Use Your CRM! HubSpot Tactics That Fix Intake & Boost Conversions

Episode 72 of the "Everything Except The Law" podcast has arrived! This time we're speaking with Robert Williams, CEO/Founder at ElevAmp LLC.

The Everything Except The Law podcast can be found on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In this episode, Robert and host Nick Werker delve into the importance of CRMs, particularly HubSpot, for law firms. They discuss the significance of knowing your numbers for growth, and the necessity of using technology effectively. Robert also emphasizes the need for clear naming conventions, proper roles in using CRMs, and gradual, strategic implementation of technology solutions.

About our guest:

With a wealth of legal marketing, technology and business consulting experience, Robert Williams helps businesses navigate the technology space to find the tools that enable them to hit or exceed their goals by focusing on productivity, profitability and leveraging actionable business data.

Robert has refined his leadership, management, training and mentoring skills over the last 20 years with proven success in digital marketing and business strategy. He has been recognized by his peers in both sales and services as a great leader and problem solver.

Learn more about Robert's company here!

See the previous episode of “Everything Except The Law” here.

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

Episode Transcript:

Nick Werker (Host): Hey everyone, welcome back to Answering Legal’s Everything Except the Law podcast. I’m your host, Nick Werker. If this is your first time tuning in, this is the show where we share expert advice on all the parts of running a law firm that attorneys weren’t exactly trained for in law school — or at all.

It’s been a little while since our last release, and I’m thrilled to be back with you. I’m also proud to say we’re making our return in style.

With me today is Robert Williams, the CEO and Founder of ElevAmp. We have a lot to get into in this episode, but first, let’s learn a bit more about Robert.

I like to start my interviews by going in reverse order — from ridiculous to serious. We’re starting at ridiculous. I know this about you, but only vaguely, and it’s a selfish question for me to ask. I heard that you could have been a professional Ultimate Frisbee player but decided to pursue a marketing career instead. Can you tell me about that?

Robert Williams (Guest): laughs Could have been somebody — could have been somebody. I don’t know if I could have gone fully professional, but I did play through high school and into college. And you’re right, I decided to pursue work and education over honing my athleticism and frisbee skills.

It’s funny though — most people, when I tell them I played Ultimate Frisbee, assume I mean disc golf. And those are two very different things. Ultimate is more like soccer or football — it’s played on a field, you pass the disc, you have to stop when you catch it, and you’re trying to throw it downfield to score. Disc golf, on the other hand, is just like golf but with a disc.

I’ve actually got one of my branded frisbees right over my shoulder here — hot off the press, just came in yesterday. I still have an arm; I can still throw it around. So yeah, fun fact.

Nick: If I ever make a trip out to you, I want to see if I can still throw one too — because long, long ago, I used to play a bit myself.

There was this Johns Hopkins summer camp program I went to for, well, nerdy kids whose parents wanted them to take seven and a half hours of classes, six days a week during the summer — which is probably why I hated school so much. But they had an Ultimate Frisbee tournament, and my friends and I would just launch frisbees into the end zone trying to make these spectacular catches.

Then there were the people who actually knew what they were doing — the ones who could cut, time their jumps, and run plays. They’d completely mess us up because we’d never seen anything like that before. There’s so much coordination and strategy in Ultimate that most people don’t realize.

Robert: Yeah, there’s a lot more to it than people think — coordination, plays, real strategy.

In high school, it wasn’t even that big of a thing where I went; it was just a club sport. But our team actually took second in the state way back in 2004. I still have that disc somewhere — it’s so old and brittle now it’ll probably crack if I try to use it.

Our strategy back then was simple: huck it downfield and throw it to the most athletic person on our team, and let him go make the play. That was pretty much it. Just, “He’s down there somewhere — throw it!”

Nick: Laughs Down there somewhere — that’s like Russell Wilson last week for the Giants. “Someone’s down there!” Except… not really.

Anyway, aside from your heavily accoladed Ultimate Frisbee career, how did you get into marketing, and what’s that journey been like for you?

Robert: Yeah, so I graduated during a pretty well-known time — 2008 — not exactly great conditions economically. I had an economics degree from the University of Washington. Go Dawgs!

