Chris Dreyer:
Most law firm owners believe growth stalls because they need more leads, but once a qualified prospect reaches out, signing that case comes down entirely to execution. Intake is where marketing becomes revenue. Move your conversion rate just a few points and you can add millions in revenue without buying one additional lead.
In this episode, we're diving deep into the core operational mechanics of high-converting intake operations, including how to sign 50% more cases without spending another dollar on marketing. Why, "We answer every call," could just be an expensive myth in your firm, and how to keep your signed cases from walking. If you want all this information in one place, then you're in luck. We put together a comprehensive resource just for PI firms called Personal Injury Intake Optimization Guide. It breaks down the exact response time standards, call flows, staffing ratios, and follow-up cadence to the top PI operations used to turn qualified leads into signed clients.
You can access the complete guide right now via the link in the show notes. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite law firms specializing in personal injury. We help firms sign more auto accident and truck accident cases. Let's get into it.
Why do so many firms think that they have a marketing problem when they have, really, an intake problem? I think the focus is always on the front end, and that's the metric that's easy to evaluate, is how many form submissions there are, how many leads are coming through the front door. But really, there's a lot of opportunity. I wouldn't say that it's an either/or. I just think that a lot of times most personal injury firms, their biggest constraint is intake. It's what influences everything. You can have an abundance of leads, but if you don't have a strong intake, then you're not going to convert, you're not going to have the opportunity to help these clients. And what I see is the basic metrics on the front end, cost per lead, your CAC, those are readily available. You even have your analytics, your UTM codes, your call rail, all those things. You're probably CC'd on the emails and have a feeling.
I got an email from a client about a feeling of leads were down the other day as opposed to objective view, right? Because sometimes what happens is the opportunity cost of focusing on marketing is less. Your focus should be less there, and there's much more opportunity on the sales side. And I'll explain. If you're getting an abundance of leads, but your wanted conversion is 60%, imagine if you got your conversion rate up to a 90 percentile. You just essentially got 50% more business. And that could be significant, as opposed to trying to get 50% more leads, and it's already on the table, and that's all you have to do.
Now there's a lot of scenarios and things that go into this. If you're a high-volume firm, you're pretty much signing everything. And so your wanted conversion rate and your signup rate is very high, as opposed to if you do a little bit more front end evaluation, maybe you're a medical malpractice firm, or maybe you're just a litigating firm that you don't want quote-unquote soft tissue cases, then you're going to have less, and your criteria is going to be different, and your drop rates are going to be different.
But we'll go down that rabbit hole. It's just one of these things that it falls kind of in the murky middle, where everyone knows the importance of getting leads on the front end. They know that their abilities as a lawyer and what average fees are and how they can influence that. And it's this middle area that's forgotten about.
There are a lot of KPIs that you can track when it comes to marketing, when it comes to sales. The number one metric to look at is wanted case conversion. Of the cases that you want, what percentage are you converting? And a benchmark is in the 90 percentile. Some people say 90%, some people say 92%, and those are the ones that you want. So even if you're a medical malpractice firm that you get a hundred leads and you only want two, you still want those two. If you're an auto accident firm and you get a hundred leads, and maybe you want 50 of them, I don't know, maybe you want 80 of them, who knows? But that's your wanted percentage. That wanted percentage is still going to be incredibly high, and the 90 percentile is a good benchmark. Then everything changes after. You get to evaluate the cases, you get to see if they have coverage, to see if they're at fault, and all these things.
But in general, if you're ... And I like to use examples for auto accidents because that's where the volume is, you need to be in that 90 to 92 percentile. And nearly every single third party, so if you're listening, and I think there's some great vendors, but there's a lot of reasons why they can't hit the 90 percentile in the third party. Nearly every single one of them, when you go to hire these firms, ask them what their wanted conversion is, and they'll have that. And it's very rare that they're in the 90 percentile.
Now, do I think you should still use them? Yes, because of overflow, because of nights and weekends, because of needing to increase and decrease capacity. So there's a lot of reasons to still use them, because even an 80 percentile is better than zero, and return call the next day.
