September 9, 2025 • 23 mins
Law firm intake delays killing your revenue? Discover how non-lawyer intake systems cut scheduling from 3 weeks to 3 days while boosting close rates 20% - without increasing operational costs.
Family law firm owners struggle with volatile attorney consultation performance and scheduling bottlenecks that lose clients. We reveal the counter-intuitive intake system that stabilized Sterling's revenue while freeing attorneys for higher-value work.
📲 Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@jsterlinghughesÂ
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—
đź“„ CHAPTERSÂ
0:00 - Law Firm Intake Crisis: Why Clients Wait Weeks for ConsultationsÂ
1:58 - The $17M Firm's Attorney Performance ProblemÂ
4:46 - Why 3-Day Scheduling Beats Sales Skills Every TimeÂ
7:07 - Building Non-Lawyer Intake Systems That Actually WorkÂ
9:19 - 20% Better Close Rates: Real Performance Data from Sterling LawyersÂ
16:12 - Common Pitfalls: When Non-Lawyer Sales Go WrongÂ
20:31 - Small Firm Implementation: When You're Ready to Start
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are new clients in your family law firm waiting
weeks to be able to get to seeyou?
Are you looking for a way toincrease the level of care that
you give your clients withoutincreasing your costs
operationally?
Then I urge you to considernon-lawyer sales.
It really is a thing and itreally does work, and we're
going to talk all about it ontoday's show.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show, the
podcast designed to help familyattorneys build the firm of
their dreams.
I am your co-host, tyler Dolph.
I'm also the CEO of ourhyper-focused law firm-only
marketing agency calledRocketClicks, and I have my
co-host, Jeff Hughes, who is theCEO of our own family law firm,
(00:44):
sterling Lawyers, on the showtoday and we're going to talk
about non-attorney sales.
It's a hot, hot debate.
We've gone through some trialand error and excited to talk it
through today, jeff.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, tyler, I did a couple of shows on this, maybe
two years ago, so we're twoyears into it here at Sterling
Lawyers.
And for all you naysayers outthere, I just want you to know,
I was firmly in your camp.
I did not think that non-lawyersales was a thing.
Who, what client in their rightmind would actually give a
retainer to a non-lawyer thatcan't give them advice about
(01:19):
their case?
That's what I believed, right.
So I'm excited to talk aboutthis because a lot has changed
from when I introduced thisconcept and talked all about it
two-ish years ago on the podcasthere.
So now we're back.
We're going to give an updateas to where Sterling Lawyers is
with non-lawyer sales and restassured, against all of my
(01:41):
wisdom, it is a real thing andit's a big thing here at
Sterling Lawyers.
So where do you want to start,tyler?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yes, for those listeners who didn't hear the
podcast two years ago, just giveus a summary around the why,
what was happening in the firmthat caused you to say, okay,
fine, let's try it.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, so we're a $17 million 27 lawyer firm today.
Back then I think we were 20,early low 20s in terms of
lawyers and the lawyer abilitiesand results in the console room
were so volatile.
We would have some that wouldjust connect with clients and
(02:24):
convince clients that we werethe right solution for them, to
guide them through what theywere going through, and others
that just struggled, and itwasn't like young lawyers and
experienced lawyers, it ran thegamut.
Some of our newest, mostinexperienced lawyers way
outperformed the mostexperienced, so it ran the gamut
.
Way outperformed the mostexperience.
(02:46):
So it ran the gamut.
In addition to that, family lawis volatile.
Right.
Christmas time things slow waydown.
No one wants to deal with afamily lawyer in a divorce
situation during the holidays,okay.
Summertime it also slows down alittle bit as well because
people are out enjoying thewarmth, which we get like three
days of warmth here in Wisconsin, so they're out doing that
Right.
And so it was always extremelyvolatile and we were super
(03:08):
frustrated because we werehaving a very difficult time
forecasting and planning out thelaw firm because we had this
volatility.
It was like 40 to 40% swings inour results from month to month
with our volatility and wetried everything, and then I was
a little.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
What did we try?
Did we try just having theright people that had the high
close rate?
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Okay, only you guys are doing sales, the other ones
aren't doing any like yeah, sowe would like rank our attorneys
by their ability to close, andthey would get the most consults
first, right.
They would get the consultfirst right.
If they were busy, then itwould kind of go down the line
to the lowest and what, as youcan imagine, happened, right,
the most skilled lawyers endedup booking themselves up and
(03:51):
getting too busy and takingthemselves out of consults, and
then we ended up having the vastmajority of our consults going
to the inexperienced lawyers andon top of that, as everyone's
getting busy, they would blockthemselves, and so we're setting
consults out two or three weeks, which probably was the biggest
factor, honestly, because Ithink the just to sorry to
interrupt you there thepsychological effect of having a
(04:20):
very full calendar and goinginto a consult room already
feeling busy yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Stress.
Oh well, I just got to getthrough this, right.
You're going to lose that humanelement.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yep, yeah, so it was.
All of those things wereconspiring against the good
results, but I want to back up alittle bit that what I just
said was vitally important.
Getting new potential clientsin the console room within three
days is the biggest factor.
It's bigger than like skill inthe room, um ability to connect.
