Can you relate: Customer relationship management software

Jeffrey S. Krause is a senior consultant at Affinity Consulting Group LLC.

Jeffrey R. Schoenberger is a senior consultant at Affinity Consulting Group LLC.

For lawyers, relationships are not just important — they are fundamental to success and longevity. While most of the business world uses customer relationship management software, the legal industry has been slow to adopt it, despite the undeniable importance of relationships in legal practice. 

This slow adoption represents a missed opportunity. CRM software can provide essential tools for lawyers to track important information about the people they meet and turn that information into mutually beneficial business relationships, helping foster strong, long-lasting connections. 

Keep track of facts 

You know the names of your client Sally’s spouse and children, her hobbies, favorite sports teams, and so on. Knowing that Sally’s spouse is Jim, she has a son, Thomas, in high school who plays volleyball, and she enjoys building ships in bottles has no bearing on legal work for her small business. But, of course, it’s courteous, it could be interesting — maybe you like ships in bottles, too — and it builds connections and rapport. 

For basic facts like these, you don’t need a heavyweight program. David Rockefeller, chief executive of Chase Manhattan Corporation, did it all with Rolodex cards.¹ 

Whether you use Apple or Google Contacts, Microsoft Outlook, or just a folder with text files in your default notes app, capture the relevant information in a way that makes sense to you. Complexity can hinder, especially if you value mobile access. 

In Apple Contacts, for example, in addition to name, phone, email, and address, it includes a “related name” field. Based on the example above, you could add two related names and relationships: “spouse” for Jim and “son” for Thomas. The related name field can hold whatever you like. Instead of just Thomas, you could write “Thomas (volleyball; middle blocker).” It’s just a text field. Outlook contains a similar feature. 

What about hobbies (ships in bottles), business wins, or other news Sally shares? You will find contact apps limiting. You could use a combination of the notes fields and a TextExpander snippet to keep a log of events, as one example. Suppose Sally said September was her business’s first month of $200,000-plus sales. You could open Contacts, click in the “note” section, type the date, and then type “first month of over $200,000 revenue.”

Whether it’s Apple Contacts, Outlook, or a cross-platform notes app, this system travels with you.

Use facts for business growth 

What the above-described system offers in simplicity, speed, and mobility, it sacrifices in flexibility, reporting, and automation. For example, to us humans, “court clerk,” “ct clerk,” and “clerk of courts” are the same person or office. Not to a computer. If you wanted to create an email list of everyone you noted talking to about an issue with the court clerk’s office, it’d be a mess to pull together because the data isn’t “sanitized.” You’re looking at a labor-intensive process to assemble an email list. 

Programs like Clio Grow, Lawmatics, and HubSpot provide organizational structure, reporting, and communications tools that humble contacts apps cannot match. Fullfledged CRM programs manage all stages of recruiting a new client or a new matter for an existing client. Suppose Sally wants to buy the building she currently rents for her business. You would create a new matter in Lawmatics (or an intake in Clio Grow) and add Sally as the contact. You can now track all interactions with Sally in persuading her to hire your firm to handle the commercial real estate purchase. 

CRM software tracks matter stages such as new lead, under review, engagement agreement, and retained. Each matter contains a calendar-centric timeline where you can add notes, schedule appointments, track emails, assign tasks, and send and receive documents. 

These capabilities may remind you of practice management software. While there are similarities, significant distinctions come in reporting and marketing tools. The more you use the CRM software, the more you can report on — for example, what percent of commercial real estate prospects greater than $500,000 become clients. Or how many inquiries resulted from an educational event you held at the community center. Or the average estimated value of clients who hire you versus those who do not. Where do you see the best return on your time? Does reporting show that Sally introduces you to lots of individuals who become clients? 

This is where CRM software shines. Lawyers traditionally market in one of two ways. One way is loud. They broadcast their name in any way they can, obtain a large number of leads, and hope that some are of sufficient quality. The other way is to quietly rely on word of mouth. Not as many leads come in, but they tend to be of higher quality. Unfortunately, neither of these methods are very targeted.

CRM software allows you to identify patterns you might miss and take advantage of them. If you market loudly, is your television ad working as well as your radio ad or your billboard? Which timeslot is working best? If you market quietly, what patterns can you identify in your best referral sources? Which sources are providing you with the best referrals? What patterns exist in those referrals and the work you do for them? This type of information lets you put your marketing dollars to work where they are most effective. 

Where practice management software focuses on handling matters for clients, CRM software focuses on the steps from prospect to signed client. In our example, once Sally agrees to representation on the purchase, a CRM tool like Lawmatics can send an engagement agreement template for her to electronically sign along with an option to pay any retainer. It can then transfer the collected information to practice management programs. 

Get started

For facts and mobility, start with either Apple Contacts or Google Contacts. Both support related names and notes. Google Contacts also supports user-defined fields. Each is accessible from the web. 

For a complete CRM solution, look for one that connects with your practice management system. A robust integration will save you time as you turn more tidbits into leads into clients.

Endnotes 
1 Joann S. Lublin, David Rockefeller’s Rolodex Was the Stuff of Legend. Here’s a First Peek. The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 5, 2017), www.wsj.com/articles/davidrockefellers-famous-rolodex-is-astonishing-heres-a-first-peek-1512494592.