The Real Reason Your Law Firm Isn't Converting Leads (It's Not Your Agency)

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

In our fifth episode, hosts Nick Werker and Tony Prieto infuse some Halloween spirit by discussing their favorite costumes before diving into a crucial topic: identifying responsibility when a law firm isn't bringing in new clients. They explore the relationship between marketing agencies and law firm intake processes, emphasizing the importance of seamless communication and proper follow-up. Nick and Tony also provide actionable insights and examples on how to diagnose potential issues in client intake.

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

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

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

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

Episode Transcript:

Nick Werker: We are back once again here on the Answering Legal Legal Intake Experts podcast. Yes, I know the word “legal” is redundant, but that’s fine.

Full disclosure and a peek behind the curtain — we batch these episodes. So, if you’re out there thinking, “Oh my god, how can I make content? They pump out so much content. They’re just marketers. They don’t have to do anything all day,” here’s the truth: we batch this stuff and then release it later.

So yes, I’m wearing the same shirt as in the prior episode.

Tony Prieto: Everything Nick said is a lie. I only own one shirt.

Nick: I love you, man.

Okay, so I’ve just been informed by the plug in my ear — what do newscasters say again? Oh right, “Breaking news! Breaking news! This just in!”

Breaking news: this episode comes out right before Halloween, and we thought it would be fun to talk about the history of our Halloween costumes.

Now, I don’t have a great memory. And you always say you have a bad memory, but you really don’t.

First of all, I’m going to tell you my favorite Halloween costume ever. That’s what we’re doing here. My favorite costume ever is one I did with my wife. I don’t think I had many great Halloween costumes growing up — not because of a bad childhood or anything — I just wasn’t that creative when it came to Halloween.

We dressed up as Cosmo and Wanda from The Fairly OddParents. And that should tell you how old I am. For those who don’t know, they’re two fairy godparents — one has green hair, wears a white collared shirt and black tie; the other has pink hair and wears a yellow t-shirt.

We got fairy wings and wands with stars on them because that’s accurate to the show. I wore a green wig, and my wife wore a pink wig. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll post a picture of that on LinkedIn when this episode comes out.

Tony: It’s a great photo. I haven’t dressed up for Halloween in a long time, but the one costume I remember most was from around 2006. Picture me at age 11. Guitar Hero 3 had just come out, and I’d been playing it nonstop. There was a Halloween party I really didn’t want to go to, but my parents said, “You’re going.”

My mom — who is a Halloween expert and puts up the fake cobwebs every year — decided I was going as Slash. So, they got me a top hat, a leather jacket, a wig, and I went with my Guitar Hero controller.

Funny enough, I later actually learned how to play the guitar. But back then, when people asked, “Do you play guitar?” I had to say, “No, I’m a poser. This is a Halloween costume.”

They had a costume contest, and I didn’t win — I came in second behind this one kid, the only Anglo-American kid in my Miami neighborhood, who dressed up as Flava Flav.

Nick: Oh, that’s a good story. You might have made me laugh too hard for the podcast.

I have a counterpoint to that story, and then we’ll actually get into the podcast — unless this gets edited out. When I was younger, I had a friend who was really into classic rock. We took guitar lessons together, listened to AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses.

That was around the time Slash formed a band with Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots — among other musicians — called Velvet Revolver. Loved that band. So, I was also Slash for Halloween one year.

To this day, I don’t have a Gibson Les Paul, though I should buy one with my adult money. But I do have an Epiphone Les Paul, because I loved Slash so much.

So maybe one day, Tony, we’ll both be Slash for Halloween and see who does it better.

Tony: I’d need a couple of years to grow out my hair if I wanted to do it without a wig.

Nick: You’ve got to stop making me laugh.

Nick: Okay, Tony, I don’t know how we can top that and have any more fun, but I thought we’d kick things off today with a little game.

Tony: I mean, I love games, so I’m in.

Nick: Good. We’re going to play… hi Rosie! — we’re going to play The Blame Game.

Tony: I have to say, The Blame Game might be one of my least favorite games, but we can continue.

Nick: So this is a hot topic. And before we get into it, I’d like to take a moment to address Tony’s dog, Rosie — who I love and adore — who is currently barking. If you pay close attention to other episodes of the podcast, you’ll notice that I’m often not looking directly at the camera and leaning to one side, because I’m petting my own dog, Alfie. He’s a very anxious and whiny boy, and he likes to make noise even while sitting next to his favorite person in the world.

