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welcome everyone to how to grow your law firm through ethical legal marketing I am Emma Ramey zlotych Clio's affinity program manager and I have a JD from the University of Houston Law Center and have a background in legal tech and an EdTech in general so I'm also have founded an attorney recruiting company started with marketing on my own and it's a big passion of mine to help innovate and talk about different ways that that law firms can really use technology to to the advantage of their firm and I'm excited to lead this session today so let's jump into the agenda here and talk about what we're going to be going over well there's a couple of things that we're gonna start with first of all we're gonna do a review a review of the state of law firm marketing in general and talk about some common pitfalls that you may be encountering in your practice and then we'll discuss the ethical rules at play related to marketing and client communication that you should really be aware of as you invest in marketing and understand how automation can play into that and then we'll jump into the ways that ethical or that that tools and marketing automation can really help you stay compliant and ethical while advancing your firm and creating a revenue generating funnel for your practice and at the end like I mentioned will sum up with questions talk about specifics of CLE requirements that'll be sent via email and discuss any other issues related thereof so let's talk about the state of law firm marketing in general what are we seeing within the industry today one of the good some of some good news here is actually that this is a huge legal market so Clio publishes a legal trends report every year where we review different issues within the legal industry and one thing we found is that yes there is a huge market out there for legal services so about 65 percent of people who faced a legal problem in the last two years have hired a lawyer and that's a big number right so we see that that's positive for us that's a huge legal market out there potential clients that are looking to hire a lawyer yet when we look at who actually is hiring lawyers many of the people that sought consults with the lawyer ended up not hiring those lawyers and even more people 68 percent that communicated with a lawyer ended up not hiring that lawyer so one of the things we're seeing is although there is this huge opportunity in the legal market lawyers are not necessarily setting themselves up for success to gain those clients so a lot of what we're going to be discussing today is how you can set yourself up for success and we do see that consistently thinking about this huge market is something top of mind for many firms so in a Bloomberg law study they surveyed firms and found that most firms are increasing their focus on marketing and business development and also most of those firms are looking to increase their budget overall for these type of things so clearly this is a priority for many firms and not only is it a priority in terms of thinking of consistently increasing budget but it's also a priority in terms of time spent so in our legal trends report we also reviewed where non billable time is going for most attorneys and of their non billable hours that they spend on different activities most lawyers are spending their non billable time at least one third of that time on business development activities so clearly it's not just the money investment that's going in but it's also the time investment that attorneys are spending on these type of marketing and business development type activities that's important yet even though we're putting in so much time and effort and money into these type of activities many firms are still not tracking a lot of the outcome of those activities so we also surveyed firms that invested in advertising and of those firms that invested in advertising about 91% again this is pretty close to a hundred percent said they could not calculate a return on their advertising investment and of those firms that did invest in advertising they also said that 94% couldn't couldn't tell you how much it cost them to acquire a new client and this is all very important information when we consider how much of our time and money is really going towards these activities this is information that we need to collect and similarly in a LexisNexis study we found that of the type of data that firms are collecting related to these marketing efforts a lot of firms are still not calculating simple things that they should be like lead source which shows you of those potential different marketing sources that you're investing in how many of them are actually leading to prospective clients our current clients something that's really beneficial to know and also things like the effect of nurturing or what is the return on investment from those different sources and this also extends to not only figuring out current marketing but also simple things like based on your referrals or how many repeat clients you're getting into your firm how many prospective clients are coming into your firm and again how many referrals your clients are sending you this is all information that should be tracked and that firms should be thinking about but that still many firms are not tracking when they're when they're investing all this time and money into their marketing spent now let's talk about the different sources of marketing and where consumers are actually finding lawyers because this is important to know when we consider how many opportunities there are to advertise for our firm how many opportunities there are to really get word-of-mouth referrals what is the most beneficial way that you can promote your firm and that consumers are actually finding lawyers well in our legal trends report we surveyed how consumers are finding lawyers and found that the top source is actually through referrals so 62% of consumers are asking friends or family for recommendations when they're