I was lucky though. I’d had a job all through college installing car audio systems — building custom boxes, running wiring, doing the full install. I held onto that work for a while after graduating. Then, around 2011, a buddy of mine who was in the automotive marketing world got me an “in” as an SEO specialist.

Back then, SEO was… pretty rough. It was all keyword stuffing — writing things like “Chevrolet of [insert city name here]” over and over again across hundreds of dealership sites. I probably managed a hundred or more General Motors websites at one point.

But I dove into it. I’ve always been technical — I love tinkering, taking things apart, figuring out how stuff works. So even though a lot of what we were doing was basic SEO — title tags, meta descriptions, H1s through H6s — I started learning everything I could about the technical side too. That part really fascinated me.

Eventually, I got the opportunity to go in-house at a law firm marketing agency. It was three of us in a tiny closet back then. I ended up staying there for over a decade, helping shape and scale almost every role. If it existed, I either created it or did it — SEO, ads, websites, all of it.

Robert: About halfway through my time at that agency, something became painfully obvious — most of our clients didn’t have a lead problem.

We’d sit down for our regular monthly meetings, show them their reports, and everything looked amazing. Graphs up and to the right. Calls through the roof. Leads pouring in. And yet they’d look at me and say, “Rob, we’re not signing any new clients.”

That disconnect really stood out to me. We were delivering results on paper, but something was breaking down after the phone rang or the form got filled out. So, I started digging into the legal tech space — trying to understand what tools law firms were using, and just as importantly, which ones they were buying and never using.

That’s what got me deeper into the technology side of things — figuring out how law firms manage their intake, what happens between a lead coming in and a client signing on, and how to bridge that gap.

Nick: That’s so interesting. I actually got into SEO a little after you did, and I remember feeling so proud of myself — like I’d found this cool new career that mixed technical skills with writing. I’ve always loved writing. I wanted to be a creative writer when I was younger — but then you realize we live in a world where you have to make money, so you find a way to turn that creativity into a 40-hour-a-week job.

I remember telling my brother-in-law about my new job. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met — insanely high processing power. I’m sitting at dinner with him, all excited, and I tell him, “Hey, I’m doing this thing called SEO — have you heard of it?” And he goes, “Oh yeah, I did that in college for for-profit colleges. It was a total hack.”

Completely deflated me. Inside, I was so resentful — like, “Wait, this thing I’m proud of is just a scam?” But eventually, I learned what you were saying — not all SEO is created equal.

Just yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine who’s starting a business. He’s a sports writer and is hiring a bunch of writers to launch a new network. He was venting about someone at his old agency who bragged about writing 40 articles a day — or maybe it was a week, either way it’s ridiculous — using AI. Nobody caught on, and it tanked their site’s reputation.

So I came up with a rule for him — and for anyone doing SEO, really: If a high school teacher would consider it cheating, don’t do it for SEO.

That’s my rule of thumb. Anything that would get you in trouble in school — plagiarism, shortcuts, cutting corners — it’s not sustainable.

Robert: That’s a really good rule to have — and honestly, it kind of sums up why we can’t have nice things in this industry.

Keyword stuffing, for example, used to work incredibly well. It was always against the guidelines, even back then, but people did it because it got results and made them money. And for a while, they got away with it. But eventually, the algorithm catches up, or the market does.

It’s only a matter of time before the shortcuts stop working. That’s something I’ve found over and over again in my career — if you focus on doing things the right way, your results last longer.

It might take more time, and it might not be as flashy, but it’s sustainable. You build real authority, not just temporary rankings.

Nick: Exactly. You look around and see so many people doing the wrong thing and somehow getting away with it — at least for a while. But like you said, it always catches up eventually.

Anyway, we could probably go down a full philosophical rabbit hole there — and we probably will later — but let’s shift gears.

Because you’re such a technology-focused person, and this is something I’ve really been trying to get more into myself. When we last spoke, I got to nerd out with you about tech, which was a lot of fun.

So I want to talk about law firms specifically. I’ve noticed this same pattern you mentioned — marketing agencies delivering all these leads, beautiful reports, charts going up and to the right — and then the firm says, “We’re not converting.”

So how do law firms actually embrace technology in a way that impacts their bottom line? Because a lot of them immediately think, I need better marketing, more keywords, more ads, more spend. But what they really need is something deeper, right?