But back to the topic, because I’ll go on a tangent forever.

Today’s question for The Blame Game is a hot one: Should you blame your marketing agency if your firm isn’t bringing in new clients?

Tony: You say “hot topic,” and yeah — this definitely is one. We’re marketing people ourselves. We’re in-house, of course, but we’re like cousins to the marketing agencies. So, this discussion could cause some family strife.

Nick: You know what I think is the coolest part? I see my favorite marketing agency owners, leaders, and professionals — and I’ll call them my favorites to their faces — constantly taking accountability for intake.

Like, you log into LinkedIn in the morning and everyone’s got their scheduled post for 8 or 9 a.m. Meanwhile, I’m still winging it.

But this morning I saw a post from my friend Bo Royal at Pareto Legal. Check out Bo — he does everything from paid Google Ads and Bing Ads to Facebook Ads, and deep data analysis and storage.

Most of his posts are about how he won’t even work with a law firm that doesn’t have a handle on their intake process. Or maybe I shouldn’t say “won’t work with” — he probably just helps them set it up first — but the point is, he won’t run campaigns for firms that aren’t handling intake properly.

Because marketing is always the first to get blamed when he drives tons of leads to a firm and none of them convert. Then the firm says, “The leads were garbage. None of them converted.”

So, Bo often talks about how intake is super important. He actually owns that part of the discussion and helps consult on it. I don’t know how exactly he fixes it — I’m not in the day-to-day at Pareto Legal — but I’m sure he does a great job. The point is, he at least acknowledges and addresses it.

Tony: Yeah, and that’s the key. A marketing agency’s job is to deliver leads — ideally, quality leads. But once you have those leads, what happens to them is no longer in the marketing agency’s court.

It’s very easy to say, “The agency’s giving us bad leads.” It’s always easier to push the blame away from yourself than to sit down and figure out what’s really wrong.

You have to ask: are the leads bad, or is the handoff bad? Is our intake process bad? Is our dreaded word in legal — sales — bad?

Nick: Here’s how I think we should talk about this: how do we identify what the real problem is?

Say the marketing agency says they’re delivering you a ton of leads, but you say you’re not making any money. Where do you look first? How do you diagnose this problem?

Tony: Yeah. So legal issues are, in economic terms, inelastic. It doesn’t matter whether the economy is good or bad, or whether people have savings or not — people will always have legal problems, and they’ll still have to pay to resolve them. That’s obviously a benefit from a business standpoint.

What that means is that, unlike most other industries, law firms don’t really experience strong seasonality. Sure, there are exceptions — tax attorneys, for example, have cyclical busy seasons — but generally speaking, month to month, you should be seeing a fairly consistent number of leads. Ideally, that number grows if you increase your marketing budget.

If nothing else has changed and your leads suddenly drop, you can’t just say, “Oh well, it’s the summer. No one’s spending money on legal.” Legal problems don’t take vacations. If you get a traffic ticket, get injured, or get sued, it doesn’t matter what time of year it is. Maybe personal injury cases rise in the winter with slip-and-falls, but overall, demand stays steady.

Nick: Two things. One, they have banana peels in Miami — you could definitely slip on one of those.

Tony: [Laughs] Mario Kart!

Nick: [Laughs] Okay, okay. I had to stop myself from interrupting earlier because when you said “inelastic,” I wanted to jump in and say, “You’re so smart.” It reminded me of a story my cousin told me years ago.

My cousin John and his partner Kenny were having an argument in their basement gym. John was on the treadmill, Kenny was lifting weights — which perfectly fits their personalities. Anyway, John falls off the treadmill mid-argument, and the belt starts dragging him. Kenny runs over, scoops him up, and helps him off. And John, still mid-fight, just looks up and says, “You’re so strong.”

So that’s what I thought when you said “inelastic.” [Laughs]

Tony: [Laughing] Okay, for accuracy’s sake, I should clarify: technically, the demand is inelastic. That’s the correct economic phrasing.

Nick: You’re going to make me say it again, huh?

But you’re right — and for a few reasons. From my own experience in marketing, once your processes are up and running, there are always fluctuations. But in general, you can expect a steady flow of visibility and a fairly consistent number of new buyers entering the market.