It's getting them in quicklyand we were having a big time
(04:49):
struggle doing that.
And so three weeks, you saidsometimes, yeah, that was our
average for much of 20.
What are we in 25 now?
And 23 was a two to three weekout period of time before we can
get someone in the console.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
What could happen between that first interaction
and three weeks later?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So I was listening to a podcast in 2023.
In fact, I remember I was on myway to my niece's graduation
listening to this podcast onnon-lawyer sales.
It was so eye-opening that itwas actually a thing and it was
actually working.
It was with Michael at yourPractice Mastered and he was
being interviewed by someone,and I remember sitting in the
(05:26):
graduation ceremony on the endof the aisle where I could
actually put my phone to my left, so my family couldn't see it
and I was entering theinformation because I wanted to
know more about this and readingas much as I could about it
because it was such a dire issuefor us to solve.
And that was in May-ish June orso of that year.
By July, we were ready tolaunch our non-lawyer sales
(05:49):
experiment, and so we startedwith four what we called consult
legal assistants.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And how did you find these people?
What did that look like?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
We found them on Indeed.
They were all throughout theUnited States.
So we had one in Florida, onein Arizona and one in Colorado
and I remember the other one inGeorgia.
So we had those four thatstarted with us.
We found them all on Indeed andaway we went and we had a
leader, mary, who's still theleader of that team, who was
also kind of already doing aversion of that in Illinois, so
(06:21):
we call it the Mary Project.
So he was doing a little bitalready toward that, but not not
quoting, not going all the waythrough the full consult.
So we wanted to go all the waythrough the full consult and
have these CLAs take theconsults.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And so we had to build a process and scripting
and the whole deal right.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yeah, we followed your practice mastered script.
That was 17 point kind ofscript.
It sounds like a lot but itreally is boiled down.
It's pretty easy to follow.
So we started off with theirscript.
We've since modified it heavilyand to fit family law and to
fit fixed fee in particular,which is all we do and so we
started with that and we'velearned a ton over the past two
(07:01):
years on how to get it to work.
Much of our early assumptionsproved out to be wrong for us
and some of them were right.
Ultimately I can skip to theend and we can fill in the gaps
here Ultimately, our non-lawyerconsults are incredible and I'm
(07:21):
underselling this when I say itAbsolutely astounding to the
success of our firm today.
So today we still have only fourfull-time consult legal
assistants.
Now we've had to cycle througha number of them, so we've hired
four others, trained them.
That did not ultimately workout.
So we're about a 50% hit rateon trained to.
(07:44):
Still with us.
Mary still leads the team.
We have these four four todayand in addition to that we've
learned to remove a lot of Iwould say, task or just like
paperwork off their desk.
So we have three full-timesupport teammates that are
supporting our CLAs.
They're all in the Philippines,our support teammates are and
(08:04):
all of our CLAs are here in theUnited States.
And so these three supportteammates do all of the nuts and
bolts and blocking and tacklingfor our CLAs by sending out
agreements, sending third-partyagreements out, different things
they need to do in order to getthings done.
And so today our CLAs do around60 plus percent of all of our
(08:29):
first consults and probably thisis undervalued.
They do a hundred percent ofthe follow-up.
So our lawyers are doing theother 40-ish percent or 30-ish
percent, I would say of ourconsults, but they're not having
to do the follow-up.
They're able to go in, do theconsult and go back to serving
clients, doing court work andthat sort of stuff.
(08:50):
So they're doing a CLA's aredoing a huge percentage of our
consults and are, from aperformance standpoint now these
are new, these are right offthe press.
Today, tyler, okay, and a 90 dayrolling is what we look at Our
CLAs are at at basicallyoutperforming by 20% our lawyers
(09:12):
.
Yeah, so they're 20%.
Their close rates 20% betterthan our lawyers.
That is incredible Plus thethey, because our CLA's cannot
give any legal advice whatsoeverand they don't, and we have
been, we've monitored that.
We do QA on almost all of ourour consults to make sure we're
(09:34):
all following the process.
And the biggest, the biggestno-no is not giving legal advice
you can't do, or giving legaladvice you can't give that.
So, but we're finding thatbecause they're so rigid around
our quoting process that they'reactually quoting higher than
our lawyers quote, because ourlawyers will, you know, find
ways to, you know, not notfollow the process, because they
(09:56):
just want, they want to puttheir stamp on it, and so
they're doing.
They're performing better froma closed perspective and, in
addition to that, they're alsogenerating more value from each
consult that they're doing.
So it's, it's been a total winfor Sterling lawyers and I'm
excited to share those everyonebecause I want everyone to think
(10:16):
about it.
At least think about it,consider it, because if you can
get a team built, it can really,it can really pour gas on the
growth of a law firm.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, I mean not to mention the, the hours saved for
the attorneys to do what theyneed to do.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So that brings up some of the I shared with you.
The obvious benefits right, theperformance numbers, the, the
revenue increase and all thatsort of stuff but there are.
There are some hiddenadvantages here, some hidden
disadvantages too that I'm goingto touch on here.
But from a benefit standpoint,the biggest one is to our legal
team.
Our lawyers have, when theywere doing consults, the
(10:55):
majority of all the consults.
