How to Handle the Sudden Increase in Intake for Immigration Lawyers

In today’s rapidly evolving immigration landscape, law firms are experiencing an unprecedented surge in client inquiries. Along with navigating the complexities of rapidly changing immigration laws, immigration law firms need to streamline their intake process to capture, qualify, and onboard clients. Leveraging technology that allows you to efficiently and effectively manage high-volume intake becomes not just beneficial but necessary.

Understanding the Current Immigration Landscape

Immigrants to the United States have historically faced an intricate and complex landscape of laws and procedures leading to legal status in the country. Recent legislative and executive policy changes aimed at restricting immigration and increasing deportations have further complicated the pathway for immigrants hoping to immigrate to, or remain, in the U.S. legally.

Expedited removal, changes to asylum eligibility, revocation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and modifications to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program have created uncertainty for both undocumented and documented immigrants. Immigrants who have been living in the U.S. legally are concerned about their legal status going forward, and those who are in the process of acquiring legal status are anxious about the prospect of deportation. Consequently, immigration law firms have been inundated with a flood of urgent requests for legal assistance.

Challenges of High-Volume Intake in Immigration Law

Managing a high volume of client intakes, particularly when the volume increases suddenly and substantially, can challenge a firm’s resources, which can impact the quality of service provided to prospective clients. Specific challenges your firm might face as a result of an increase in intakes include:

• Administrative Overload: Support staff, typically the first point of contact for prospective clients, may become overwhelmed trying to process a significant increase in prospective client contacts while simultaneously gathering relevant data and scheduling follow-up contacts and consultations.
• Incorrect Data Collection and Management: In the absence of standardized and scalable intake procedures, costly errors and omissions can occur. Missing information, duplicate records, and poorly organized client files can jeopardize case outcomes as well as client trust.
• Communication Errors: Failing to communicate with new and prospective clients in a timely manner can be detrimental to an immigration law firm’s reputation. Clients may turn elsewhere for legal assistance because of communication lag time given the time-sensitive nature of many immigration issues.
• Security and Compliance Risks: While all client information should be considered confidential, immigration clients frequently provide particularly sensitive data, including their current legal status within the U.S. Inadequate data security practices and procedures can put your law firm at risk of breaching both your ethical duties and your clients’ trust.

Implement a CRM for Effective Contact Management

Immigration law issues are frequently time-sensitive, even urgent, making it crucial for your firm to respond in real time to prospective client inquiries despite the high-volume intake. Fortunately, there are tools and strategies available to immigration law firms facing the challenges that are inherent with an intake volume increase. A legal client intake and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system like Law Ruler provides you with access to a suite of tools specifically designed to address high-volume intake challenges, including:
 

• Advanced Legal CRM: Law Ruler’s centralized dashboard provides instant, simplified access to client contact information, intake status, case details, and communication history. This allows attorneys and support staff to track a case from initial contact through case resolution.
• Intelligent Intake Forms: Dynamic intake forms that can adapt based on client responses, resulting in more accurate client qualification. Along with improving data collection, these forms also help determine whether a client qualifies for services early on in the intake process.
• Automated Communication: Personalized communication, including emails and text messages, can be sent to clients during the intake process as well as throughout their case, reducing the number of lost leads and missed appointments.
• Intake & Marketing Platform: Offers real-time insights into intake metrics and marketing performance, allowing you to make informed and strategic decisions based on which platforms are bringing in the most leads and the efficiency with which they are converted into clients.
• Document Automation: Automatically generate and manage client letters, forms, and important legal documents, reducing both administrative expenses and avoidable errors.
• Automated Lead Capture: Law Ruler lets you automate and streamline the capture of client leads from website forms, telephone calls, and chatbots. This ensures that all inquiries are logged into the system and followed-up on to prevent losing prospective clients.

Steps to Better Manage Client Intake

Optimizing the client intake process is an essential key to acquiring new immigration law clients. Law Ruler helps you achieve this goal by following these steps:

1. Utilize Multi-Lingual Forms: By its very nature, immigration law involves clients from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. Catering to prospective clients by offering intake forms in a variety of languages is a meaningful—and often overlooked—first step in capturing new clients.
2. Develop Smart, Logical Intake Forms: A well-designed intake form should be able to dynamically adjust future questions based on previous responses. For example, if a prospective client indicates that they wish to change their current status in the U.S., the follow-up questions will focus on procedures required for a change of status. Law Ruler’s smart forms can help improve both data collection and client qualification.
3. Automate Communication: Prompt and consistent communication is the key to both client engagement and client satisfaction. The use of a personalized, automated email or text message shortly after a lead comes in shows prospective clients that their case matters and that they will receive the legal assistance they need. Automated communication can also be used to remind clients of upcoming appointments or as a reminder to submit documents.
4. Train Staff and Create Intake Scripts: Standardized intake scripts and training ensure that staff interactions with clients will be consistent, courteous, and professional from the moment a prospective client reaches out to your firm.

In the face of rapidly evolving immigration policies and increased client demand, your firm cannot afford to rely on outdated systems or manual processes. The intake process is where your firm’s relationship with a client begins, and a disorganized or inefficient process can derail that relationship before it has time to take root. To remain competitive and meet the increased demand, your immigration law firm must adapt by making use of cutting-edge technology and implementing efficient intake procedures.

Streamline Your Intake Process with Law Ruler

Law Ruler provides robust and customizable solutions tailored to the challenges faced by law firms today. From dynamic and multilingual intake forms to automated communications and document creation, Law Ruler allows your firm to process more intakes, provide quality service, and improve client satisfaction while also reducing administrative costs.

Embracing technology that refines your intake and case management procedures places your firm in an ideal position to handle the current influx of immigration clients as well as any future increases. To learn how Law Ruler can help improve your client intake and case management systems, schedule a personalized one-on-one demo today.