Having said that, the majority of your intake should be in-house. This is the one avenue ... Look, I'm a big proponent of using strategic partners in many areas, but from what I've seen, the absolute most important thing to keep in-house, and I would say that many of the most successful PI firms would agree with me here, is intake. Keeping your intake operation in-house gives you full control over your wanted case conversion. In order to optimize the chances of getting the cases you want, you got to move quickly. In personal injury, the fastest firm to respond is almost always the firm that signs the case. Let's look at the exact response time standards and outbound rules you need to enforce.
So the one thing that you can do to improve your intake is to focus on speed. What does that mean? The first thing is how quickly you answer the phone on an inbound call. That's less than 20 seconds, less than that ... You don't want it to ring four times. Within the first three rings is ideal. Technically, within the first couple rings. I know that AI can pick up quicker and things like that, but then you have issues with the conversions and individuals currently not wanting to talk to AI. We've seen it. Again, backup, great. Chase, great, but not as your sole first impression. Harlan Schillinger talks about the director of first impressions. That's what you have on the first initial call, is your first impressions.
The other thing where speed matters is on your chase. What I mean by that is when a contact forms is submitted, or you've got a DEM on a social media property, or a number of channel conversion points, if you can get back to them in under two minutes, and under two minutes is a target. Obviously, if you can get them under a minute, that's even better.
If you ask ChatGPT right now, it's going to tell you in under five minutes. I can tell you today, that is not quick enough. There's too much competition. And even with all the brand recognition, the brand may give you the opportunity to get the first call, but I promise you there's not a lot of loyalty here, because many of these individuals have never been in a personal injury situation. They don't even know how to measure the competency of a personal injury attorney. So if you don't answer and get back to them quickly, they're going to call the next person. That's why also, on the nights and weekends, you can't wait around till Monday. You got to get back to them. That rule applies, that less than two minutes applies at late at night, on the weekends, on a Sunday. It doesn't matter. On a holiday, it doesn't matter. You got to get back to them.
I'll take it a step further on the speed to lead and the missed calls and all this. Google just announced that local services ads are going to start charging for missed calls. Most of you are like, "Ugh, sure." I say, "Good, good." You know why? That forces you to be better. You shouldn't be missing calls anyways. So now you get penalized, and so that forces you to be better. That forces you to make money. And that's the name of the game. Speed, the quicker, the better. It's really going to impact your bottom line, and I'm all for it.
So the question is, how long should a firm continue to chase a lead? Many of our firms, even the biggest firms, we had a situation where they would call back a few times, only a few times. And it's absolutely wild to me that the cost per lead is so incredibly high. Your CAC across the nation is $3,000. You only call them back two times? You don't want to bother them? You don't want to double dial? The bare minimum is a 14-day cadence of follow-up. That's the industry ... I hate using industry standard. No one wants to be the Genero version. You want to set the standard. But the industry standard is 14 days, and the first few days is very heavy. Pretext, emails, calls multiple times that day. Then it starts to taper off when you get to the 14th day, because each subsequent day you have a less conversion opportunity.
But let me take this a step further. That 14-day standard was pre-AI. You know what AI is great at? Chasing forever and at low cost. You know why you only chase for 14 days? Because your labor costs. Because they have to go answer inbound calls, and the incremental gains isn't there on the labor side, but AI it is. AI can chase them, and it has the context stored in the CRM. It can chase them. Now, you got to be careful with the SOLs, the statutes and all that, and you don't want to take a case too far out, but months, that's what you should be looking at. Because what if someone, they're like, "Ah, I'm not hurt." And then they get hurt, they start getting some pain three months from now and they haven't talked to the insurance company, or maybe they're just busy and it's not a priority.
Look, I am one of those guys. I'm practically on my deathbed before I go to the hospital. I just don't want to go. And I'm like, "Maybe it'll get better. Maybe I'll just take a couple more ibuprofen." And this is the scenario where AI is absolutely beneficial from an overflow perspective and from a chase perspective.
So what's one of the common things that I hear is, "Oh, we answer every single call. It goes in a phone tree. It goes to the first attorney and it rings for four times. And then it goes to the next person, it rings for four ... Then it goes to the paralegal." Every single call is answered because it bing, bong, bing, bongs. Guess what? I'm the consumer? I'm gone, baby. I'm out of here. See you later. I am going to the next firm. And no one likes to be on hold. It drives me absolute bananas. You put your speakerphone on, and you got the music, and the ping pong. Nobody is going to do that. And so that's a false assumption that goes back to speed to lead, where you need to ... Speed to lead is they need to talk to someone within 30 seconds.