Now, I want to push back on one common assumption — that lead quality is always the big issue. I see this a lot with attorneys who say things like, “I don’t want these kinds of cases,” or, “I only take that kind of client.” And that’s fine — you should specialize. You’re not for everyone.

But when I hear lawyers saying, “We’re not getting the right kind of leads,” I challenge them to take a hard look at their intake process. Are you qualifying people correctly? Is there a mismatch between the clients you want and the clients you’re attracting?

If there is, that’s not necessarily a marketing problem — that’s a goal alignment problem. You need to sit down with your marketing agency and make sure your client persona and messaging actually match the people you want to work with.

So it’s a two-part issue:

1. Examine the process you’re using to qualify leads.
2. Then examine the alignment between your targeting and your business goals.

Does that make sense?

Tony: Yeah, I mean, baseline — you need to be able to track what’s happening with your leads. If you have a CRM that can report for you, that’s ideal. That should be step zero for any firm.

Once you have that in place, you need to start qualifying leads and seeing how many are actually good fits. Of course, sometimes you might be targeting the wrong people. That could be an issue on the marketing agency’s side, but it could just as easily be on your side.

Like you were saying earlier — maybe your client profile is too niche for the kind of marketing you’re doing, and your overall strategy needs adjusting. That’s a joint issue that you and your agency can work through together.

But if the lead volume is stable and the quality seems good, yet you’re still not converting — that issue is firmly in your court. At the end of the day, it’s not the marketing agency’s job to convert clients. That’s yours.

Nick: You made a really good point, and I just want to imagine a scenario here. Fair warning, I’m working on being more direct these days — I’m a people pleaser, and I’m in therapy for it. Everyone should go to therapy, by the way. In The Four Agreements, one of the lessons is to be impeccable with your word, and I try to live by that.

So here’s a direct example. Let’s say your marketing agency is bringing you 100 total leads. Out of those, 50 percent are qualified. From that qualified group, your goal is to convert 20 percent into paying clients.

You’ve run the numbers: your cost per acquisition is $100, and your average case brings in $10,000. That’s a fantastic return. So you’re shooting for that 20 percent conversion rate from qualified leads.

But month after month, you’re only converting 5 percent. That’s where the problem lies — somewhere between when the lead comes in and when they become a client.

The issue isn’t that you’re not getting enough leads. The issue is that something in your process is breaking down — maybe your follow-up timing, your consultation process, your messaging, or your pricing presentation. Somewhere between the first touchpoint and the final signature, something’s going wrong.

And here’s the best part — that’s all measurable.

Let me give you an example, because I love examples. Let’s say 50 percent of your leads come in. Your process looks like this:

• The lead comes in.
• Your intake team gathers their information, or your answering service delivers the message.
• The lead books a 15-minute consultation.
• After that consultation, you send them a retainer agreement.

You set expectations, send the email, and wait for the client to sign. But you notice only 5 percent of people are completing that final step.

That’s where you start diagnosing. Look at the email. What’s wrong with it? Is it confusing, too long, missing urgency?

And one of my favorite things to tell firms: just ask the people who didn’t sign. Reach out and say, “Hey, why didn’t you choose us?”

Not everyone will respond, but the ones who do can give you gold. Some might say, “Oh, I totally forgot to sign it,” or “I went with another firm that was cheaper.” That tells you exactly where to look — your follow-up or your pricing.

Wherever the communication stopped is where you’ll find the breakdown. That’s the point to fix.

Tony: One of those things that’s easy to overlook when you’re running a business is how much this really comes down to basic problem-solving. It’s like being back in school and thinking, “When am I ever going to need this?”

I find myself thinking about the scientific method all the time. You learn it when you’re ten, but it’s one of the best tools for diagnosing business issues. All you really need to solve a problem is a way to measure what’s happening, and then to look at those results.

Let’s say your process goes like this:

1. People call you.
2. You call them back.
3. You schedule a consultation.
4. From that consultation, you send out representation agreements.

That’s a simple four-step process. If you have a CRM, each of those can be a stage in your CRM pipeline. Then you can see where the fall-off happens.

And you don’t even have to get deep into reporting tools — though you should learn them. You can literally just look at the list and see, “Wow, a lot of people are stuck at the ‘Sent Representation Agreement’ stage.”

That’s your clue. Is it your pricing? Your follow-up? Something else? You can reverse-engineer the problem from there.