It was a huge time suck becauseyou have to prep for the consult
and for us what that looks likeis we have to go on.
Our state bar has a website youcan look and see details about
a case.
Illinois has got it by countyand we've got it here by the
full state.
So we would always go requireour team to go on first, look up
(11:18):
anything you can find about thecase, about the parties that
are involved, so you're somewhatarmed with information.
So that takes some time.
You got to do the consult.
You do the post consult, notes,follow-ups over the ensuing
days, which a lot of times justdidn't happen.
You got to send out agreements.
You got to modify agreements.
You got to do all that sort ofstuff.
We were having our lawyers do so.
(11:39):
Now they just got to go in andpretty much do the consults with
very little pre and post work,because our team is prepping
that for them and only doing 30,30 plus percent of the consults
now.
So there's that.
It also and here's something,one of the hidden advantages our
clients coming in feel a higherconnection to our law firm
(12:03):
because they're just not talking.
They're not just talking to thelawyer and paralegal, they're
talking first with a CLA who isa lethal salesperson and they
connect so well and they're sopatient and understanding and
experienced with helping justempathize with folks going
through a family law crisis thatthey feel more connected even
(12:25):
once they get involved with us.
So it's helped our full clientexperience right there.
So it's saving attorney time,improving client experience,
making my CFO and me happy.
All of that sort of stuff is iscoming, has come together as
we've done this, so it's been areal win across the board for us
.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
It's just back to the psychological part of this
right Context.
Switching, getting out of flow,is detrimental for productivity
, and so if you have someone whois doing the same task over and
over again, they're able tostay in that flow.
I have to be human, I need tobe supportive.
I need to be emotionally in themeeting and really listening.
(13:06):
Doing that over and over againit's easier than I need to be
supportive.
I need to be emotionally in themeeting and really listening.
Doing that over and over againit's easier than I need to do
that Now.
I need to file this grievanceand do this thing and paperwork
and then come back and be ahuman, and so allowing them to
live in that flow state for alonger period of time has got to
have a benefit.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Oh, it's major for our lawyers.
Lawyers run the firm, they arethe firm right, they're on the
front lines and what we want iswe want our lawyers to do the
things that only lawyers can do.
That means giving advice andgoing to court predominantly and
setting legal strategy, thingslike that.
We don't want them worryingabout anything else, if we can
(13:44):
possibly remove thatresponsibility from them.
So they've got clear minds andclear time and margin in their
day to serve clients, call themback, do the things that need to
happen there.
So this program has enabled usto do that in a really big way
and it's also it's reduced thevolatility.
So now we get clients in theconsult room within three days
(14:04):
almost every week when wemeasure this.
So it's a real big number thatwe follow.
So the volatility hasdramatically declined.
So we're able to predict outwhere our firm is and where it's
going months out, because ourvolatility has declined so much.
So it's enabled us to plan outand plan growth, where we can
(14:27):
never do that in the pastbecause we would hit a month
where all of a sudden our salesdropped 40% or would increase 20
or 30%.
So it's stabilized all of ourforecasting and planning out
into the future and that's beenreally helpful from a growth
perspective.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Love it and I got to believe.
The close rate in the consultroom is so much higher because
of that, volatility decrease.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
It's higher because the clients are getting in right
away, so they're not gettingdiscouraged and setting an
appointment and then gettingimpatient or just needing a
lawyer sooner.
So they go talk to someone else,end up working with that
particular firm.
So we're able to get clientsand that's been the biggest win
from a close perspective andthey're also feeling heard,
(15:13):
they're telling their story,they're spilling their guts
right away with someone who isgoing to live like for all the
gray things about lawyers, theyhave a really difficult time as
they get more experience slowingit down in the console room and
just listening and lettingclients let all because they've
heard the story a hundred times.
So they want to get right tothe meat of it, like giving
advice, and they want to helpthem.
(15:33):
They want to get to the help,Whereas they don't spend the
time helping by just slowing itdown and just let the client
share that.
That's.
That's difficult to do becausefor a lot of reasons it's not.
It's coming from a good, goodplace that it happens, but our,
our CLAs are just trained thatway and they're just in tune.
So much more with that empathyfactor that's needed in that
(15:54):
first initial consult.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Well said, all right, so we've done this process for
the last two years.
And if someone is listening tothis and it's like, okay, fine,
I want to, I want to look intothis more, explore it, seen this
and it's like, okay, fine, Iwant to look into this more or
explore it, talk to us aboutsome of the pitfalls, some of
the key learnings.
What didn't we do correctlywhen setting this up that
someone can avoid?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, a couple of things here.
Well, the biggest downside tohaving non-lawyers is doing your
consults is they can't givelegal advice and so inherently
there is a certain number ofcases where they screw up by
funding them when they shouldn'tbe funded and we correct that
(16:34):
right away and refund them.
But that incurs a cost to us todo that, so there's an expense
there of refunding that creditcard right back.
So the most common are inpost-judgment cases, where
they're not uniform, likedivorce cases or fraternity
cases are.