looking to hire a lawyer now that's a huge number right and in consideration of how much money we're putting into different sources even traditional advertising methods like yellow pages or a TV ad referrals are actually a huge chunk of where you should be spending your time and how do you improve and figure out who is going to refer your firm well it's typically by collecting that feedback and figuring out how the client experience is and how it looks like for your firm so before I get started in talking about feedback really quickly I'm actually interested to see how many of the people in this webinar how does your firm collect feedback from clients do you collect feedback at all and if you do what is the method so I'm gonna go ahead and launch a quick poll let me go ahead and click that you should see it under the poll section and go ahead and select either a my firm does not regularly collect feedback B we do it casually or informally C through email surveys D through dedicated phone calls or e formally in person of course there's no right or wrong answer here it's just interested to see what people in this webinar are actually doing to collect feedback from their clients currently and I'll give it a time I see people are still entering in their their answers all right couple more seconds now okay so I think we've collected most of the answers and actually this is amazing this is very in line with the findings that we found so I'm going to go ahead and close the poll but this is very reflective of the feedback or of the the trends that we found in our legal trends report so we also surveyed lawyers about how they collect feedback from clients and as the majority of of you all in this webinar have said either they don't regularly regularly collect feedback from clients or they're doing it casually or informally in person and then of those that actually do have some sort of system to collect feedback those firms that do are using email surveys most commonly but again the top ones are either not regularly not regularly collecting feedback or doing it casually or informally so clearly this is something if you're thinking about the competition out there and how to better your client services this is an area where many firms can really improve upon and it's not only how you are collecting feedback but let's say you are collecting feedback if you are one of those firms that does have a method of collecting feedback when are you collecting feedback is also important so many times feedback is actually being sought too late in the process so many firms although they're collecting that feedback at the close of the matter which is always beneficial and sometimes during the matter there's a majority of firms that still are not collecting feedback at the beginning of the matter and the Tykes got a little cut off here but you can see that only about 19% of firms that collect feedback are collecting it prior to the beginning representation and we really do want to be collecting feedback during that time the reason being is you want to know why someone hired you in the first place right that is how you know you can improve your marketing in the future and how you can understand what type of factors are influencing the likelihood of people to actually hire your firm in general now there's a simple method that you can use that I highly recommend looking into and using if applicable to collect this type of feedback from your clients and it's a simple formula called Net Promoter Score essentially what Net Promoter Score asks is one question so that's why it's so beneficial it's just asking people on a scale of 0 to 10 how likely are you to recommend our firm it gives them that simple option to click through either 0 10 and say the likelihood that they are to give your firm a recommendation with this information the simple type of information you can really quickly see who's going to be your promoter the people that give you more recommendations the people that are likely to bring in more matters to your firm and also be less price sensitive so of course those are the people we want to focus on at our firm and those are going to be your promoters so the people that give you a 9 or 10 score and then it also helps you see who your detractors are now detractors are people that you're not necessarily going to want to focus on those are the 0 to 6 ranking people but they're also the ones that maybe want to be cognizant and aware of because they might be the people that you might have some issues with and/or it might not be experiencing a great client experience currently then you can repair so it's important to be aware of that early on throughout the process in order to avoid not only creamed that bad client experience but also to potentially event malpractice claims from coming up in the future and there is a benefit for us as well in collecting this information it's not just for the client but in general we find that firms that focus on this better client service overall experience a couple of really positive things so things like higher revenue growth higher profits per attorney and higher client retention overall and that is definitely something I know most people in this audience are looking for right I don't know any firm that would say they don't want to experience these things so it is in our interest to collect this feedback and figure out and focus on the client in general when we focus on our marketing efforts once you start collecting this feedback it's likely that you'll see a couple of trends here pretty much based on the factors that we evaluated in our legal trends report of that impact the likelihood of your firm receiving a recommendation are a couple things at the top so we see most often you're probably going to see cost is one of the factors that influences the likelihood of someone to recommend your firm and that is something that often enough is going to be a little bit outside of our control most people are probably going to complain about cost at one point or another but when