And sometimes, it’s more than one thing. If someone doesn’t show up for their consultation, it could be that they forgot — in which case you need to send reminder texts. Or maybe they found another lawyer first — which means you need to speed up your follow-up process.

Whatever it is, once the lead is in your court, it’s almost never the marketing agency’s problem anymore.

It’s easy to say, “Ah, well, they’re giving me bad leads.” But if you’ve set up a system to measure lead quality and most of the leads you’re reaching out to meet your own standards, then either:

1. There’s something wrong with your standards, or
2. There’s something wrong with your approach.

Both are things you can fix.

And that’s actually a good thing, because if it’s the marketing agency’s problem, you’re stuck relying on them to solve it. But if it’s in your hands, that means you get to fix it, learn from it, and become a better business owner.

Nick: Shout out to the scientific method. That was actually the name of a Jeopardy! category last night!

I talk about it all the time here — hypothesis testing, control groups, A/B experiments — all that stuff that marketers love. It might sound boring, but it’s the same principle.

And funny enough, one of the questions in that category last night — I can’t remember the exact clue — but the answer was quarks.

I knew it because one of my closest friends, Matt, is a particle physicist at Brookhaven National Labs. Shout out to my buddy Matt, the physicist who taught me about quarks.

Tony: I’m sorry, Nick. You have to phrase your answer in the form of a question.

Nick: [Laughs] What are quarks?

Nick: So, here’s the last thing I want to cover. I learned about this process because what you have to understand is I’m obviously, and Tony is also very obviously, very cognizant of the way that lawyers and law firm owners must run their business in order to align on goals and provide solutions.

However, most of what we do is in the front, right? We’re front of house if you want to talk in terms of restaurants. We’re the welcoming. We’re the answer. We’re like if a Michelin restaurant— a Michelin-star restaurant— like, you ever watch The Bear and they make your experience really good, or he runs down the street and gets a pizza from the Chicago pizza place? It’s a great show. We do that sort of stuff.

What I think is really cool and can provide your intake with a ton of information is an exit interview.

I want you to think about it this way: every interaction that a client has with you is part of your brand. One of the first interactions they have with you is during your intake and onboarding process of them hiring you. Ask them when you’re done handling their case. Because, like, you should be asking for reviews at certain milestones, but ask them at the conclusion of their case what it was like working with you and how it was for them hiring you to represent them.

You could get so much information from that where they’re like, “Oh, like in the beginning it was a real pain to get somebody on the phone,” or, “It was a real pain to get a response to an email because I work— I’m a nurse, and I work night shifts from 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. Shout out my sister who actually does that.” Or, “It’s 7:00 to 7:00, it’s not 5:00 to 5:00, and so, like, I knew I had to send an email because it was overnight and I was at work and this problem happened,” and so on and so forth.

You know, the response time could have been better, or, “You made me come down to the office and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to do a Zoom call.” You know, like, find out these things that you can do to provide better service to your clients so that you decrease the amount of drop-off.

Tony: And that’s the thing. We were talking about ways to analyze things to change from failure, right? Not converting a qualified lead. You could think of it as a failure if you really wanted to be down on yourself, but this is a way to get that information from successes.

Because even if you provided that person with the best possible result, and you ask them that question, like, “What was it like?” hiring a lawyer is a stressful process, and they’re going to, unfortunately, because of the way that human nature and memory works, remember the most stressful parts of this process.

And you can take from that ways to reverse-engineer and reduce the amount of stress and assume that those are drop-off points where this person did not drop off. And whatever reason that is, is really not something you can control. But what you can control is making that experience as smooth as possible.

And one of the ways you could do that is by hiring a 24/7 answering service like Answering Legal.

Nick: I love when you do that.

Last thing I’ll say. Everything we talked about—improving all of that—will help you in your client acquisition so much. Here’s how.

The topic of reviews—lawyers love reviews. And it’s because marketing agencies stress the power of Google reviews. Do I think that this is a sustainable way to distinguish yourself? No, I do not. I don’t. But for now, it is what it is. And it’s not spam. You know, getting reviews and social proof is always going to be important.

I just push back on the idea that that’s going to last forever. However, I will stop on my soapbox.

When you have these great touchpoints with a client and better customer service—because that’s ultimately what we’re talking about here—in order to convert them to a client, and you do something like an exit interview, once you find out ways to improve that, you’re going to improve the experience, right?

