Fat Cat Syndrome: The state of mind one possesses when one becomes so successful, he/she disregards the inefficiencies and lost opportunities.
I speak with plaintiff attorneys daily. Too often I hear “my intake has worked for 20 years” or “we have other areas in the firm we need to focus on instead”. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my opinion on the importance of intake is a little biased given my current role with Captorra and ICE (Intake Conversion Experts). However, with that experience comes witnessing the good, bad and ugly in our current industry.
I strongly believe the biggest reason intake is overlooked is due to the “fat cat syndrome”. Compared to other job jobs, practicing as a plaintiff attorney can be quite lucrative. Just like anything else in life, complacency can become our worst enemy. We fall into that comfort zone and believe our company is going to continue to be successful regardless of whether we make any changes. This is a very dangerous spot to be in our current marketplace.
We hosted an intake seminar in NY where 25 well known plaintiff firms around the country attended. Prior to the conference, we submitted a web inquiry for each of the law firms. We used the following scenario:
Scenario Details
- Auto Accident
- Happened Yesterday
- Not At Fault
- MRI Scheduled
Results
- 10 Firms Placed Phone Calls (at all)
- 2 Called Within 15 Minutes
- 3 Placed Phone Calls Within 15 Minutes to 2 Hours
- These firms never placed a second call.
- 5 Placed Phone Calls Before the End of the Day
- These firms never placed a second call.
- 4 Firms Sent Emails Asking for Me to Call Them
- 11 Firms Never Attempted Contact
You may find these numbers hard to believe, but they are real results. When the attendees approached us after the seminar asking for their firm’s specific results, the two most common responses were “it must have been a busy day” or “that couldn’t have possibly been our firm”. Now, I understand that different firms prioritize different types of cases, but the response rate to these ghost inquiries was staggering. It solidified my belief of how disconnected several Partners and Admins are to what is taking place in their law firms and within their intake department.
No one can argue that you can’t litigate and/or settle a case you don’t have. Then, why is the intake department such an afterthought for so many plaintiff firms? The answer, I believe, is the fat cat syndrome.
This is where Captorra comes in to play. Our case intake and lead conversion software is designed to automate your follow up and sign up procedures. All your web leads, chat submissions, after hours calls and third party leads get posted into Captorra automatically. This allows your staff to focus more on the intake process and not hand keying data into the system. Captorra automatically generates further follow up tasks for your team if needed along with automated email drip campaigns and text messaging. eSign via text messaging has been a tremendous help to our clients to make sure they get qualified claimants signed up immediately.