you look at the other top three factors listed there they're all things that are within our control and most things related to ease and responsiveness of communication so the benefit of that is basically that we can control those other top three factors yes cost will probably be something that you'll see but ease of responsiveness actually double the factor of cost right so we can we can control setting case expectations early we can control things like bedside manner and also the responsiveness of our communication in via phone email text etc now unfortunately currently many firms are actually setting different expectations and what clients expect so in a study by BTI consulting they evaluated what clients expect in response to texts and emails and most clients said that actually they expect an immediate response to text and emails and when they evaluated what immediate meant to a client that actually meant something within one to two hours but that was quite different to what immediate meant when they evaluated what firms thought was appropriate firms were saying immediate was reserved was a response between four to eight hours and within that big time period that big range we know that a couple things can happen right clients may get a little angry a little have negative feelings towards your representation because of that discrepancy in time and it's important to set those expectations early and understand what your client expects or clearly state what your expectations will be in communication so that there aren't these discrepancies between what clients are thinking is responsive versus what firms are actually thinking and we see this trend continue not only once a client becomes a client but even before hand so when consumers of legal services are looking to hire a lawyer responsiveness is actually the top concern that they use in choosing a lawyer so when they choose a lawyer the firm's that respond to a phone call or email right away are the firms that typically will select and that's really important to understand when we're thinking about how we're investing in marketing and and where we're putting our time right so unfortunately though we do see this continued trend of those expectations not being met even early on even before a clock even during the time and a prospect reaches out to a firm so in a recent study by the ABA so the ABA client the ABA benchmark study on the law firm intake process they evaluated a couple firms intake processes and evaluated the responsiveness of communica patience once these leads come in and found that 42 percent of the time law firms are taking three or more days to reply to a voicemail or web generated form that's filled out by a prospective client that's a long time we know that even within five minutes a potential prospect looking for legal representation can go to another firm because their phone call or their form was not answered but three or more days is a huge discrepancy in time and when we're thinking about how much money and time spent on our ends that were putting into these services just to collect that new lead it's very important that we're also paying attention to once we collect the lead how we're communicating with them in general we see in this study for instance in terms of online forms let's say you have a contact form on your website only about 50% of those contact forms were answered within the same day the rest of them either took the next day or three days or never to respond to and the same trend goes towards when someone picked up the phone so in general 35% of callers who called in to a firm looking for questions about representation didn't actually get to speak with any person in general and of the ones who left voice messages and that's hoping that they left a voice message right but if they did leave a voice message only about 50% of those were returned within two days and some weren't returned at all so again we're losing out it's almost like money down the drain when thinking about how much money we're putting into investing in these marketing and business development sources how much time we're spending to collect these leads and then once we get them essentially we're not following up or we're losing them to potential other firms and competitors just because of our lag time so understanding these different marketing trends let's talk about some ethical rules at play here how we can influence those and how they apply to marketing so that we can better improve the process overall so I'm gonna be going over the model rules here and make sure that you also review your state specific rules because again each state of course has specific requirements related to these different ethical rules and it's important to research those to understand if the same model rules are applicable and if there are any changes there but in general ing to the model rules there's basically two things that they say you cannot do they say you cannot lie and you can't solicit or basically pressure clients to hire you the rest of the rules are actually quite permissive and we're gonna go over them now and show where exactly they are permissive and what they allow you to do so ing to rule 7.1 this is an area where it's a little more restrictive basically it says you cannot make fuss or misleading communications about your services and it's important to again look into your specific States requirements in that regard so for instance when differentiating between past results and future results some states require specific disclaimers and you want to know how specific your state requires that disclaimer to be but in general make sure that those communications again are not false or misleading and this also applies to the rules regarding advertising so rule 7.2 goes over specific things that are actually quite permissive in written respect to advertising so essentially it says that lawyers can communicate about their services through any media and although it does restrict and put some restrictions on the ability of not being able