Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen. Are you spending way too much time on repetitive marketing tasks like posting to social media or duplicating contact information in your CRM, or is your team spending time on this? Today, we're going to be talking about how automation can help your law firm save time on the back end, reduce errors and help you actually scale things. Because, look, let's face it, running a law firm is a juggling act between managing the cases, handling the client communications and keeping the business side of things afloat, which I realize. I'm glazing over a huge amount of items there, but your to-do list has got to feel endless. I know mine does and I'm guessing yours is worse. Now let's add manual marketing tasks to the mix and suddenly you feel like you've gone from treading water and holding a baby to treading water and holding two babies. You're spending hours and hours each week on things that just aren't driving the results for your firm and ultimately you're just going to feel like you're drowning. So take an example how many times have you or your staff sent the same follow-up email manually, maybe even in the last week or the last day? Or how often do you scramble to keep track of leads to see who has actually been, you know, contacting the lead, just because someone forgot to update the spreadsheet. These repetitive tasks don't just waste time. I think you can clearly see why they drain energy and lead to missed opportunities. And when we start talking about scaling which is where the big dollars come from it becomes nearly impossible when your team is already stretched thin on these processes. This is where marketing automation comes in and really changes the game. By automating routine processes, not only are we ensuring consistent follow-ups with potential clients, we're minimizing error and we are freeing up tons of time for more valuable work. This is really important when we come to spend time on strategizing how to grow the practice. But look, it's not just about efficiency. Automation actually enhances client experience by delivering faster responses, personalized communications and a really seamless end-to-end journey, from the moment that initial contract is signed all the way through to the end of the case.

Speaker 1: 2:24

In today's competitive legal landscape, automation is not a luxury. This isn't something you can think about doing later. It is a necessity for firms that want to thrive. So how do we start? This feels incredibly overwhelming. There are a million avenues and a million different platforms that all want to take my money. Let's just break it down with three simple strategies. I'm going to tell you these three strategies. You can use any one of them today on your practice and they will start getting your feet wet with automation in a way that is going to work for you long-term. Number one is streamlining client intake, and you can do this yourself, but you can also call me if it sounds overwhelming.

Speaker 1: 3:02

Client intake this sets the tone for the entire relationship you have with a potential client, and in a lot of cases it can be really difficult to change this relationship. But for most law firms, it's one of the most tedious and inconsistent processes. How many times have you lost a lead because they didn't get a timely response and someone else followed up? Or how often do you have to deal with the back and forth of scheduling? It's constant. Streamlining client intake with automation can solve these pain points right away and it makes the process smoother both for you and your team, but also for your clients.

Speaker 1: 3:37

The first step here, the easy step, is to use online intake forms Tools like Clio, grow, typeform, formstack there are a billion of these form tools. They all allow you to create customized forms that collect essential client information up front. These forms, while I don't always recommend this for intake, but they can be directly embedded on the website on a private page or shared via email so that it makes it really easy for the lead to provide you the information you need without a whole bunch of back and forth. And these forms integrate with automated email responders, so when a client fills out the form, they can immediately receive a personalized email that confirms the receipt of that information and then outlines their next steps. This not only reassures the client, but it also saves your team from manually crafting these individual replies. And scheduling. Consultations can also be automated. As part of this flow, tools like Calendly, which I really love and I use constantly. They let clients choose an available time slot from your calendar because it syncs directly with your calendar, and this completely eliminates the headache of coordinating schedules. And you can even add automated reminders that reduce no-shows and wasted time and, you know, keep people informed about what's going to happen in their meeting.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Let's look at an example. So let's take a personal injury firm that mostly relied on phone calls for intake. Maybe they'd get a few emails or referrals or whatever, but let's say it's mostly on phone calls coming into the firm for the intake, the firm is going to lose leads because it can take hours or even days for a human to respond, and when they switched to an automated process, leads can now come from an online form at any time, receive instant confirmation and book a consultation within minutes. No human interaction needed from our side. What's the result? Our response time immediately dropped from 24 hours on average to less than five minutes, and conversion rates jumped by 40% because we were responding immediately. Even though it was automated, it was immediate.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Streamlining this client intake is not just about saving time. While that is a great number to show if you're the marketing person, if you're not the partner attorney at the firm, it's great to show that, hey, we're going to save money and we're going to save time, but the reality is that streamlining this intake process is about showing your clients that their needs are your priority, and with automation, you can create a professional, efficient and highly client-friendly process that sets your firm apart from the competition. On this subject, though, let's talk a little bit about email marketing campaigns. This is one that it sort of flows well with this intake process, because, when it comes to nurturing leads and keeping your current clients engaged, email marketing is still one of the most effective tools at our disposal, but sending individual emails manually, or even like with the automated stuff that's built into Gmail now, it's really time consuming to do this for every lead and every client, and it's basically impossible to do it consistently, and the reality is it's just outdated. Automating our email campaigns, specifically the drip ones the drip campaigns this is an incredibly powerful way to stay top of mind with basically no effort once it's set up. So we've talked about drip campaigns a lot.