They require almost a one-offanalysis in every single
(16:54):
post-judgment case and, likemost states have this, you can't
come back to court on apost-judgment unless you fit
certain criteria, you meetcertain thresholds and for us,
like in Wisconsin, just to givean example and I think all of
our family lawyers have the samething in their states it's a
two-year moratorium on comingback to court unless there's a
very substantial change in thecircumstances.
(17:15):
And even after two years thereneeds to be a change in
circumstances for that to happen.
And that's a legal analysis.
You can't train CLAs withthousands of different fact
patterns to really do thatconsistently right to know
whether or not we can.
They're a good candidate towork with us.
So we have some of that andthere's some times where they'll
sign up a client that is justnot a good fit for our firm and
(17:37):
they don't really sense thatright up front.
And that could be forpersonality reasons or a whole
host of reasons, a lot of whichare something's really going on
in that with that person, thatwe just don't want to work with
them because it's going to be,it's going to suck life out of
us and kill brain cells.
So there's some of that goingon.
So that's that's one of the bigdownsides.
Other ones is that you have tounderstand that it's not a hire
(18:00):
someone and they work outforever like everything.
You're going to hire andthey're not going to work and
they're going to have to move onand you're going to have to
deal with that with retraining.
Our process today is a four weektraining process and we have a
leader of our team who does thattraining.
It took us a long time to helpMary get to that level where
she's now equipped with all theskills to do that, so that
(18:23):
there's there's a leadershipchallenge there.
And then there's a four weekplus training, just observing
and training them on how toquote, how to do all that stuff.
And then, once they go on thephones or in the video,
everything's remote by video, bythe way, or we try to get it by
video, sometimes it's by phoneOnce it gets there.
Still, we, we train for the twoweeks of just like live
(18:43):
whispering, watching, you know,over the shoulder type coaching
and that sort of stuff.
So there's a long trainingcycle to do it and you need
someone that's equipped to dothat.
If the lawyer can't, becausethey're just busy, you got to
find someone else to do that.
So it takes some time todevelop that.
But if you can do that, we didit over years.
Right, this was not done likein a month or two or a quarter,
(19:06):
it was month or two or a quarteris done over years to get there
.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
So that's one of the other downsides to it.
It takes time to build thatmuscle and the hit rate of a
salesperson across industries isextremely low.
This is not an easy position tofill, correct.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Correct.
It's easy for us to acquireinterest for the position.
We'll get hundreds ofcandidates because we can search
nationally for a candidate.
So we get hundreds ofcandidates and we do it all
through.
Indeed, we pay.
Well, all in their CLAs aremaking between $120 and $160.
So it's a nice compensationthat they get for that.
(19:44):
It's a.
It's a nice compensation thatthey get for that, um, but it's
a special person that could doit and listen to stories that
are tragic and sad and hard tohear all day, day after day.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
You know it's that's, that's, that's not easy yeah,
it's got to be the right type ofperson for sure.
So, jeff, if, uh, if I'm asmall firm and I have five
attorneys and they're telling methey're overwhelmed and they
don't have time to be in theconsole room and I want to
explore this is a non-attorneysales kind of pivot.
(20:20):
Do you think it depends on thesize of the firm and what's
happening?
Is this only for larger firms,or have you seen this be
successful in smaller firms aswell?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
your firms or have you seen this be successful in
smaller firms as well?
Oh, yes, I've seen it besuccessful in other firms not
necessarily family law, fixedfee firms, because there's only
a few of us out there, okay, sothat's where I'm coming from.
But I've been a part of RichardJames's mastermind at your
Practice Mastered, where a lotof folks in that group do that,
and I've hired a couple CLAsfrom other firms and I know that
there's other mastermind groupsthat are overseeing these
(20:55):
programs as well.
So I know that it works.
So if I were a smaller firm two, three attorneys I think at
two-ish, three-ish you're readyto hire for that first role.
Now they may be required to doother things so you can't keep
them busy enough, but I thinkthat's the time to do that.
So the way I would approachdoing that is I would probably
(21:16):
send them to Richard's you knowhis education course that
they've got on training.
That's a good place to start.
That's probably the best placeI know of to begin.
If that's not something thatsomeone's interested in, then
you've got to just commit tohiring someone and have them sit
with you over weeks and inevery consult to train them, to
get them ready to do that, andif you're selling hourly
(21:38):
services, I would.
I would offer that it's easierthan selling big, big fixed fees
right up front, because it'sit's you know, it's a lower
upfront cost, the barrier toentry is a little bit lower to
get them going and it's easierto kind of understand and
explain that you're just payingfor an hour of time and this is
what it's going to cost you andthis is your initial retainer.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, yeah.
So it sounds like the warningor opportunity signs for a firm
to start thinking about this istheir consult window is too long
into the future.
You know you're waiting a week,two weeks, three weeks before
you can get someone in.
Uh, or your, your attorneys areoverwhelmed.
They can't simply handle thenumber of consults that are
(22:19):
coming in.
Um, you know which is a goodproblem to have, but something a
problem nonetheless.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, I'll underscore that without an anecdote.
So my brother, unfortunately,is going through a divorce and
he reached out to a lawyer andit was like a three week wait
for him to get in to see her andI and he ended up waiting it
out because I was kind ofhelping him see that it was
worth it and it wasn't anurgency around it.
