[12:23] “I’m still very involved in marketing, and even more so in intake. The more conferences I go to and see lawyers with firms way bigger than mine, everybody says the same thing. It’s intake, intake, intake.”

[12:40] “So we’re very involved. Speed is important for criminal defense. Also making sure people feel calm, understood, and listened to. We are their bastion of hope. We are their security blanket.”

[13:00] “We don’t do hard sales; we build relationships, but it is also making sure that we’re on top of things. When we say we’re going to do something, we do it. If we schedule them for a phone or zoom appointment, then we’re not late. We’re not going to miss it. We are all over the phones and making sure that we are always available.”

[13:25] “I was at a conference last week and I took a call at 10:30 pm. That’s what we do. We always have attorneys on call nights and weekends, and it was my turn. In criminal defense, nobody plans for this. We’re like emergency room doctors. There are some doctors that have their office, and there are other ones that run the E.R. That is us.”

How do you keep that high level of customer service consistent throughout your firm, from the person answering a phone all the way through?

[14:23] “It takes a lot of coaching and a lot of mentoring. But it goes back to having clearly defined core values and then hiring, firing, and training based on those core values.”

[14:36] “It’s something we have learned a lot about in the last three years. It starts with hiring, which is designed like our marketing to attract and repel. So first and foremost, it’s about people who wouldn’t be a good fit or don’t fit our core values or don’t understand what we do for people here.”

[15:09] “We have invested heavily in training in the last two years, and we have built tons of modules, videos, and tests for training for many of our departments. We record our calls, and go over them as a team. We have scripts, but always want to make sure we don’t take out the human component of it. Right? ‘I got arrested and the police beat me up.’ ‘Okay, where do you live? Because that was the next question, right?”

[15:46] “We want to hire naturally empathetic people and then continue to motivate them and give them tips, tricks, and responses for different scenarios that they might encounter like objections to price.”

How far is the initial intake person taking the prospect? When is the prospect passed off to the next level?

[16:20] “I know some firms have non-attorney salespeople. We don’t believe in having attorneys do it because we do it differently. We don’t do consults; we do strategy sessions. Our strategy sessions run 45-90 minutes. We’re not giving legal advice; we’re giving legal analysis. We do have a script that we follow. But we first get to know you as a human being.”

[17:02] “We need to get to know you. If I was to represent you versus somebody else for the same charge and similar facts, the representation could differ based on what you have to lose, where you’re going, and where you are in your life. Our big focus is building the relationship. We go slowly through that process and it builds trust. And trust is what I think all of this is about.”