CASE STUDY
Legl helped the firm move closer to its vision for making it easy and instinctive for everyone in the firm to deliver excellent client service.
As Director of Client Services, Julia Taylor ensures the Debenhams Ottaway client experience is seamless from initial contact through to matter completion and beyond: “My role in the firm is to deliver that excellent first impression, uphold client expectations, and support the lawyers to be as accessible and responsive as possible.”
Julia explains, “My overarching goal is to oversee and understand how people choose us, how they use us, how they pay us, and why they stay with us.” As Director of Client Services, Julia was unwavering in her approach to ensure the Debenhams Ottaway’ 100-person-strong, multi-service law firm set its focus on the client experience. From a background of working in law firms for over 30 years, Julia’s role at Debenhams Ottaway is to form and maintain the foundations of exceptional client service across the firm.
The aims for Debenhams Ottaway included:
Debenhams Ottaway are a multi-service law firm based in Hertfordshire, known for delivering clients outstanding service and award-winning legal advice. The firm is unrelenting in their dedication to growth through doing more for their people, their personal and business clients and their communities.
Firm Focus
Corporate, Employment, Family, Litigation, Property, Wills, Trusts & Probate
Debenhams Ottaway pride themselves on being accessible to their clients, but it meant that the team were spending too much time taking an old-fashioned approach to client payments – “We still had people wanting to pay their invoices at reception or by cheque.”
Prior to using Legl, the firm took client payments via BACS or card payments over the phone, often taking 5-7 minutes to take each phone payment. These un-client friendly methods meant the finance team and receptionists were spending time handling manual finance transactions, rather than adding value to clients and the business.”
Julia explains, “Clients could only ring up and pay their invoices with cards between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday, which wasn’t offering them a convenient way to pay.”
Julia received a letter from a healthcare provider which offered a link to click and pay. Although Julia had been considering the idea of a digital payments solution for some time, this was the pivotal point that prompted the change, “I knew we needed this for our law firm.”
Although Julia was sold, she faced concerns from the law firm’s partners that a tech-enabled payments solution would potentially cause clients to pay incorrect amounts; thus heightening their compliance risk exposure.
A chat with the Legl team quickly put their minds at ease. The finance team receives a notification when a client payment is made – enabling them to easily check the payment source, amount and compliance. The built-in grace period of 6-12 hours allows the firm to deny a payment if there are questions as to the source or amount of funds.
After gathering reviews from other satisfied Legl customers, Legl became Debenhams Ottaway’s solution. “What I really liked about Legl was that upon enquiry, the client service team gave me examples of how other firms use the platform and how to get the most out of it, which was a big selling point.”
Through Legl’s platform, Debenhams Ottaway also now includes an email link within its invoice for easy payment and uses the pre-populated payment request links via email for overdue invoices. “Clients started using payment links almost immediately, and our finance team found that many clients now pay more quickly than they would have otherwise. In fact, we’ve saved 60-70 hours across 600+ payments.
The feedback from our clients has been positive, too, with one commenting that, ‘Wow, this is amazing!’ with regard to paying online.” Julia explains, “He was really impressed with the fact that he could pay online, whenever it suited him, and in whatever way he wanted to do it.”
Initially, Julia felt that Legl’s platform seemed tailored to a younger client base, but many of Debenhams Ottaway’s clients have picked it up really easily, “The automated, bespoke reminders and payment links have made it easy and really driven the speedy payments, especially for overdue invoices. Legl delivers our clients an easy way to pay their invoices which is great for them and us.”
Julia is delighted to note that, “Legl implementation and in-house debtor recovery tactics have seen our debtor days drop from 34 to 26 days.”
“Legl has been really easy for the finance team to be trained on. And Legl’s client service team has answered all of our questions really quickly.”
Julia advises any law firms currently evaluating Legl’s pay solution to “get on and do it! In terms of helping the clients and being efficient internally, it’s a little bit of a no brainer.”
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Start automating your credit control process to reduce the time spent on costly admin and quickly recover outstanding payments.
Help support your clients with any outstanding debt by splitting payments into more management instalments. Get access to financial management features, such as enhanced reporting, and reminders to automatically follow-up with your client when payments are due.
Verify the card owner and billing address ahead of taking a card payment from your client.
Before your client is prompted to pay, you can run a check to confirm that the details of your client match the details of the person making the payment. Get all the information you need to verify the payment, or decide if any additional CDD is required.
Process bank transfers with additional compliance checks, including source of funds, client details, and more. Review or reconcile payments before they arrive in your client account to ensure maximum control.
You can offer a new set of bank details for online payments via Legl and for other payment methods, such as bank details on your own invoices. Incoming bank payments will be visible in your dashboard and paid out alongside your card payments.
Attract new clients and support clients who prefer to pay invoices in instalments.
Only ask your client to authorise payments once, and automatically collect the total amount across multiple payment instalments. Control the number of instalments and over what time period payments will be taken, helping your clients to better manage their finances.
Send payment requests to your client via SMS. Create automatic reminders to be sent to your client at intervals once the payment has been initially requested via SMS or a letter sent to their address.
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