I'm one of the forward-facing people for the company, I get emailed a lot of stuff. Joe gets emailed a lot of stuff, producer Joe, because he's listed as, like, the contact for the podcast, and he'll forward it to me. Um, and if there's a problem and I know the answer to that problem, I don't simply just forward it along to the person I know who has to handle it— I do forward it, and I go and speak to this person about my understanding of what's occurring in the problem, right, and we talk about how we're going to fix it, and then I can help them, right? It's incumbent upon you to consistently learn about the way that you want to care for your clients and answer the phone and do the intake, and iterate on that. So if you have an answering service, great— every time the answering service does something good that you want them to replicate, tell them that, right? For us, it's as simple as an email, and we'll be like, "Got it done, we did X, Y, and Z, this is how we're going to do it in the future." Or you could call us and we'll have a chat on the phone, too. But a lot of lawyers are really busy and they fire off emails, and the emails are 24/7— the phone, you have to call, and, you know what I mean, you have to speak to someone, have a whole conversation. It's the same thing with your intake team: if you listen to a call, or review a call, and they're super excited about something that somebody said and they want to get informed and they ask you, "Was this a good fit?" and you tell them why it was, they're going to figure out how to do stuff on their own, right? And that's removing yourself as the bottleneck. That's being a cultural leader. That's setting a precedent, and that's giving people ownership over what they're supposed to do.

TONY: The thing that requires, though, is the right mindset, right? Like we talk a lot about how— and we hope you're here for this reason— we're here to help lawyers improve their intake, run better firms, run better businesses. One of the things that almost all business owners, entrepreneurs, eventually have to confront is that this is no longer their baby, right? I mean, you know, that's true of children as well— eventually it's no longer your baby, it's an adult, and it has to make its own decisions. In the same way, the business is yours when you're the only person and you're scrappy and small and you're starting out. But as it grows, you're no longer scrappy, and you don't have to perform as if you're the scrappy underdog. Because once you are a small mid-size law firm that has a dedicated niche and a local market that knows you, you're just not the scrappy underdog anymore. You are probably just a dog, if you're not the big dog. And you don't have to act like a scrappy underdog anymore, because the things that worked when you were scrappy are going to hold you back when you are not small anymore. And one of those things is your mindset of "this is mine, and I'm in control, I'm in charge of it"— and letting go of that and delegating control to people you trust who can do those things, and then it doesn't even become your job to train those people anymore. If you give them the right indications, like Nick was saying, you just hire smart people, they're going to figure it out on their own.

NICK: Yeah, I talked to a lot of smart lawyers who do a lot of what you're saying, and it's so easy— I was going to say this to Delisi, too, and I'm sure she feels the same way that I feel about this— is I look at marketing, and unfortunately for me sometimes, I have to try and have more of a beginner's mind about this. Do you ever think about— you know, like doctors or surgeons, and you think about it and you're like, "Wow, you cut people open," and to them that's not a monumental thing anymore because it's so routine, and I imagine it's not really desensitization so much as it is you become a professional at it. Where I look at marketing, I'm not super enthralled about it anymore. Like, sometimes there will be something really cool and somebody will do something really creative, but I look at it and I understand it, I know what it is, and it doesn't— like…

TONY: You see the numbers in the matrix.

NICK: Exactly. And for Delisi, I'm sure she looks at these referral relationships and it's like this— she's like, "I know exactly what you should do." You explain it and she just gets it. And for me, that blows my mind, right? What I have to try to remember is that because we speak to people to try and amplify their message, they are the exception, not the rule. Is the word "ubiquitous"? I feel like I've just started using this word a lot. It is so ubiquitous for law firm owners to have the opposite mindset of what you're saying— well, two things: number one, that they either have to do it all themselves, or it's wrong; or that when you hire someone, it's now their responsibility to figure it out, and you abdicate your accountability for that. And I do hear this all the time, that lawyers are like, "It's so hard to find somebody to hire." It's like— is it really hard to find somebody really good, or are you just really bad at training them, and are you bad at setting the tone for how to accomplish those things and how to take care of your customers? And I will leave you with one thing, like this: My mentor, a very, very, very good person and man named Michael George, was my catering boss for a long time. And I loved this about him, and I often fantasize about becoming a CrossFit coach because I know exactly what I would say at the start of every class that I would teach. But at the start of every event, no matter who you were or what your position was, he would gather you together and give a little tiny speech. And this was not an ego thing at all, he doesn't care about his own ego. He would say, "If this is your first time working for me, welcome. If this is your hundredth time working for me, welcome back. I have three rules, right: we're here to have fun, we're here to do a really good job, and we're here to make some money. That's our three rules. And how we do that is the following: if you see somebody doing something wrong or slacking off, you do not yell at them or berate them or whatever— you help, right? If you see somebody struggling to pick up a garbage can, help them pick up the garbage can. If you see somebody who's talking too long to somebody else, you're like, 'Hey, let's get back to work.' We identify problems and we fix them, that's really it." And he set that standard for me, where I learned that that was how you were a leader, right— you led by example, you got your hands dirty, and if somebody needed your help, you stopped what you were doing and helped them clean it up. And I hang out with him all the time, and he's such a deep person that we don't have surface-level conversation, we talk about our experiences like that, and what we've learned, and how far we're willing to go, and to me it's so cool to see the effect that he's had. So I do have a counterpart— I rose through the ranks in catering, because that's my goal in life, to just continue to ascend. There is a wonderful woman, her name is Katie, and she worked for him even longer, and to watch her become a leader at the organization that she works at, and how she treats people, is the same exact thing. And I talk to her about this all the time, too. It makes such a difference when you take ownership and train and lead with compassion, and the way that you want to do things.