But when you have that exit interview with a former client now, which is a great thing, you will remind them of all the good experiences that they had with your firm so that they can speak more eloquently and in more detail on the review that you should ask them to write.

Tony: And even though things are changing—right, like Google reviews, maybe people are doing less research on Google and more research on ChatGPT—a lot of times, you know, when you type in “Where should I go for date night in Manhattan,” ChatGPT is going to go through the ratings of those things and return the Dorsia if you’re Patrick Bateman.

And those markers are signals. It is very difficult to tell, especially with something as complicated as the law, whether someone is a reputable representation of their profession. And Google reviews—whatever review platform it is—are a very simple way to look at a thing, read what people say about it, and then make the decision yourself.

And that is so important because the internet is full of scammers, at the very least. And you know, people habitually make decisions based on those five little stars. And the more of those that you have, the better off you are.

And all of this is part of the client experience and ensuring that when someone becomes a client, they’re likely to review you, recommend their friends, and all of those things. Paying attention to all of those things will also increase the number of people who sign up later—not just because you have better reviews, but because of the things you did to get those reviews.

You’re smoothing out those pain points so that someone is more likely to—I mean, you used that example of a restaurant, right? Intake is the host. Marketing and intake are the host. Sales is the waiter, right? He’s the person who goes in and says, “Oh, you should really get that tomahawk steak tonight. It’s fantastic.” And then the chef is the person who works there.

But unfortunately, in law, you are both the waiter and the chef. And so, you take the order and then you run back and you make it happen.

Nick: You made me laugh too much on camera today.

Nick: I have a confession, and then we will wrap it up. My confession is that because of the nature of the work that I do, I only see ads for legal marketing agencies—uh, what would you call it—like fractional operations, all sorts of solutions for lawyers, right?

And some of them are such bad scams. And I have a file on my phone of screenshots that I save of these scammers and their promises and their guarantees and their shady tactics. And I save them.

And sometimes, when I look back through my camera roll, I look at them again. And I will—I’m going to make this confession, which means I can never do it, and so that if it is being done, it is not me.

I will say that now. I am not Batman. However, I was going to start an anonymous Batman troll account where I posted these screenshots and just, like, detailed how bad of a scam this thing is, and then, like, would be a meme lord—anonymous meme lord on the internet—calling out scammers everywhere in the legal community.

I’m not going to do it.

Tony: And if you see it happen, you know that Nick has been captured and is being held hostage.

Nick: They found my swipe file. The blackmail is loose.

Tony: Yeah.

Nick: Anyway, I’m not Batman. Not Bruce Wayne today. Even though there is a dog who lives near me that I pass on either runs or walks with my wife, and his name is Batman, and I love him very much.

Tony: Good dog name.

Nick: Role reversal again. What a great dog name. I call him Bruce. The woman who owns him, Lisa, thinks that’s very funny. She says, “My boyfriend also calls him Bruce.” Bruce Wayne. Mr. Wayne.

She had another good one.

Tony: Put on the—

Nick: Oh, don’t do it. Don’t do it.

Tony: Theatricality and deception, Mr. Wayne. Powerful tools to the uninitiated.

Nick: I’ll tell you what, when you come and stay with me, we will go on a walk and you will meet Mr. Batman himself. He is a very small—I don’t know what kind of dog he is—he’s like a small black dog, and he’s great.

Nick: He doesn’t like me very much.

Tony: I do the Bane voice.

Nick: Oo yeah, you might touch a nerve there.

But anyway, I know we referenced Answering Legal a few times, so I want to let our listeners know that they can head to answeringlegal.com to learn more about our virtual receptionist service and how we can help lawyers hopefully convert these qualified leads that their marketing agencies are bringing them into new clients.

There’s also a link in the bio of this episode to get started with a 400-minute free trial of the service. Four hundred minutes is a lot to use, just putting that out there.

Tony: I want to thank all of our listeners. If you like this podcast, you can find more episodes of Legal Intake Experts. All of them are on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel.

If you don’t like this podcast, what’s wrong with you?

Nick: If you don’t like this podcast, you have horrible, horrible taste, and you should reevaluate everything that you like and enjoy in life.

Tony: And on that very positive note—

Nick: Yeah, on that very positive note, we will see you next time. Peace.

Tony: That’s a mic drop.