(22:43):
But if that is like most otherpeople, they're not going to
wait for that, they're going tolike go call the next person on
their Google listings and that'swho they're going to go to.
So if if you're, and a lot offirms don't even track that
number, they don't even know butthey intuitively know if
they're busy.
So if you are busy and you'reputting people out two weeks,
(23:03):
three weeks, I would offer thatthis console legal assistant is
going to pay for themselveswithin and it's worth it to try
that.
So I think you're right.
That's the starting point.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Love it.
Jeff appreciate the insight.
Are new clients in your family law firm waiting
weeks to be able to get to seeyou?
Are you looking for a way toincrease the level of care that
you give your clients withoutincreasing your costs
operationally?
Then I urge you to considernon-lawyer sales.
It really is a thing and itreally does work, and we're
going to talk all about it ontoday's show.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show, the
podcast designed to help familyattorneys build the firm of
their dreams.
I am your co-host, tyler Dolph.
I'm also the CEO of ourhyper-focused law firm-only
marketing agency calledRocketClicks, and I have my
co-host, Jeff Hughes, who is theCEO of our own family law firm,
(00:44):
sterling Lawyers, on the showtoday and we're going to talk
about non-attorney sales.
It's a hot, hot debate.
We've gone through some trialand error and excited to talk it
through today, jeff.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, tyler, I did a couple of shows on this, maybe
two years ago, so we're twoyears into it here at Sterling
Lawyers.
And for all you naysayers outthere, I just want you to know,
I was firmly in your camp.
I did not think that non-lawyersales was a thing.
Who, what client in their rightmind would actually give a
retainer to a non-lawyer thatcan't give them advice about
(01:19):
their case?
That's what I believed, right.
So I'm excited to talk aboutthis because a lot has changed
from when I introduced thisconcept and talked all about it
two-ish years ago on the podcasthere.
So now we're back.
We're going to give an updateas to where Sterling Lawyers is
with non-lawyer sales and restassured, against all of my
(01:41):
wisdom, it is a real thing andit's a big thing here at
Sterling Lawyers.
So where do you want to start,tyler?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yes, for those listeners who didn't hear the
podcast two years ago, just giveus a summary around the why,
what was happening in the firmthat caused you to say, okay,
fine, let's try it.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, so we're a $17 million 27 lawyer firm today.
Back then I think we were 20,early low 20s in terms of
lawyers and the lawyer abilitiesand results in the console room
were so volatile.
We would have some that wouldjust connect with clients and
(02:24):
convince clients that we werethe right solution for them, to
guide them through what theywere going through, and others
that just struggled, and itwasn't like young lawyers and
experienced lawyers, it ran thegamut.
Some of our newest, mostinexperienced lawyers way
outperformed the mostexperienced, so it ran the gamut
.
Way outperformed the mostexperience.
(02:46):
So it ran the gamut.
In addition to that, family lawis volatile.
Right.
Christmas time things slow waydown.
No one wants to deal with afamily lawyer in a divorce
situation during the holidays,okay.
Summertime it also slows down alittle bit as well because
people are out enjoying thewarmth, which we get like three
days of warmth here in Wisconsin, so they're out doing that
Right.
And so it was always extremelyvolatile and we were super
(03:08):
frustrated because we werehaving a very difficult time
forecasting and planning out thelaw firm because we had this
volatility.
It was like 40 to 40% swings inour results from month to month
with our volatility and wetried everything, and then I was
a little.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
What did we try?
Did we try just having theright people that had the high
close rate?
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Okay, only you guys are doing sales, the other ones
aren't doing any like yeah, sowe would like rank our attorneys
by their ability to close, andthey would get the most consults
first, right.
They would get the consultfirst right.
If they were busy, then itwould kind of go down the line
to the lowest and what, as youcan imagine, happened, right,
the most skilled lawyers endedup booking themselves up and
(03:51):
getting too busy and takingthemselves out of consults, and
then we ended up having the vastmajority of our consults going
to the inexperienced lawyers andon top of that, as everyone's
getting busy, they would blockthemselves, and so we're setting
consults out two or three weeks, which probably was the biggest
factor, honestly, because Ithink the just to sorry to
interrupt you there thepsychological effect of having a
(04:20):
very full calendar and goinginto a consult room already
feeling busy yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Stress.
Oh well, I just got to getthrough this, right.
You're going to lose that humanelement.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yep, yeah, so it was.
All of those things wereconspiring against the good
results, but I want to back up alittle bit that what I just
said was vitally important.
Getting new potential clientsin the console room within three
days is the biggest factor.
It's bigger than like skill inthe room, um ability to connect.
It's getting them in quicklyand we were having a big time
(04:49):
struggle doing that.
And so three weeks, you saidsometimes, yeah, that was our
average for much of 20.
What are we in 25 now?
And 23 was a two to three weekout period of time before we can
get someone in the console.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
What could happen between that first interaction
and three weeks later?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So I was listening to a podcast in 2023.
In fact, I remember I was on myway to my niece's graduation
listening to this podcast onnon-lawyer sales.
It was so eye-opening that itwas actually a thing and it was
actually working.