Robert: Yeah, exactly. I think what ends up happening a lot of the time is that law firms just buy a lot of technology — period.

They either think they have a problem to solve, or they don’t even realize there’s a problem and just see a demo of something cool. They buy it because it looks impressive, and then it just sits there unused.

They’re not thinking strategically — Why are we buying this? What purpose does it serve? How does it fit into our current process, and how might it shape the way we work tomorrow?

It’s almost like Pokémon cards. They want to collect them all. There’s this mindset of, “The more tech we have, the more efficient we’ll be.” But that’s just not how it works.

What I see most often is firms with a ton of tools they barely touch. They’re not connecting them, not standardizing how they’re used, and not thinking about who’s actually responsible for them. So instead of becoming more efficient, they just create more confusion.

Robert: The other big thing I notice is that firms don’t think strategically about what needs to come first when they adopt new tools.

I talk a lot about people, process, technology — and it has to be in that order.

Because what you don’t get if you just buy the technology is the person who’s actually responsible for using it or overseeing it. And you don’t get the process that sits on top of that technology — the workflow that makes sure it’s being used correctly.

That’s why legal technology is such a hot space right now. A lot of products are marketed as if they can just replace those missing pieces. The pitch is usually, “We built the thing for you, it’ll just work.” But when firms actually implement it, they realize, “Oh, wait — no, it doesn’t just do that.”

You still need to know where to click, how to integrate the tool, how it fits with your web forms, your chat, your answering service — all of it.

So many people approach technology backwards. They think, “I’ll buy the technology, I’ll become more efficient, and then I’ll make more money.” But that mindset is completely reversed.

You need to start with people, then define your process, and only then bring in the technology that supports them both.

Nick: So take me forward on that — people, process, technology.

I’m guessing you deal with two kinds of firms all the time. The first group comes to you and says, “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I want to get better at people, process, technology.”

And then the second group says, “I already bought all this technology, but no one’s using it and I need help fixing it.”

How do you approach each of those situations?

Robert: The first thing I always do is an audit — I call it a People, Process, and Technology Audit, or PPT for short.

Because in either of those situations — whether you don’t know where to start, or you’ve already bought too much — it surfaces a lot of holes.

I’ll sit down and start with really basic questions. Like, “What do you call someone who fills out a form on your website?”

Usually, they’ll say, “Oh, that’s a PNC — a potential new client.”

Then I’ll ask, “Okay, what do you call a PNC who’s qualified — someone actually looking for a service you offer?” And they’ll say, “That’s also a PNC.”

Then I’ll ask, “What do you call a PNC who’s had a consultation with an attorney and the attorney decides they want to retain them?” And they’ll go, “That’s still a PNC.”

So just by asking those kinds of questions, we start to uncover issues. If you’re using the same label for every stage, that’s too broad — it makes your data hard to work with.

And it’s not just about the tech. If you’re talking internally with your marketing team or a vendor, and someone says, “How many PNCs did we get?” — what does that even mean? Are we talking about leads, conversions, prospects? Everyone’s speaking a different language.

That’s why it’s so important to define those terms and write them down. You need everyone — your team, your vendors, your tech — all speaking the same language. Because if you’re not aligned internally, you’re not going to get clean data externally.

And the kicker is, even the software you buy is going to have its own naming conventions. So if you call something a “lead,” but your CRM calls it a “deal,” or “contact,” or “prospect,” things start to get messy fast.

When I do an audit, we map all that out. Once you define your terms, you can even change the names inside your technology so it matches your internal language. That’s when everything starts to click.

Then we figure out who’s responsible. If you have a CRM, who’s in charge of maintaining it? Who ensures the data is accurate and actionable?

Most firms don’t have an answer to that. You look at their org chart, and there’s no one accountable. Sometimes two or three people sort of “share” the job, which means no one really owns it. It’s like that Spider-Man meme — everyone’s just pointing at each other.

So yeah, the audit is always the first step. Map it, define it, assign it. That’s how you start turning technology into something useful instead of just another tool collecting dust.

Nick: It’s so true — every organization seems to have its own language.

We actually did an episode of one of our other podcasts about this exact topic — naming conventions. I always thought it was totally normal to call a form fill a “conversion.” That was just second nature to me.