That's another issue with third-party intake. "Oh, it goes to our third party after the third or fourth ring." Guess what? Your conversion percentage just dropped significantly after that third or fourth ring, because especially when there's that delay, maybe the consumer thinks it's going to a voicemail, they don't really know what's happening and, "Hey, thank you for calling." Or maybe do the double intake, and a lot of times you have to repeat the information when you get transferred around on the initial phone tree if you're an existing or a new client. So it's just a really bad experience, and that's where the one call, that's all, plays. People don't want friction. They want friction eliminated. The one call, easy, that's it. That's all you have to deal with. One individual is going to help you. That's it. I talk about the value equation a lot. That's on the denominator. Decreased effort and sacrifice on the consumer side is a positive. It is more value.
Removing friction before the lead signs is critical, but what happens immediately after they say yes? Many firms lose qualified cases between the initial agreement and the actual onboarding, especially over weekends, because no one maintains momentum or counters any buyer's remorse. Once the prospects explain their situation, you've sent ... Let's take it a step further. You've pre-qualified, maybe you've even sent the e-sign out to sign up the engagement, to sign up the new prospect. Now, there is still an evaluation period, and there's different names people call this period, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's over. That just means that it's begun, honestly. Because until you really get involved, they could go sign up with someone else. That happens all the time.
You hear about dual reps. On the mass tort side, it's very common. Promise you it happens on the auto side, too. It's where, yeah, they don't really remember, they didn't really understand the process, and nobody told them what steps were next, and they have a sense of urgency here. Their car's broken. They need money for ... They're out of work, and all these scenarios. They have a sense of urgency.
And I would say the biggest issue here that I see or I've seen from our clients is they'll do a phenomenal intake on a Friday night or a Saturday night, but the attorney or the case manager isn't introduced until Monday. The point of contact needs to be introduced immediately after the signup, to set expectations, to talk about when they're going to be communicated next, to give them their cell phone number, to answer all their questions, and just to establish and set expectations to counter any buyer's remorse as well. Do you think that particular activating system is activated? Now they see personal injury billboards everywhere. They see them on TV, they hear them on the radio. "Oh, maybe I signed up with the wrong attorney." Versus, "Oh, I'm in good hands. I really know what's going on. This process, I get it."
There's a lot of debate on scripts versus what I would call frameworks. And I think that scripts are very rigid. From what I see, when it's just a strict script, it loses kind of on the empathy side. You need the ability to deviate and go the direction where the consumer wants to go. It's about them, their pains, their situation.
And that's why I like a framework. You need to ask these specific questions. You need to have your value props ready for conversion, but it's a framework where you can jump around. Now, if it's just a pure intake and you can go down the list, one, two, three, four, five, but sometimes you will jump around. They'll talk about their injury, their treatment, their car, and you need to be helpful. So I would say have a script that you can study, and become accustomed to how to answer calls. I would also say that it depends on the volume, the type of practice you are. If you're a massive volume and you just need to just do the intake, maybe there's certain ... We'll go to mass torts not on the auto where, look, they don't even qualify unless you hit these particular questions, versus a boutique that really needs to understand what happened. It's a weird scenario. They fell down some stairs. Was it out of code? Do I need to send an investigator? Do they have this rare situation with the hospital?
So it depends, but in general, I'm a fan of frameworks, not scripts. One of my favorite questions or general rules is in regards to the staffing of a personal injury firm. In general, and I did this, I was in Lake Tahoe. I had a massive firm tell me the size of their intake department, and then I did back of the napkin math and I said, "Oh, so you get about X amount of leads." They went and looked it up and it was pretty dead on.
So this is for auto, this is for auto, guys. One intake specialist per 150 leads. You got 300 leads, you need a couple. And this gives you some general guard rules, like a general rule for hiring and staffing. Now you need to look at the metrics. Obviously, as you get bigger, you've got roles like workforce management, and I know some of your tools have workforce management, but when you're small, you can't hire these leveraged roles. You just don't have enough bodies to get the value out of hiring a full-time person for that. So you need these general rules. It's another thing. I'll tell you another general rule, just as an example. In a professional services organization, typically the rule is one employee per $250,000 of revenue. And that means at 100 employees, you're 25 mil. Again, that's just a general rule, that just helps protect you.