to compensate for a recommendation it does allow you to pay for the reasonable cost of advertising and communications so you are able to pay for those advertisements communication and in the comments we'll go over in a second you'll see how expansive that can actually be in addition in regards to recommendations although you can't pay and compensate for the recommendation you can have reciprocal referral agreements as long as they're not exclusive and as long as the client is informed of the nature and existence of that agreement so that also is quite permissive there and note that again you can give things like nominal gifts as appreciation for the recommendation but you want to make sure that you're treading lightly there so it's not something that's considered to be compensation right so always tread those lines carefully to make sure you're not crossing over into compensation when you're giving something of a nominal gift for appreciation or like a thank-you card something of that sort and again rule 7.34 regarding solicitation ooh excuse me we'll get into solicitation in just one second but as I mentioned in the comments of rule 7.2 or we discuss advertising this again shows how quite permissive this rule can be so it does allow you to communicate through any form of public dissemination of information and this includes things like names of references and names of clients that you regularly represent but again you really want to make sure that you're checking your state specific requirements to make sure that that's included and what exactly your requirements are for your state in that regard and then one of the benefits here that we see is that 21st century type of advertising and communications are included in this rule so it's not just those traditional forms of advertising that they list like newspaper ads and television advertisements but it's also things like online directory listings and internet-based advertisements so it is quite permissive in that aspect as well and then not only does it say that we can pay for the reasonable cost of those as advertising and communications but it also says that you can compensate employees agents and vendors engaged in that marketing and client development services and that is quite a benefit to us because as we've discussed we have quite a few you know things that we should be tracking related to marketing you should also be potentially using consultants and different softwares to help track the results of your marketing and through these rules through the modern rules at least it allows you to compensate for those type of services for people and vendors engage in that and as I mentioned previously I went a little faster than normal but in rule 7.3 regarding solicitation this is where again we see that restriction on the lawyers ability not to solicit right I mean this is one area where many lawyers can kind of tread the line so they can mistakenly move from things like one too many conversations to one to one conversation using technology and with the news and more and more technology nowadays in advertising this is where one-to-one conversations can become kind of at risk and you just want to know where exactly you're drawing the line there so for instance in on social media if you're advertising and then you get into a one-to-one conversation you want to be careful that you're not creating that attorney-client relationship inadvertently that you're directing them to your site or you're directing them to reach out to your firm instead of answering fact-based questions directly through that form of media right and that's also something to consider when we think about in terms of the duties to a prospective client role 1.18 we again want to make sure with more and more technology being prevalent in the way that we advertise our services that we're not forming that client client lawyer relationship and again having things like gated intake forms on your site instead of having them just readily available we want to make sure that we're creating or doing our best to create that expectation with for the client that they we are not their counsel so now that we understand a little bit more about what applicable ethical rules are at play here and investing in marketing and we do see that for the most part these rules are quite permissive we understand now that there's a better way to to track and keep track of marketing and the investment that we're putting in and using tools that automate some of these processes not only can help you stay at the cole and compliant but they also can help you with your marketing and be more strategic in the way that you market as well as set those client expectations early on so let's talk about some different ways that automation can really improve your firm's processes and help you stay ethical well there are a number of things you want to keep in mind I mentioned them previously in this webinar but some some different KPIs and metrics related to marketing that you should be aware of and hopefully be tracking at your firm there are things like lead source and again I mentioned not earlier but I stress this one quite often because what is going to show you is of those different marketing portals that you've invested in let's say you've invested in online advertisements as well as newspaper ads you want to track which ones of those sources are really bringing in the most prospective clients and what's the value of those matters overall you want to track how many prospective clients are coming in through your firm what their rate of conversion is basically of those prospective clients how many are actually being converted into clients maybe click-through rates if you have advertisements via online things like the value of cases and matter reports related to the type of matters that you're representing and also track once they become your client things like billable hours are they really worth is this matter really worth your time in terms of billable hours right and then as we discussed NPS getting