Then I’d be on a call with a vendor or someone outside our company and I’d say, “Yeah, conversions on the site look great this month,” and they’d go, “Wait, what are conversions?”

Good question, right?

And then, inside our own system, when a conversion hits the CRM, we call it a “lead.” And then it moves into “new prospect.” Then it becomes a “qualified lead.” And from there it’s split between how our salespeople and account executives work them.

It’s so easy for that to become a mess if you’re not clear about definitions.

Actually, I made a big mistake the other day because of something like this — and it’s a perfect example of what you’re talking about.

So here’s what I did — and I’m only sharing this so that no one else ever repeats it.

We recently added a new property in our CRM. I put it on a web form so people could select which services they were interested in — just like a law firm might have checkboxes for “personal injury” or “criminal defense.”

Everything was fine, but I wanted to retroactively fill in that property for everyone who had filled out a form before the change. So I thought, “No big deal — I’ll just re-enroll them in the workflow so it updates those records.”

What I didn’t realize was that re-enrolling them triggered the entire automation sequence again. I hit “reenroll” on over 3,000 records — and it created 3,000 brand-new deals in my pipeline.

Doesn’t sound so bad, right? I figured I’d just delete the extra deals. But it was worse than that — it also updated every one of their lifecycle stages.

So now, all my contacts, deals, and reporting were completely scrambled. I had people getting automated emails, my Slack notifications were blowing up, and everyone in the office was like, “What just happened?”

It was chaos. But I learned my lesson: never touch workflows without double-checking what the end result will be — and always back up your data first.

Robert: Oh man — yeah, that’s a classic. And it’s one of those things you only have to do once to learn the hard way.

What probably happened there is that your workflow was connected to multiple objects — contacts, deals, lifecycle stages — so when you re-enrolled those records, every related field got triggered again.

Those relationships in HubSpot are powerful, but they can be dangerous if you don’t understand how deep they go.

I’ve done stuff like that too. I’ve built really elaborate workflows to automate as much as possible — create a contact when a call comes in, update the stage when a deal moves forward, all that. And then one wrong checkbox or timing rule and the whole thing blows up.

Sometimes, the simpler solution is the better one. Instead of trying to have the system do everything automatically, it’s okay to have someone on your team manually add a new contact or fill out a form when they take a call. Then you can go back and sync or map the data later once you know it’s clean.

Automation is amazing, but it’s only as smart as the logic you give it. And one missing condition can cause total chaos.

So yeah — double-check your workflow settings, and whenever possible, make a copy or a backup before you change anything that touches lifecycle stages. It’ll save you a weekend of cleanup.

Nick: Yeah, lesson learned for sure. But honestly, that’s one of the things I actually love about HubSpot — even when you break something, you can almost always fix it.

What’s so cool about it is how flexible it is. As long as you’re using it consistently and putting the right information in the right places, you can retroactively fix almost anything with workflows or property updates.

Like in that example — I created a new property after the fact. In HubSpot, I can automatically fill that field based on an action someone took in the past. Or I can create rules that update multiple records whenever something changes.

It’s so adaptable. You can build custom fields, automate repetitive stuff, and even rework entire processes without having to start over.

And there’s this one specific problem I had that I think you’ll appreciate — because it’s exactly the kind of thing you talk about all the time when it comes to law firm tech and marketing.

So here’s a cool one I think you’ll appreciate.

A few years back, when we were still a much smaller company, I used to handle all the partnership inquiries that came in. One day, this marketing guy reaches out saying he wants to partner with us—he’ll send us his law-firm clients who need answering services, and in return, we’ll give him visibility into their accounts so he can help them fine-tune their intake.

Sounded great in theory. I asked him how many clients he had, and he said, “One.” That should’ve been a red flag right there. But he quickly grew to four or five clients, set up call-tracking for them, and started sending them our way.

Then, a few weeks later, he starts calling our support line furious—yelling that we’re double-billing everyone and overcharging. He’d pulled the numbers from his call-tracking software and thought we’d tripled his volume.

Turns out, he was reporting on unique phone calls, not total call volume. So he told all his clients to fire us based on completely wrong data.

That experience stuck with me because we still run into the same problem today—marketing agencies and law firms trying to treat every phone call as a “matter” in their systems. But that doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s a returning client or a wrong number, and then you have to clean it all up manually.