TONY: Every time you get three-quarters of the way through Michael George's name, I'm convinced you're gonna say Michael Jordan.

NICK: Not George Michael.

TONY: No, because it's Michael George. I don't think that's the leadership advice Michael Jordan would give.

NICK: I don't know that he has any leadership advice.

TONY: Yeah, well, he was kind of— I mean, you know, anyway, I think that— yeah, staying invested in it. There's a line you have to walk, and you have to find that line yourself. That's sort of the tricky part about life, is that no matter how much advice we give you, at the end of the day, you do kind of have to figure it out on your own, which kind of negates why we're here. But that's not what I mean— I mean that there's a line that you have to define for yourself, between how involved you want to get in every step along the way, let's call it, of an intake. And you can take advice from as many different corners, like ourselves, as possible, to give you sort of heuristics, right, best practices, but you do need a certain level of investment, of course, because it's your law firm— but you shouldn't be 100% invested, because then you're going to have nothing left to invest anywhere else in the law firm, or anywhere else in your life, right? So, I guess the last thing that we could talk about is, what does it look like— like, if you could give one just quick piece of advice, or something that a law firm owner who's struggling with this problem, just one action they could take right now to move themselves along the journey to finding that line, what would you say?

NICK: I would say— this is something that has really worked for me— is, we're all on the ride. We're on the ride every day. It's the same thing, it's what I eat, it's what I read, it's what I watch, it's who I talk to, it's who I'm around. And I'm on the ride, and this happens every day. And you choose where to get off that ride. If you are a law firm owner and you feel trapped, you choose where to get off that ride, and it will compound. Here's how: if you start with your intake and you review it, you will have better interactions with your clients, your new clients. When you have better interactions with your new clients, you will get more referrals, you will get more positive reviews, more people will want to hire you. What that looked like for me personally is I got off the ride at exercise, right— I wasn't exercising, I wasn't consuming good stuff, I wasn't hanging around with people, I wasn't participating. I got off the ride at exercise. When I started exercising, I said, "Wow, I bet exercise would work better if I ate better food." So then I ate better food, and I started to feel better. And I said, "Wow, I feel better, I wonder if I read more literature about feeling better, and what I can do nutritionally and mindset-wise in order to feel better, what that would do." And I started reading that, and that started affecting my exercise, and that started affecting this. If you get off the ride somewhere— and say that ride is, I don't know, taking better care of your existing customers and communicating with them more— they're happier, they refer more people, then you're happier, you take better care of the new client callers, you start having better referral relationships, you start performing better at your job. You have to get off the ride somewhere. Make one decision, change one thing— it will compound.

TONY: So Nick's advice is to get off of this ride and get on a better one.

NICK: Is that my metaphor?

TONY: Kind of, I guess.

NICK: Did you ruin my metaphor? Don't ruin my metaphor.

TONY: 'Cause the new ride is, you know, a feedback loop,

NICK: I guess— you have to get on a new ride. That's right.

TONY: Yeah, yeah. My advice, of course, is to go to answeringlegal.com to learn more about our virtual receptionist service.

NICK: You corporate shill.

TONY: Um, and you can find a link in our episode to get started with a 400-minute free trial of the service.

NICK: And so we're done. Wow. Uh, Tony, thank you for making sure that we get paid, I appreciate you. I really— truly, at the end of that diatribe, I hope that this episode wasn't aimed specifically at, like, note-taking, but inspired you to try to change one thing about your intake that can improve your overall quality of life and the way that your customers hire you.

TONY: Yeah, just, uh, remember, you can get off this ride. If you don't like your ride, life's a theme park, there's going to be a ride you're going to like.

NICK: Yeah, I like that, that's good, I'm getting on the teacups. Anyway, be sure to join us on the next episode of the Legal Intake Experts. All episodes of the show can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel.

TONY: Thank you all for listening, and we'll see you next time, everyone.