gathering that feed from current clients is actually very very important so now that we know a couple different examples of metrics and KPIs that you should be tracking at your firm related to marketing let's talk about some of the ways and tools that you can use to automate these and collect this information so here is a list of different automation tools that you can use in collecting this and basically all of these ideally should work together this list looks very long right and it may be overwhelming you might be thinking to yourself I don't have time to to use all these different tools to collect marketing sources but ideally you'll have a system that collects all this information in one or at least you know a limited number of places but basically things like a CRM what a CRM stands for is a customer relationship management software and many different many different industries use CRM s but the legal industry is a little slow to adopt this type of technology but the benefit of it is that it helps you collect all this information in one place and then in addition things like email marketing software we talked about the importance of communication with prospects and clients and email marketing software can really help bridge that gap in timeliness and responsiveness also things to manage your social media to manage communications via virtual receptionist services and help you answer the phone live chat get appointments books quickly through automation and also collecting NPS through some sort of tool and finally you need a place for all these reports so having some sort of reporting system a referral tracking system is super beneficial so I'm going to go into some of these examples here just so that you can become a little bit more familiar with what I'm talking about and I'm more than happy to answer questions at the end or via email about any of these tools if you're interested but in general let's talk about communication so we discussed the the big gap that we've seen communication that clients expect and prospects expect and responsiveness first is what attorneys and firms are actually doing and their responsiveness so we see that there is a discrepancy there and a lot of these communication tools can be used to help bridge that gap so things like virtual receptionist tools that help you answer the phone even when you're not there or a client just calling in late things like automated email campaign so that maybe you're not responding in person but at least you're responding in some sort of way also having live chat on your site so that you can collect information from a prospect immediately or being able to communicate via text I know many clients like and prefer that message and also having an online contact form on your website so using WordPress Squarespace whatever website provider you have having some sort of contact form available on there and one of the benefits of having a CRM so for instance Clio Gro is a customer relationship management software and what it allows you to do is automatically get notified from these different methods that hey you've got a new prospect that reached out to your firm through this method so that way you're not missing out on communicating with them just because you haven't received a notification so for instance when someone fills out a contact form on your website through some sort of system either a CRM or otherwise you want to make sure that you're getting notifications that a new prospect has come in in this instance you can see that we automatically get pinged when Cassie Campbell fills out their consultation form on your site that way you don't miss out on the opportunity and wait three or more days to follow up with them there's also different tools to streamline your intake process and this is something that I think regularly goes missed many firms are forgetting about the ease of communication that many clients and prospects actually expect so having some sort of forum portal or some way to easily documents let's say you're sending out an engagement or disengagement for you want to have certain tools such as adobe sign there's a plethora of different automation ease signature tools that allow clients to have an easier process in filling out this documentation for you and then also you want to have intake forms that are very easy for your client to fill out so that you don't create that doctor or dentist like experience when they're sitting in your lobby filling out a 10 page paper form you want to make sure that communication process is really really easy for them and it's easy for you to gather that information as well so for instance using a CRM like Clio Gro that allows you to send online intake forms is a huge benefit and being able to also schedule these consultations and other types of appointments easily with clients and have automated reminders and things is also a benefit so using tools like La tab Clio grow also does that and other sort of calendar booking systems is really really important for from the client perspective and can again lead to a better overall experience for for clients and prospects at your firm not only do you want these type of systems to streamline your intake but you also want things like and I know I mentioned Clea grow often but there are different tools for this you want to have tools that allow you to monitor your tasks during the intake process and even thereafter and also be able to track where these matters are within certain stages so oftentimes firms are just forgetting about or again not following up with matters that come in and that again is money down the drain we know how much we're spending on marketing we know how much we're investing of our time into these marketing activities so it's very important to have some sort of system that allows you to keep track of these matters and not let them slip through the cracks and finally once you implement all these systems together it's going to be super super beneficial for you to have some sort of reporting system in place I suggest