There are many reasons why, as a business, you would opt for the use of advanced software to streamline certain processes. One of the biggest reasons behind our development of GOOD LAW SOFTWARE was seeking to resolve a recurring issue that involves responding to all our clients’ legal enquiries in an efficient and expeditious manner. However, it can be an ambitious task, particularly if there are many enquiries to juggle alongside one another.

For instance, a specific issue for our founder was the number of enquiries coming in over the weekend coupled with the number of enquiries received at the start of the week. This backlog was becoming increasingly difficult to clear; after all, who do you prioritise?

Another issue is, of course, time. Consider an admin sifting through a number of enquiries from the previous day or two whilst trying to manage the constant influx of new ones. In such a scenario, a firm would be inclined to deal with the most immediate requests made at the start of the week, ultimately losing out on a lot of potential connections with prospective clients.

Responsiveness

Several recently conducted consumer surveys and reports show that consumers are expecting an increasingly higher level of responsiveness from businesses. In fact, sales data shows that it’s usually the businesses that are first to act that win over clients, and there’s, unfortunately, very little margin for error – the trajectory for an ideal response time begins to drop sharp and fast from when any request is made. Ideally, you’d need to get back to any enquiries within 5 minutes, and anything beyond 30 minutes is heavily leaving the outcome to chance.

GOOD LAW SOFTWARE provides a direct solution to this. Any enquiry made via your website or request form will be identified as an individual or business matter and automatically log onto the system and create a new case enquiry without any manual administration from you. It will also send a notification to both parties to ensure that your enquiry receives a prompt response and that you’re kept updated about any progressions to your enquiry.

One of our partners boasts 40% growth in revenue because of this implementation and change to their workflow.

Billing by the hour

Let’s be frank – in a world where technology dominates and automation is the hot topic, you’re going to have an increasingly difficult time maintaining a model that requires you to manually draft legal documents that can be created at the press of a button.

Eventually, whether this model can be maintained will be out of anyone’s control because of 2 inevitable factors:

1. Increased competition from practices that have improved their service offering through technology, and 

2. Increased expectations for transparency from your clients because of this.

Do not make the mistake of thinking ignorance or apathy from your client base will remove this risk – it’s only a matter of time before educational content like this reaches them. Or they find themselves speaking to somebody about a faster and more cost-effective way of getting the same service.

The concept of billable hours is an oxymoron in the digital age, but this shouldn’t be seen as a negative. Instead of perceiving it as a loss, partners should view it as an opportunity. Rather than unnecessarily accumulating charges through repetitive tasks, businesses can redirect their focus and surplus funding on sourcing more clients or developing more lucrative service offerings.