It was with Michael at yourPractice Mastered and he was
being interviewed by someone,and I remember sitting in the
(05:26):
graduation ceremony on the endof the aisle where I could
actually put my phone to my left, so my family couldn't see it
and I was entering theinformation because I wanted to
know more about this and readingas much as I could about it
because it was such a dire issuefor us to solve.
And that was in May-ish June orso of that year.
By July, we were ready tolaunch our non-lawyer sales
(05:49):
experiment, and so we startedwith four what we called consult
legal assistants.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And how did you find these people?
What did that look like?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
We found them on Indeed.
They were all throughout theUnited States.
So we had one in Florida, onein Arizona and one in Colorado
and I remember the other one inGeorgia.
So we had those four thatstarted with us.
We found them all on Indeed andaway we went and we had a
leader, mary, who's still theleader of that team, who was
also kind of already doing aversion of that in Illinois, so
(06:21):
we call it the Mary Project.
So he was doing a little bitalready toward that, but not not
quoting, not going all the waythrough the full consult.
So we wanted to go all the waythrough the full consult and
have these CLAs take theconsults.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And so we had to build a process and scripting
and the whole deal right.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yeah, we followed your practice mastered script.
That was 17 point kind ofscript.
It sounds like a lot but itreally is boiled down.
It's pretty easy to follow.
So we started off with theirscript.
We've since modified it heavilyand to fit family law and to
fit fixed fee in particular,which is all we do and so we
started with that and we'velearned a ton over the past two
(07:01):
years on how to get it to work.
Much of our early assumptionsproved out to be wrong for us
and some of them were right.
Ultimately I can skip to theend and we can fill in the gaps
here Ultimately, our non-lawyerconsults are incredible and I'm
(07:21):
underselling this when I say itAbsolutely astounding to the
success of our firm today.
So today we still have only fourfull-time consult legal
assistants.
Now we've had to cycle througha number of them, so we've hired
four others, trained them.
That did not ultimately workout.
So we're about a 50% hit rateon trained to.
(07:44):
Still with us.
Mary still leads the team.
We have these four four todayand in addition to that we've
learned to remove a lot of Iwould say, task or just like
paperwork off their desk.
So we have three full-timesupport teammates that are
supporting our CLAs.
They're all in the Philippines,our support teammates are and
(08:04):
all of our CLAs are here in theUnited States.
And so these three supportteammates do all of the nuts and
bolts and blocking and tacklingfor our CLAs by sending out
agreements, sending third-partyagreements out, different things
they need to do in order to getthings done.
And so today our CLAs do around60 plus percent of all of our
(08:29):
first consults and probably thisis undervalued.
They do a hundred percent ofthe follow-up.
So our lawyers are doing theother 40-ish percent or 30-ish
percent, I would say of ourconsults, but they're not having
to do the follow-up.
They're able to go in, do theconsult and go back to serving
clients, doing court work andthat sort of stuff.
(08:50):
So they're doing a CLA's aredoing a huge percentage of our
consults and are, from aperformance standpoint now these
are new, these are right offthe press.
Today, tyler, okay, and a 90 dayrolling is what we look at Our
CLAs are at at basicallyoutperforming by 20% our lawyers
(09:12):
.
Yeah, so they're 20%.
Their close rates 20% betterthan our lawyers.
That is incredible Plus thethey, because our CLA's cannot
give any legal advice whatsoeverand they don't, and we have
been, we've monitored that.
We do QA on almost all of ourour consults to make sure we're
(09:34):
all following the process.
And the biggest, the biggestno-no is not giving legal advice
you can't do, or giving legaladvice you can't give that.
So, but we're finding thatbecause they're so rigid around
our quoting process that they'reactually quoting higher than
our lawyers quote, because ourlawyers will, you know, find
ways to, you know, not notfollow the process, because they
(09:56):
just want, they want to puttheir stamp on it, and so
they're doing.
They're performing better froma closed perspective and, in
addition to that, they're alsogenerating more value from each
consult that they're doing.
So it's, it's been a total winfor Sterling lawyers and I'm
excited to share those everyonebecause I want everyone to think
(10:16):
about it.
At least think about it,consider it, because if you can
get a team built, it can really,it can really pour gas on the
growth of a law firm.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, I mean not to mention the, the hours saved for
the attorneys to do what theyneed to do.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So that brings up some of the I shared with you.
The obvious benefits right, theperformance numbers, the, the
revenue increase and all thatsort of stuff but there are.
There are some hiddenadvantages here, some hidden
disadvantages too that I'm goingto touch on here.
But from a benefit standpoint,the biggest one is to our legal
team.
Our lawyers have, when theywere doing consults, the
(10:55):
majority of all the consults.
It was a huge time suck becauseyou have to prep for the consult
and for us what that looks likeis we have to go on.
Our state bar has a website youcan look and see details about
a case.
Illinois has got it by countyand we've got it here by the
full state.
So we would always go requireour team to go on first, look up
(11:18):
anything you can find about thecase, about the parties that
are involved, so you're somewhatarmed with information.
So that takes some time.
You got to do the consult.
You do the post consult, notes,follow-ups over the ensuing
days, which a lot of times justdidn't happen.
You got to send out agreements.
