Case Study - Law Firm

Business Challenge: Partners of a medium-sized law firm had come to the conclusion that their revenue was seriously limited because of their hourly rates, so they tried to maximize billable hours but were hindered by lots of wasted time and effort on client acquisition. The firm had a website but it was just a brochure doing nothing for the firm to advance its profitability. Website updates were both awkward and expensive to handle. The law firm needed to be able to communicate with their clients by making changes to their website and being able to send out email to the client base letting them know of news and significant information that could effect their clients. Clients also wanted to be more involved with their cases and constantly wanted progress reports. They also got frustrated when they couldn't reach their lawyers. This frustration did not not help with referrals from clients until they win their case.

Diagnosis: The best way of increasing billable hours was to automate all non-billable activities, which required a platform for automation. They key was to develop a system which can execute specific processes and produce consistent results. The Internet was the obvious solution but it was a must that staff could make all the necessary updates to the website without programming knowledge. There needed to be a client login in place so that the staff could update the case with current news and projected time lines for things to get done. This would decrease the amount of call in to the front desk leaving more time to do acquisitions for new clients and allow clients to be happy and taken care of easily by communicating with them online.   

Solution: Two parts for the solution was developed. One part was about developing a sequence of processes, and the other was to find a powerful enough content management system that could handle both the website management and a broad range of automation issues, including an intranet where staff could update cases and clients can get a user name and password to log into there own area of the site to get progress reports and time line estimates.

Value Received: The overall operation of the firm changed. The website and the other complementary online elements (newsletter, autoresponders, interactive Q & A, etc.) made it possible that prospects could walk themselves through the sales funnel, and the first human interaction was basically the act of taking the payment. It became easy to update the website, which one of the assistants could handle on a regular basis, so there was no longer need for a webmaster. Overall billable hours went up, leading to higher profitability, and non-billable activities became more streamlined as well.