that actually you have a report system set up even before even before you start you start marketing or investing in these different sources because you don't want to invest in your marketing sources without having the backbone and infrastructure set up prior to that to be able to evaluate if these sources are actually worth your while so you want different reporting tools available and all I can say is that if you do not have any reporting of tools available now get something at least like Excel to track those reports somewhere you want them not to be on paper you want to have a system even if it's Excel or something similar to that where you're actually tracking these metrics and data that I mentioned above but you can use even more advanced technology as you as you get more comfortable with these reporting types of software so for instance things like Google Analytics if you have website tracking or Google Adwords if you have online ads things like that and then also case management and CRM reports such as in Clio are going to be really valuable to evaluate things like revenue etc and you can even use different tools such as my from data clock demise that give you kind of these custom reports that are based on productivity and in different types of information that you want to see but again these are more customized and I highly suggest using something and having it set up prior to investing in all these different marketing sources because this is really what's going to allow you to evaluate how how beneficial each source is now just to give you an example of what these reports should look like once you properly implement them so this is an example in Clio grow and I'm not saying you have to have this exact report but you should have something really similar to this so that it's easy for your firm to be able to assess which of these marketing sources are actually working and also be able to assess which ones maybe are not worth your time or investment so that you can put your time and money in more beneficial places so for instance having a report that allows you to track your top lead sources or track conversion rate overall or over a specific period of time is going to be really really important and you should have some systems set up early for this in addition once you actually start working on those matters tracking and reports that don't stop right it's not that you just want to evaluate the benefits of your marketing before you get hired once you get hired you actually want to know hey what if this client can bring in more revenue for my firm or which clients are really worth taking right so you want to have different activity reports based on clients or different revenue reports to understand which of your matters actually are bringing in the most revenue for your firm so having some sort of case management software or different tools post-post you know someone becoming a client it's going to be really beneficial for your firm as well and then like I mentioned do not forget about referral tracking referrals are a huge chunk of where you can get new business and also hopefully continue to get existing business so you want to figure out who those people or companies are that are giving you those those referrals and you can see actually what conversion rate those particular people have which people are companies are giving you the most type of matters what's the value of those matters that is all information that you should make sure you're collecting again through one of these referral tracking tools this is an example in Clio grow but you can also do this if you want to start out with you know very simple method I wouldn't recommend it but you could use something like Excel to at least track it not on paper right so that you can start evaluating these different sources now to sum up we mentioned mps and reviews and this is again going to be a big part of how to grow your business so you want something that can help you manage reviews there's tools like Birdseye that can help you keep track of those reviews that you're getting from clients and also maybe ask them for reviews one to represent station is over you also want things like different survey tools or NPS trackers ideally that allow you to capture those NP that MPs number from your current and past clients so you can use different survey tools like Survey Monkey or even Google Forms or if you really want to implement an actual NPS system there's tools like Cleo's client satisfaction pilot program which you can see here that shows you that Net Promoter Score and any feedback you get from the clients directly and automatically sends them out sends out that survey during put specific intervals during the representation so it's again important to have these systems set up early because you don't want to skimp out on that feedback since 62 percent of those consumers of legal services again are asking their friends or family for recommendations you want to make sure you have a system to gather that feedback and see who's most likely to give you that recommendation so before I jump into questions and talk about the specific CLE requirements that I'll be mentioning I want to sum up with some best practices that we went over and take this into consideration when you're setting up your marketing your marketing investment and marketing spend at your firm first of all make sure again that you're setting up this sort of client centered approach to your marketing we saw that the firms that invest in those better client services are the ones that are going to experience more revenue more profits and greater client retention and that's really what we all want ideally so make sure you take that client centered approach to the way that you approach your marketing spend and the tools that you implement also like I mentioned don't invest in in every form of marketing quickly make sure you this carefully and specifically based on the goals that you're looking for and purchase any support tools and an automation systems that you