You got to modify agreements.
You got to do all that sort ofstuff.
We were having our lawyers do so.
(11:39):
Now they just got to go in andpretty much do the consults with
very little pre and post work,because our team is prepping
that for them and only doing 30,30 plus percent of the consults
now.
So there's that.
It also and here's something,one of the hidden advantages our
clients coming in feel a higherconnection to our law firm
(12:03):
because they're just not talking.
They're not just talking to thelawyer and paralegal, they're
talking first with a CLA who isa lethal salesperson and they
connect so well and they're sopatient and understanding and
experienced with helping justempathize with folks going
through a family law crisis thatthey feel more connected even
(12:25):
once they get involved with us.
So it's helped our full clientexperience right there.
So it's saving attorney time,improving client experience,
making my CFO and me happy.
All of that sort of stuff is iscoming, has come together as
we've done this, so it's been areal win across the board for us
.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
It's just back to the psychological part of this
right Context.
Switching, getting out of flow,is detrimental for productivity
, and so if you have someone whois doing the same task over and
over again, they're able tostay in that flow.
I have to be human, I need tobe supportive.
I need to be emotionally in themeeting and really listening.
(13:06):
Doing that over and over againit's easier than I need to be
supportive.
I need to be emotionally in themeeting and really listening.
Doing that over and over againit's easier than I need to do
that Now.
I need to file this grievanceand do this thing and paperwork
and then come back and be ahuman, and so allowing them to
live in that flow state for alonger period of time has got to
have a benefit.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Oh, it's major for our lawyers.
Lawyers run the firm, they arethe firm right, they're on the
front lines and what we want iswe want our lawyers to do the
things that only lawyers can do.
That means giving advice andgoing to court predominantly and
setting legal strategy, thingslike that.
We don't want them worryingabout anything else, if we can
(13:44):
possibly remove thatresponsibility from them.
So they've got clear minds andclear time and margin in their
day to serve clients, call themback, do the things that need to
happen there.
So this program has enabled usto do that in a really big way
and it's also it's reduced thevolatility.
So now we get clients in theconsult room within three days
(14:04):
almost every week when wemeasure this.
So it's a real big number thatwe follow.
So the volatility hasdramatically declined.
So we're able to predict outwhere our firm is and where it's
going months out, because ourvolatility has declined so much.
So it's enabled us to plan outand plan growth, where we can
(14:27):
never do that in the pastbecause we would hit a month
where all of a sudden our salesdropped 40% or would increase 20
or 30%.
So it's stabilized all of ourforecasting and planning out
into the future and that's beenreally helpful from a growth
perspective.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Love it and I got to believe.
The close rate in the consultroom is so much higher because
of that, volatility decrease.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
It's higher because the clients are getting in right
away, so they're not gettingdiscouraged and setting an
appointment and then gettingimpatient or just needing a
lawyer sooner.
So they go talk to someone else,end up working with that
particular firm.
So we're able to get clientsand that's been the biggest win
from a close perspective andthey're also feeling heard,
(15:13):
they're telling their story,they're spilling their guts
right away with someone who isgoing to live like for all the
gray things about lawyers, theyhave a really difficult time as
they get more experience slowingit down in the console room and
just listening and lettingclients let all because they've
heard the story a hundred times.
So they want to get right tothe meat of it, like giving
advice, and they want to helpthem.
(15:33):
They want to get to the help,Whereas they don't spend the
time helping by just slowing itdown and just let the client
share that.
That's.
That's difficult to do becausefor a lot of reasons it's not.
It's coming from a good, goodplace that it happens, but our,
our CLAs are just trained thatway and they're just in tune.
So much more with that empathyfactor that's needed in that
(15:54):
first initial consult.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Well said, all right, so we've done this process for
the last two years.
And if someone is listening tothis and it's like, okay, fine,
I want to, I want to look intothis more, explore it, seen this
and it's like, okay, fine, Iwant to look into this more or
explore it, talk to us aboutsome of the pitfalls, some of
the key learnings.
What didn't we do correctlywhen setting this up that
someone can avoid?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, a couple of things here.
Well, the biggest downside tohaving non-lawyers is doing your
consults is they can't givelegal advice and so inherently
there is a certain number ofcases where they screw up by
funding them when they shouldn'tbe funded and we correct that
(16:34):
right away and refund them.
But that incurs a cost to us todo that, so there's an expense
there of refunding that creditcard right back.
So the most common are inpost-judgment cases, where
they're not uniform, likedivorce cases or fraternity
cases are.
They require almost a one-offanalysis in every single
(16:54):
post-judgment case and, likemost states have this, you can't
come back to court on apost-judgment unless you fit
certain criteria, you meetcertain thresholds and for us,
like in Wisconsin, just to givean example and I think all of
our family lawyers have the samething in their states it's a
two-year moratorium on comingback to court unless there's a
very substantial change in thecircumstances.
(17:15):
And even after two years thereneeds to be a change in
circumstances for that to happen.
And that's a legal analysis.
You can't train CLAs withthousands of different fact
patterns to really do thatconsistently right to know
whether or not we can.
They're a good candidate towork with us.