So I started working on a fix. I asked our developer to build an API connection between our call-tracking platform and HubSpot. We already had an integration where, when a call comes in and our answering service takes a message, it creates a deal in HubSpot. But that didn’t include the call-tracking metrics.

Now, with this new API, when a tracking number gets a call, HubSpot automatically looks up the phone number and updates the record with all the tracking data—without creating duplicates. It works perfectly.

It solved a massive headache for us and for our marketing partners. No more manual updates, no more mismatched metrics. Everything syncs automatically.

Robert: That’s awesome, man. Seriously — that’s one of those elegant solutions you’ve got to celebrate.

Sometimes it’s not even about solving a massive, world-ending problem. It’s those small, annoying issues you’ve been living with for years — the ones where you’ve just accepted, “Yeah, that’s how it is.” And then suddenly, you find a way to automate or simplify it, and everything runs smoother. That’s a win.

Technology always makes it look like everything’s easy — but it’s not. Even in the age of AI, there’s no “easy button.” It still takes strategy, discipline, and usually an engineer or developer (or a few of them) to make everything connect the right way.

And sometimes, the simpler approach is actually the better one. You don’t always need to build some hyper-complicated automation or ten-step workflow. A simple form submission or manual data entry can often do the trick — especially when it keeps your system cleaner and your data more reliable.

So yeah, props to you for that integration. That’s the kind of thoughtful, process-driven fix that saves teams hours every week — and usually prevents someone from breaking something bigger down the line.

Nick: laughs Thanks, man. I definitely felt proud of that one. It’s funny though — whenever we talk, I end up nerding out with you about this stuff, and then I completely forget the outline I had planned.

I actually had a whole agenda written out for this episode, but when I know the person and the conversation’s this good, it all just goes out the window.

So, I want to jump into HubSpot specifically. You already know I use it — I love it. And I can totally nerd out with you about it because every time I log in, there’s something new you can do.

There’s so much technology out there for law firms, so many CRMs to choose from. But I want to talk to you as my HubSpot guy. Why is HubSpot so valuable for growing law practices? What makes it worth considering — and ultimately using — as part of a firm’s daily operation?

Robert: First off, kudos to you — because you’re actually using your CRM. That’s the key. I don’t even care which one people use — HubSpot, Clio Grow, Lawmatics, whatever — just use it.

That’s the biggest hurdle for most firms. They buy the system, but they never fully adopt it.

I always tell people this story: years ago, I took Aikido lessons. My sensei said the hardest part of Aikido isn’t the throws or the techniques — it’s walking through the front door. And that’s how I feel about CRMs. The hardest part is just starting to use it.

Now, why HubSpot specifically? Because I’ve been able to get law firms to actually adopt it more successfully than any other CRM I’ve ever worked with.

At my old agency, we didn’t even care which CRM a firm used. We’d just adapt to whatever they had. I’d spend hours inside different systems — customizing fields, cleaning up data, setting up integrations — to make sure the information we needed as a marketing agency was being tracked properly.

But you know what? It never changed behavior. I could build the most beautiful CRM portal in the world — completely tailored to their process — and the intake team still wouldn’t use it.

Then I started building full systems around HubSpot. Not just the tool itself, but a framework for how firms could implement it step by step. And that’s when I started seeing adoption.

HubSpot has the flexibility to replace a lot of other tools firms are juggling — marketing automation, email campaigns, sales pipelines, even reporting dashboards. It’s powerful enough to centralize everything, but still intuitive enough that teams actually use it day to day.

One of the things I love about HubSpot is that it’s modular — it’s built around different “hubs,” and each one serves a unique purpose.

You’ve got the Marketing Hub, which lets you run campaigns, automate emails, build landing pages, and even push custom conversion data back into Google Ads so your ad algorithm gets smarter. It’s great for anyone running lead generation.

Then there’s the Sales Hub, and that’s the one I think most law firms completely overlook. To me, that’s where the magic happens.

The Sales Hub is your intake side — it’s where the leads become conversations and the conversations turn into clients. You can track every interaction, automate follow-ups, assign tasks, and even measure response times. It’s built to make sure no potential client falls through the cracks.