need to help support this I really recommend having those reports set up before you invest into these different marketing sources so that you know you can automatically capture this information once you implement those different tools that you're using for marketing and make sure then you're tracking those metrics so you're collecting them but tracking them and making sure that you're regularly reviewing those metrics to see what's successful and not successful is almost the key to make or break your marketing funnel so that is the key to generating those those consistent and more and more revenue for your firm by understanding which marketing portals are making you ideally the most money which ones you can maybe get rid of or invest in more carefully so make sure you implement all these different practices into your firm's marketing while staying ethical and compliant based on the rules that we discussed earlier so before I jump into questions I just want to do a quick one last poll here so I'm gonna go ahead and launch this poll would you like to learn more about CEO so just in case you would go ahead and click a if you want to learn more about Clio bro we can have someone reach out to you about CEO grow which is again our CRM and intake software we can also contact you about Clio manage which is our case management software or if you're interested in learning about both Clio grow and Clio manage someone can reach out to you about those also the Clio cloud conference is coming up so I love to mention those we'd love to tell you more about that if you're interested it's a huge conference that we have every year this place is taking place in San Antonio or San Antonio excuse me this plant this time is taking place in San Diego California in October 21st through 22nd this year so it's a great opportunity to learn more about some of the different trends that we've been discussing within the legal industry learn more about automation practices and marketing that can improve and benefit your firm so as this poll is going on I'm going to jump into some questions and it may take me a little while to answer these questions so just one second as I read through them and in regards to Cleo's NPS tool if you are a CLE abuser have a question where can I find Cleo's NPS tool is it Cleo manage or Cleo grow it would be in Cleo managed and it is a pilot program so you have to and you have to sign in to that um and then I have someone asking about what was the app for texting also do not worry everyone on these these slides will be sent to these slides will be sent to everyone in the email as well so if you miss something in these slides don't worry and it follow-up email you'll receive the slides you can also download the handout right now and so you should see the handout there but the text the specific these specific hmm sorry these specific apps that I was discussing is actually called zip whip alright so I'm going to close out this poll as I'm answering more questions and I'll give everyone about 20 more seconds to to enter in their answers if anyone's hasn't answered the poll yet okay I'm going to close the poll now then I do have quite a bit of questions about Clio specifically so I'm going to answer them but on note this doesn't have to be for Clio only Clio users only but in general and discussion of what size firm I have a question about what size is your system best for how about solo practitioners yes it's honestly best for any size firm so if your solo this definitely can benefit your practice having some sort of system is better than none as I mentioned I'm so making sure that you have that available is or having some sort of system is really can be really beneficial for you no matter if your solo firm to a midsize firm or a large firm um and then someone asked is there an efficient way of creating customizable attorney-client fee agreements and yes actually as I mentioned on that slide when I was discussing the streamlined intake process so I really really think that having some sort of system for document creation and document automation is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your client and there are a bunch of tools available for that actually so some of the tools are listed on on that slide so if you download the handout you can take a look at them but basically there are systems to help you get electronically signed documents where you can upload them directly into the system so there's systems like and and adobe where you can Dobey acrobat where you can actually create those customizable intake forms and then there's systems like Clio grow or the CRM systems where you can actually create even more customizable forms with specific fields that get filled in automatically so instead of having to generate a new intake form or a new engagement agreement for each new client that you get it just automatically fills in the fields with their name and the matter information and it sends it out for each signature so that way you're not dealing with creating a new form for each Kancha client that you're wanting to engage with and then I also have a question from Joseph are there any more specific statistics on unanswered calls are these calls being ignored or just screened by firms before responding so actually Joseph there is a ton of statistics related to unanswered calls and I kind of went on the conservative route in my presentation and didn't put all of the information but I am fascinated by the information from that study that I mentioned if you look up ABA study on the client intake process you'll find all of the statistics that I mentioned and much more but basically what what is in so what is in that study that I found fascinating are things like the fact that only about 11% of the callers actually got to speak with an attorney and and they surveyed firms in understanding hey why are these callers not actually getting to speak with an attorney or why are these calls not being answered or strained and just like just like Joseph mentioned other reasons for why