Wolters Kluwer’s Future Ready Lawyer 2022 report reveals that 79% of respondents saw meeting changing client expectations as one of the top impactful trends facing legal professionals over the next three years.
What are the tangible benefits of a client-centric law firm, and how does this approach directly benefit your firm?
Law firms we’ve spoken to are actively evaluating the value they are delivering against the results they need across a range of attributes based on changing demands.
It’s obvious that firms cannot simply rely on keeping “satisfied” clients – they must continuously look for ways to exceed expectations, increase their value, and respond to emerging client needs in an agile fashion.
Reducing onboarding friction
A lengthy and cumbersome onboarding process won’t win you any favours with clients.
How long does it take you to open a new file – a few days? A few weeks? More?
Two weeks to onboard a new client is the industry average – which is an exceptionally long time to wait until billable work can begin. Not only does this process risk frustrating the prospective client, it also creates a huge amount of manual work and wasted time for lawyers who are looking to get started on substantive work right away.
Adopting a truly client-centric approach means considering your client’s complete journey with your law firm, from the initial enquiry to the delivery of the substantive work.
The beginning of the client journey
To avoid prospective clients dropping off at the new enquiry stage, seek ways to reduce friction and offer simple ways to interact, like getting documents signed easily and supplying information in an automated, digital way.
A digital onboarding solution, like the one Legl provides, creates a seamless process and actually increases client engagement. Instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach, you can use Legl’s platform to create automated and tailored onboarding workflows for each different department and client type.
Think carefully about the journey for your clients, and where it might be cumbersome for them – for example, ask for all documents at the same time, so clients don’t have to go looking twice.
With Legl, new client onboarding is completed by the client via a simple and secure link that takes them step by step through the onboarding process (including CDD), and guides the client through the information and documents that they need to provide. Legl’s platform enables law firms to deliver a fully client-centric approach – clients can complete the process on any personal device (whether mobile, desktop, tablet), at a time of their choosing.
From speaking to law firms, we’ve discovered that 49% of clients complete their onboarding processes out of office hours using Legl.
Creating a well-thought-out onboarding experience by investing in the right tools, thinking through the right processes for your firm, and evolving that process when you see opportunities to improve might require some investment, but it will lead to a faster onboarding process, fewer questions for the duration of your engagement, and happier staff and clients alike.
“In the past 30 days alone, we have successfully processed close to 500 conveyancing transactions where the clients onboarded quickly and compliantly with Legl’s platform. 75-85% of our clients complete the identity verification and onboarding steps within 1 day – a turnover we’ve never seen before.”
Ian Bury, Sales & Marketing Manager, GloverPriest
Increase client time-to-value with Legl
- Digitised back office functions enable fee earners to focus on higher value work.
- Detailed CDD reports are produced for compliance teams for swift review.
- Intuitive gathering of client information digitally supports Source of Funds analysis and other key AML processes.
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