And the beauty of HubSpot is that I haven’t hit a ceiling with it yet. Every time a law firm comes to me with a unique workflow or problem, I’ve always been able to configure HubSpot to make it work — either natively or with a simple integration.

With other CRMs, I’d often hit limits. Some of them are great at managing cases or tracking pipelines, but when it comes to reporting or marketing attribution, you end up having to export everything to Excel or Google Sheets just to make sense of it. HubSpot gives you all of that out of the box.

It even has its own tracking pixel, so it automatically collects marketing attribution data — where your leads came from, what pages they viewed, how they engaged with your content — without needing a third-party tool.

That’s what makes it so valuable for law firms trying to grow. It’s not just storing data — it’s actively helping you understand it.

Another big advantage with HubSpot is its reporting. Honestly, I don’t even set up Google Analytics 4 anymore.

When Universal Analytics was retired and everyone had to migrate to GA4, it was a nightmare — and even now, I don’t think GA4 has caught up to what the old version could do. HubSpot’s reporting tools have become my go-to because they’re cleaner, more customizable, and everything is already tied to real business outcomes.

When I build out a HubSpot portal for a firm, I usually create around 40 or 50 custom reports. They cover everything a law firm needs to see: lead sources, conversion rates, average response time, cost per qualified lead, you name it.

And that’s where the real value is — because once you’re using the CRM consistently, your data becomes accurate and actionable.

Then we can start having intelligent conversations like, “Your speed-to-lead is four days — that’s way too long,” or “You’re following up only once instead of three times.”

If you can fix those bottlenecks and double your conversion rate from 5% to 10%, that’s massive. You don’t need to spend more on marketing — you just need to better use the leads you already have.

That’s what I love about HubSpot. It gives firms the visibility to make smart business decisions instead of emotional ones. The data tells the story.

The other challenge I see a lot with law firms is that they try to shoot the moon with technology.

They’ll buy HubSpot — or any big, powerful platform — and immediately want to use every single feature, every automation, every bell and whistle, all at once.

But when you do that, you just end up spinning your wheels. It’s too much too fast. The team doesn’t understand what’s happening, workflows overlap, and suddenly nobody’s confident about how anything works.

So now, when I work with firms, I take the opposite approach. I start with the basics — the minimum viable setup that actually makes sense for how their firm operates today.

That usually means:

• The right custom properties in place,
• A clean, simple pipeline,
• A few key workflows to automate the boring but important stuff, like lifecycle updates or email notifications.

We automate just enough to make things efficient and keep the data accurate, but not so much that people lose touch with what’s happening.

Then, once the firm is using it regularly and the team understands it, that’s when we start layering on more complexity — new automations, integrations, advanced reporting.

It’s the crawl-walk-run approach. Too many firms try to sprint right out of the gate, and that’s when they get frustrated and abandon the technology altogether.

Nick: That’s exactly how we did it here. When we first got HubSpot, we didn’t build the whole thing at once. We had no idea what we really needed yet.

We just started using it — capturing leads, tracking deals, sending emails — and then as we ran into walls, we’d go, “Okay, now we need to automate this part.”

It’s like the system evolves with you. Every time we hit a bottleneck, we’d add a workflow, or create a new property, or change how we handled a process.

What’s amazing is that HubSpot actually lets you do that. You don’t have to rebuild the foundation every time you improve something. You can layer new logic and automations on top of what’s already working.

And like you said — as long as you’re putting the right information in the right place and using it consistently, you can fix anything retroactively. You can look back, find what needs cleaning up, and build automation to fix it moving forward.

That flexibility has been huge for us. It’s not just a CRM — it’s a living, evolving system that grows with our company.

You know, all this talk about flexibility and accurate data reminds me of one of the most painful — but educational — experiences I’ve had in this business.

Years ago, when we were still much smaller, I was handling all the partnership inquiries myself. I got a call from this marketing guy who said he wanted to partner with us. His pitch was that he’d send us his law firm clients who needed phone answering, and in return, we’d give him visibility into how those accounts were performing so he could help them optimize intake.

Sounded great at the time. I asked how many clients he had, and he said, “One.” That should’ve been my first red flag. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and sure enough, he grew to four or five clients pretty quickly. He set up call tracking for all of them and started sending them to us.