If you're below the 250, it's challenging to get profitability. And again, as you grow, you're going to have a director of finance, a comptroller, a CFO, and those individuals to help maybe fractionalize, which not a fan of fractional, because most of the time they're middle managers. But anyways, you'll have a finance role that can help with those guardrails. So backing up, if you don't have workforce management employees, then use the general rule of 150 leads per intake specialist.
Nailing your staffing ratio keeps your team from burning out, but as lead volume grows, manual systems start to fracture. That's where building a modern RevOps infrastructure, knowing how to handle cases you turn down, turns intake into a cost center, into a major profit engine.
I am a huge proponent of in-house RevOps. RevOps is an IT, a technical professional that deals with the technology on the revenue side, on the marketing and intake side. They're going to help with your tracking, your analytics, your UTMs, your CallRail. They're going to help with your CRM. Your CRM optimization is incredibly expensive. It's not too bad on the Lead Docket, Filevine side, but it's still expensive. When you're flipping over and paying these massive fees for customization to solidify in Salesforce, it is a phenomenal return on investment. And when things break, and I am a huge fan of RevOps to get you the data, the wanted rates, the workforce management numbers, any and all technology applied to enhance that department, it is a phenomenal role. I very rarely see it, but I think more firms should start looking into adopting that role. What's the size that I would start to consider it? I would say in the six to 10 intake professionals, you could apply a RevOps. There's a lot of it depends here.
For example, a solid RevOps manager can also tie in your case management and start to get data on the tiers of cases that you're signing, and how that influences your marketing decisions. So whether you're using Chad Dudley's A++, A-, B, as every case comes in as a B and it drops down to C and F, that's in his book, or you have your own S-tier rating. It's really important that your best cases go to your best attorneys, because they have an outsized impact on your revenue. The other thing is it allows you to evaluate your marketing channels more effectively. Because who the heck cares if the CAC is $20,000, but you're signing commercial accidents? No one cares. But if you're just looking at every channel and, "I need to hit that $3,000," that's a flawed mentality and it's going to cause you problems.
There's a lot of situations where your firm has expertise in a number of practice areas and in certain jurisdictions, and there are scenarios where you need to turn down a case, or the firm can't accept it. First of all, I think that the phrasing here is incredibly important, and this is why a lot of people get negative reviews on the front end, because I'm going to give you a scenario. Prospect comes in, and they ask for a divorce attorney, and you're a PI firm and you say, "No, we don't handle divorces, and here's the number to the bar association, go do that yourself." Low value, increases their effort, boom, they give you a negative review. Or it's an auto accident and you're not going to accept them, versus, you say, "Yeah, absolutely, we can help you. Our firm doesn't handle these cases, but this firm does. Let me connect you."
Guess what happens? Referral commission potentially, but also you're building reciprocity currency. So the more leads that you send that family law firm, when they get a PI case that they don't want to take, guess who's going to be the person that's top of the dome, because they want to continue to get the family law cases?
And any lead that's outside your jurisdiction should automatically be monetized. There's a number of methods of doing that. There's all kinds of listservs. You should have that already established and have a document to send your overflow cases to, or your turn downs. There's also marketplaces, Lexamica, Attorney Share. There are a number of methods of monetizing turndowns, and guess what? It ends up being the best way to get a referral is to give a referral. Let me repeat that. The best way to get a referral is to give a referral, from your peers.
You can deploy all the capital in the world driving high intent leads, but if your phone tree ping pongs calls, your team stops chasing after two days, or weekend signups sit untouched until Monday, then you're literally paying to pass cases to your competitors. Fix intake and raise the return on every other dollar you're spending on marketing. If you want all the information I talked about today, plus a whole lot more, then make sure you grab our complete Personal Injury Intake Optimization Guide. It contains the exact response time standards, call flows, staffing ratios, and AI follow-up cadence top operations use to sign more cases without spending an extra dollar on ad spend. Click the link in the show notes to get instant access. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. See you next time.