Speaker 1: 6:52

It's a series of automated emails that are sent over time, designed to educate, engage and build trust with the audience. This is really great for both nurturing new leads and for maintaining relationships with existing clients and potential referral sources. But the key here is consistency. When we use a program like ActiveCampaign or HubSpot or MailChimp, the emails get sent out automatically at these scheduled intervals, ensuring that our audience receives valuable content without us having to lift a finger, and they receive it in a way that feels comfortable because it's consistent. These tools the MailChimp, hubspot, activecampaign, convertkit there are a million of them they make it really really easy to set up these campaigns.

Speaker 1: 7:34

You can create the customized email sequences that go out at specific times, and you can also create emails that go out based on specific action a lead takes. So if there's a contact or a potential client who fills out a form, they can automatically be added to a series of offerings on the legal tips that you offer, or case studies or information on your firm's expertise. All of this is designed to show your authority and build trust, but if they then click on a link, you could have an entire another version of that series that helps redirect the person into more action. But look, automation doesn't just help you convert leads. It can also enhance your relationship with existing clients. Instead of every attorney having to send out manual emails when each of their cases is closed, imagine if we could send out automated email to the clients right when their case is closed that thanks them for their business and offers additional resources like a postcase guide or even something like a referral bonus, obviously depending on your bar rules in your state. But these emails they feel really personal and they feel thoughtful and we don't have to manually intervene. Now I could give a specific example, but this story has been told over and over again. The reality about automating your email marketing is that we not only save time, but we ensure that we're consistently nurturing relationships and positioning our firm as a trusted authority in our field.

Speaker 1: 8:57

So let's move on to strategy number three, which is social media scheduling. I've talked a little bit about social media on the podcast. It's something I don't go into a lot, but there's a lot of chaos in the world of social media at the moment, and scheduling it does seem like a good way to minimize that chaos. Having this consistent online presence, whether it's on social or a specific platform, on social LinkedIn versus TikTok versus Facebook versus Instagram it is critical for building brand awareness and engaging with potential clients. We've talked about why it's important to have social media platforms in your marketing strategy, but maybe not to have all of them. But let's be honest posting on social media every day, whether you're posting on one channel or five channels, it feels like a full-time job. It can feel like a full-time job. It just does. And that's where social media scheduling tools come in, because they allow us to plan and automate posts so we can focus on the other areas of our practice that sometimes we just feel are a lot more fun.

Speaker 1: 9:59

By automating our social media posts, we can maintain this steady stream of content without the daily grind. I've talked about consistency, and it's no different in social media scheduling. So, using tools like Hootsuite, buffer and even things like Later which I personally haven't played with, but I've heard about it they allow us to schedule posts in advance across multiple platforms like Facebook, linkedin X, tiktok, instagram, etc. You can batch, create content for the week or the month and then schedule it to go live at optimal times without having to be online and engaged to press, publish and scheduling. It doesn't just save us time. It ensures that our firm stays visible and relevant. It helps manipulate the algorithm in the right way and we can use it to start creating our content calendar with posts about legal tips, case studies, client testimonials, industry news.

Speaker 1: 10:49

I talked about building a content calendar earlier in 2025 and Buffer or Hootsuite these tools are great ways to get started with that, this consistent posting. It helps your followers stay engaged, shows potential clients that you're active and committed to providing value, and it does the same thing for the platform that you're posting on. I guarantee the more consistent you are, the more exposure your platform is going to give you. Now it's really easy to see why each of these tips helps you out on a time basis, but the reality is that the more time you create for yourself, the more money you're going to be able to make by spending more time on other areas of marketing. Automating social media posts it allows you to stay ahead of the trend, share updates timely and manage multiple accounts from one platform. It's a simple way to maintain this strong, professional online presence without the constant need for all the manual effort, whether it's promoting a particular blog post, sharing the latest in legal news. Having this content system and really having automation throughout your practice is a game changer when it comes to marketing.

Speaker 1: 11:52

Now, before we go, what I want to say is this I recognize that these things are challenging. I recognize that it feels like learning an entire new world of tools, and that's because it is. If you need someone to help, please don't hesitate to reach out to me or talk to your marketing team. Most of this stuff is old hat for many marketers, and I may have been in the game for a while now, but a lot of the stuff that we're doing when it comes to automation is just basic for a lot of new marketers. So make sure that your team can either do this or get in touch with somebody who can. If you need my help, you can always visit my website. That's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out RosenAdvertisingcom for more Thanks.