A few weeks later, out of nowhere, he starts blowing up our support line. Absolutely furious. Accusing us of double billing, saying we were charging him three times what we said we would. He was calling everyone — our team, our management — demanding refunds.

I looked into it, and it turned out he’d been looking at unique call volume in his call-tracking reports, not total call volume. So his numbers looked completely off. He thought we were overbilling, when really he was just reading his own data wrong.

And before he even realized the mistake, he told all of his clients to cancel with us. It was brutal. But it taught me an important lesson: if your reporting isn’t accurate, it doesn’t matter how good your marketing or intake is — everything falls apart.

That’s what makes integrations like HubSpot so valuable. They keep all the information centralized and consistent, so you’re not pulling one number from your ad platform, another from your call tracker, and another from your CRM. You’re looking at the same data story across the board.

Robert: That’s such a great story, and I love that you were able to turn it into something useful. Because that’s the reality of working with technology — it’s not just about tools, it’s about discipline.

And honestly, when you find an elegant solution to a problem like that, you’ve got to celebrate it. It doesn’t have to be some huge, earth-shattering fix. It’s usually those small, persistent pain points — the stuff you’ve just accepted as “that’s how it is” — that make the biggest difference when you finally solve them.

Technology makes it look like everything’s easy, but it never really is. Even now, with AI everywhere, there’s no “easy button.” It still takes strategy, patience, and usually at least one developer who understands what you’re trying to do.

And I’ll tell you what — sometimes the simpler answer is the smarter one. You don’t need ten automations for every problem. Sometimes it’s cleaner to just have someone manually add a contact or type in a field. It keeps your data accurate and your system under control.

That’s why I always encourage my clients to slow down, get the process right, and really understand how their technology works before they start automating everything. You’ll save yourself a ton of headaches that way.

Nick: That’s exactly how I look at it. I’ve definitely broken things in HubSpot before — badly — but one of the reasons I love the platform is that you can always fix it.

I actually thought about you when I messed up our CRM the other day. I commented on your LinkedIn post about it — I was half venting, half laughing at myself. Emails went out to people who shouldn’t have gotten them, lifecycle stages got reset, my team’s Slack was blowing up. It was chaos.

But then I looked at the sign behind you in your office — that one that says “Everything Is Figureoutable.” That stuck with me. I was like, “Okay, this is fixable. We’ll figure it out.”

And that’s what we did.

It’s kind of sentimental, but it’s true — that mindset keeps you calm when you’re managing complex systems. You can’t panic every time something breaks. You just take a breath, look at the data, and start untangling the mess.

For me, that’s one of the reasons I love HubSpot so much. It’s forgiving. You can experiment, make mistakes, and then correct them. And as long as you’re consistent, it always balances out.

Robert: laughs I love that — and I’m glad that phrase stuck with you. That’s actually the title of a book I really like, Everything Is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo. It’s kind of a mindset I try to live by.

But yeah, as much as things are figureoutable, it definitely helps to take a few precautions before you start tinkering.

Number one — always back up your data before making workflow changes. Most CRMs have some kind of export or snapshot feature. Use it. Especially when you’re about to re-enroll records or touch lifecycle stages. That’s where people get burned the most.

And number two — be mindful of permissions. Don’t give everyone in your firm full admin access. I see that mistake constantly. A law firm will tell me, “Oh, it’s fine, everyone’s a super admin.” And then they wonder why someone accidentally deleted a workflow or broke a sequence.

Dial in your user roles. Your intake team doesn’t need to see every email or every automation. They just need access to the tools that help them do their job.

Also, having too many people with high-level access isn’t just risky from a workflow perspective — it’s risky from a security one too. You’d be shocked how many firms still send passwords over email. I tell people all the time, “Just assume everyone can read your emails.”

Lock things down, back things up, and have one or two super admins who actually understand the system. That’s all you need.

Nick: That’s such good advice. And yeah — guilty as charged. I’m one of maybe two people at our company with super admin access. So when something breaks, there’s no hiding it. I can’t even say, “Wasn’t me.”

When that workflow disaster happened, I just owned it. Accountability, right? If you’re the one who’s trusted with the keys, you’ve got to take responsibility when you crash the car.

And you’re absolutely right — not everyone needs admin access. With great power comes great responsibility.