So we have some of that andthere's some times where they'll
sign up a client that is justnot a good fit for our firm and
(17:37):
they don't really sense thatright up front.
And that could be forpersonality reasons or a whole
host of reasons, a lot of whichare something's really going on
in that with that person, thatwe just don't want to work with
them because it's going to be,it's going to suck life out of
us and kill brain cells.
So there's some of that goingon.
So that's that's one of the bigdownsides.
Other ones is that you have tounderstand that it's not a hire
(18:00):
someone and they work outforever like everything.
You're going to hire andthey're not going to work and
they're going to have to move onand you're going to have to
deal with that with retraining.
Our process today is a four weektraining process and we have a
leader of our team who does thattraining.
It took us a long time to helpMary get to that level where
she's now equipped with all theskills to do that, so that
(18:23):
there's there's a leadershipchallenge there.
And then there's a four weekplus training, just observing
and training them on how toquote, how to do all that stuff.
And then, once they go on thephones or in the video,
everything's remote by video, bythe way, or we try to get it by
video, sometimes it's by phoneOnce it gets there.
Still, we, we train for the twoweeks of just like live
(18:43):
whispering, watching, you know,over the shoulder type coaching
and that sort of stuff.
So there's a long trainingcycle to do it and you need
someone that's equipped to dothat.
If the lawyer can't, becausethey're just busy, you got to
find someone else to do that.
So it takes some time todevelop that.
But if you can do that, we didit over years.
Right, this was not done likein a month or two or a quarter,
(19:06):
it was month or two or a quarteris done over years to get there
.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
So that's one of the other downsides to it.
It takes time to build thatmuscle and the hit rate of a
salesperson across industries isextremely low.
This is not an easy position tofill, correct.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Correct.
It's easy for us to acquireinterest for the position.
We'll get hundreds ofcandidates because we can search
nationally for a candidate.
So we get hundreds ofcandidates and we do it all
through.
Indeed, we pay.
Well, all in their CLAs aremaking between $120 and $160.
So it's a nice compensationthat they get for that.
(19:44):
It's a.
It's a nice compensation thatthey get for that, um, but it's
a special person that could doit and listen to stories that
are tragic and sad and hard tohear all day, day after day.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
You know it's that's, that's, that's not easy yeah,
it's got to be the right type ofperson for sure.
So, jeff, if, uh, if I'm asmall firm and I have five
attorneys and they're telling methey're overwhelmed and they
don't have time to be in theconsole room and I want to
explore this is a non-attorneysales kind of pivot.
(20:20):
Do you think it depends on thesize of the firm and what's
happening?
Is this only for larger firms,or have you seen this be
successful in smaller firms aswell?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
your firms or have you seen this be successful in
smaller firms as well?
Oh, yes, I've seen it besuccessful in other firms not
necessarily family law, fixedfee firms, because there's only
a few of us out there, okay, sothat's where I'm coming from.
But I've been a part of RichardJames's mastermind at your
Practice Mastered, where a lotof folks in that group do that,
and I've hired a couple CLAsfrom other firms and I know that
there's other mastermind groupsthat are overseeing these
(20:55):
programs as well.
So I know that it works.
So if I were a smaller firm two, three attorneys I think at
two-ish, three-ish you're readyto hire for that first role.
Now they may be required to doother things so you can't keep
them busy enough, but I thinkthat's the time to do that.
So the way I would approachdoing that is I would probably
(21:16):
send them to Richard's you knowhis education course that
they've got on training.
That's a good place to start.
That's probably the best placeI know of to begin.
If that's not something thatsomeone's interested in, then
you've got to just commit tohiring someone and have them sit
with you over weeks and inevery consult to train them, to
get them ready to do that, andif you're selling hourly
(21:38):
services, I would.
I would offer that it's easierthan selling big, big fixed fees
right up front, because it'sit's you know, it's a lower
upfront cost, the barrier toentry is a little bit lower to
get them going and it's easierto kind of understand and
explain that you're just payingfor an hour of time and this is
what it's going to cost you andthis is your initial retainer.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, yeah.
So it sounds like the warningor opportunity signs for a firm
to start thinking about this istheir consult window is too long
into the future.
You know you're waiting a week,two weeks, three weeks before
you can get someone in.
Uh, or your, your attorneys areoverwhelmed.
They can't simply handle thenumber of consults that are
(22:19):
coming in.
Um, you know which is a goodproblem to have, but something a
problem nonetheless.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, I'll underscore that without an anecdote.
So my brother, unfortunately,is going through a divorce and
he reached out to a lawyer andit was like a three week wait
for him to get in to see her andI and he ended up waiting it
out because I was kind ofhelping him see that it was
worth it and it wasn't anurgency around it.
(22:43):
But if that is like most otherpeople, they're not going to
wait for that, they're going tolike go call the next person on
their Google listings and that'swho they're going to go to.
So if if you're, and a lot offirms don't even track that
number, they don't even know butthey intuitively know if
they're busy.
So if you are busy and you'reputting people out two weeks,
(23:03):
three weeks, I would offer thatthis console legal assistant is
going to pay for themselveswithin and it's worth it to try
that.
So I think you're right.
That's the starting point.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Love it.
Jeff appreciate the insight.
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