they're screening it and many and many actually actual attorneys reference the fact that hey they thought it wasn't an important call or is it was important the caller would let them know but yet when they serve what what was also included in that survey was the fact that when those callers actually got to speak with someone they weren't asked the right questions or enough questions to be able to properly evaluate their case so although many lawyers and firms are actually thinking that if it's important the client will let them know it might be on the end of attorneys and and not understanding that many firms are actually not asking the proper questions to be able to screen those calls and properly assess the value of those matters so it's important to not let these calls slip through the cracks just because maybe you know on first on first call you might not think it's worthwhile you want to have that system systematize process set up at your firm so that everyone on your firm is trained and under what type of questions should be asked on the initial call to be able to properly evaluate the matter and see if it's something important and that needs to go to the attorney directly so again I highly recommend that you read through that study it really has some really valuable information it's called the ABA study on the client intake process and if you just google it you should find it there I'll answer just a few more questions and then I'm going to talk about the CLE requirements as well and then I have a question from Jessica regarding how beneficial our community advertising efforts ie programs sponsorships for City events and honestly that depends right so if you take a look at the most common methods at least we reviewed in our in our 2018 legal trend support where we took a poll of how consumers are finding legal services the different advertising efforts through events and public speaking and sometimes sponsorships we're not super high up there on the list as one of the top ways that consumers of legal services are finding attorneys but they are on there so I don't think it's something to skimp out on and it also depends on the community that you're in so if you're in a smaller City I would say or a smaller town those are probably going to be very lucrative for you if you're in a bigger legal market let's say that's very competitive sometimes online advertisements will work better and it also depends on on your specific area of practice too so if you're something that's very very specific and only a couple different you know clients can actually become your clients those type of specific targeted events sponsorships may be much more worth your while than if you're something more broad where in that case sometimes even billboards are newspaper advertising can have to have a positive impact for you in marketing and then I have a question from Susan so it says but do you necessarily want to represent a person who won't hire you if you don't call back with one one hour I don't screen my calls so that is actually something that if you google that study as well the ABA study on client intake the client intake process that was mentioned there a lot of a lot of attorneys and firms are saying you know if they don't if they aren't my client within that you know five minute period or something like that maybe I don't want to represent them or maybe it's not important and that's something that we also reviewed and talking about different expectations of clients versus expectations of attorneys in our 2018 legal trends report so definitely take a look at that as well but I would say yes honestly do not assume just because someone doesn't want to be your client because you haven't returned their call that they were a bad client in the first place what it could mean is that that person actually just thinks that you're not interested or needs representation quickly and maybe going to another firm because they think that potentially you are not you know interested in their matter or they want an attorney who's more attentive and I would say this is just an example I know this is not a great example but it's an example of myself in terms of reaching out to different services and I know just think about your own actions whenever you reach out to a service and they don't respond back within a certain amount of time are you just looking at that one service or are you looking at different competitors within that same service and calling them all essentially it's almost like a game of who's going to call back first and if you're missing out on that opportunity just because you didn't call back it doesn't mean that that was a bad client maybe potentially that person just found an attorney who responded that quicker so as I mentioned this webinar is going to be recorded and the slides and the recording of this webinar are going to be sent to you via an email that you will Steve tomorrow so make sure to keep a look out for that email and note that if you received email there will be a link in there to how to get different CLE information for your specific state so all of you they're looking for CLE information or just want the recording of the webinar as well as the slides click on that CLE information link and that's where you can find all of that information regarding each specific state there are two states here that I'm going to mention I'm just quickly one and of course if you want to contact me this is my contact information I'll put this back up in just a second but one that I want to mention is that this course is certified for seal for one hour its general CLE credit in Florida this is the course number so if you are a Florida licensed attorney you'll also receive this course number in the email as well along with the other state certification information as well if you're not a Florida licensed attorney note that for Florida eligible for two bar members you're eligible for a ten percent off discount of cleo products as well because of our member benefit relationship with the Florida Bar