If you’re a law firm owner or a marketing manager, and you’ve got people in the system who don’t really know what they’re doing, you’re just inviting chaos. You can cause so much damage with one misclick.

So yeah — restrict access, and make sure the people who do have it know exactly what every workflow, property, and lifecycle stage actually does. It’s not just about data management. It’s about protecting the integrity of your firm’s entire process.

Robert: Exactly. And it’s such an overlooked part of the conversation when firms talk about technology. Everyone wants to talk about automations, integrations, dashboards — the flashy stuff. But user permissions and access control are what keep the whole thing from collapsing.

When you’re a small team, it might not seem like a big deal. You trust everyone, you want them to be able to help, and giving everyone full access feels easier in the moment. But when you start scaling, that approach becomes a nightmare.

You’ll have people overwriting fields, deleting contacts, turning workflows on and off — not because they’re malicious, just because they don’t know what everything touches.

So, as you grow, you’ve got to start thinking like a systems architect. You want clearly defined roles. The intake team should only see intake data. Marketing should only touch lead sources and campaign tracking. The admin should be the only one who can publish or edit workflows.

That’s how you protect the system, keep your data clean, and make sure the tech is working for you — not against you.

And it’s funny, because the firms that take that seriously are always the ones that scale the fastest. Once your systems are structured properly, you can onboard new people, plug them into defined roles, and the whole machine just hums along.

Nick: laughs Yeah, it really is like that Spider-Man meme — everyone pointing at each other. “You got it, right?” “No, I thought you had it.”

And when nobody really owns the system, everything falls apart.

But when you set it up the way you’re describing — with clearly defined roles, solid processes, and the right technology layered on top — it’s amazing how much smoother everything runs.

So before we wrap up the tech talk, I want to pivot a bit. For anyone out there listening who’s hearing all this and thinking, “Okay, I clearly need Robert in my life,” can you talk about what you actually do for law firms?

What kinds of consulting or implementation services do you offer, and how do you typically work with your clients?

Robert: Yeah, absolutely. So I usually work with firms in one of two ways — project-based or ongoing.

It typically starts with a project, like a HubSpot implementation or a People, Process, and Technology audit. That’s where we do all the groundwork — getting the CRM set up properly, cleaning up data, defining processes, mapping out roles, and putting the systems in place so everything runs smoothly.

Then, from there, I offer what I call fractional CTO or tech-ops consulting — basically acting as an outsourced head of technology operations for the firm.

I’ll meet with the team weekly, monthly, or quarterly, depending on what they need. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s not, what bottlenecks they’re running into, and what new tools or automations might help.

It’s a mix of strategy and execution. We’ll keep a running list of issues and opportunities — things we want to fix, test, or improve. Some of them I’ll handle directly; others I’ll coach their team through.

And for firms that want a more hands-on relationship, I can even embed with them — join their Slack channels, act as part of their team, and handle their tech roadmap start to finish.

The idea is to give firms access to real technology leadership without having to hire a full-time CTO. You get that expertise and strategic direction, but it’s scaled to your firm’s size and budget.

Nick: That’s awesome. And for anyone listening who’s interested in working with you — or just wants to learn more — where should they go? How can they get in touch with you?

Robert: Hopefully I’m easy to find — if not, I’m doing something wrong.

You can visit elevamp.com. There’s a contact form there if you just want to reach out, or you can book a discovery call directly on my calendar — it’s powered by HubSpot, of course.

If you’re curious about whether your firm would be a good fit, there’s even a short “Am I a Fit?” form that walks you through a few questions. All of it comes straight to me.

I’m also really active on LinkedIn, so that’s another great way to connect. Feel free to message me there — I love talking about legal technology, CRMs, and intake systems.

Nick: Perfect. Well, Robert, thank you so much for joining me today — this was an awesome conversation.

And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed this episode and picked up some useful insights on how to better leverage technology inside your law firm.

We’ll be back soon with another episode of Everything Except the Law. In the meantime, you can catch up on past episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on the Answering Legal YouTube channel.

Links to everything we talked about today — including Robert’s website, his LinkedIn, and all the resources we mentioned — can be found in the description of this episode, wherever you’re watching or listening.

And if you are watching this on YouTube… yeah, I know — I need a haircut. laughs

See you next time, everyone.