Eleven people asked this law firm for help last quarter. Nobody called them back.
A nine-person family and personal-injury firm in Cobb County was paying for ads, a website and a referral network that worked, then letting the inquiries sit. Web forms landed in a shared inbox. Voicemails turned into emails nobody owned. By the time someone called back, the caller had usually hired the firm that answered first. We fixed the gap between "someone reached out" and "someone called them back", inside the software the firm already paid for.
What it was costing
Nobody at the firm was careless, and that was the hard part. Intake belonged to whoever was free. On a day when the paralegal was in a deposition and the receptionist was on the phones, it belonged to nobody.
We went through the firm's intake mailbox for the previous quarter together. Sixty-three new inquiries had come in. Eleven never got a callback at all. The median first callback on the rest was 26 hours, and anything that arrived after 3 p.m. on a Friday waited closer to three days.
Then the managing partner ran the numbers with us. About one in five inquiries the firm actually spoke to became a signed matter, at an average fee of around $4,200. Eleven unanswered inquiries a quarter at that rate is roughly $9,000 in fees every quarter, about $37,000 a year, paid to the firm down the street. That counts only the inquiries nobody answered. Some of the 26-hour callbacks were lost too, and nobody could say how many.
"I'd find out we'd lost someone when opposing counsel mentioned he'd retained them. That's a terrible way to learn your intake is broken."
Managing partner
The software already in place
Nothing new had to be bought. The firm ran Microsoft 365, with one shared intake mailbox that both the website's contact form and the phone system's voicemail-to-email sent to. Matters lived in Clio Manage. And Clio Grow, the intake tool, was already included in the firm's Clio plan and had never been switched on.
That last one decided the build. We check what a client's software can already do before building anything, and here the right home for every lead was a tool they were already paying for. The attorneys would see the lead in Clio the moment it became a matter.
How it works
In plain English: every inquiry, from any door, goes to one place, becomes a lead with a named owner and a clock, and gets chased until a person has called.
A flow in the firm's Microsoft 365 watches the intake mailbox. Each new message is read for the caller's name, phone number, email and the kind of matter, then logged in Clio Grow as a lead and assigned by a simple rota: whoever is on intake that day, with a named backup when that person's calendar shows them out. The owner gets a Teams message within a minute.
Logging the call stops the clock. That's one click in Clio Grow, or a reply of "called" to the Teams message. If two business hours pass with no call logged, the owner gets a reminder. Four hours in, the managing partner gets a message with the caller's name and who owns them. At 5 p.m. everyone who handles intake gets a short list of what arrived that day, who called whom and what's still waiting.
What we automated
The sorting, the logging and the assigning, plus every reminder and the end-of-day list. Whoever reached out also gets an acknowledgment within a minute, from the firm's own address, in wording the firm wrote and approved, so they know a person will call and roughly when.
What still needs a person
Every call. The system never decides whether to take a case, never runs a conflict check and never says a word about anyone's legal matter. It can't close a lead either: marking an inquiry "not a fit" is a person's click, with a reason attached. Changing the rota, reassigning a lead and rewording the acknowledgment all stay with the office manager.
Results
Measured over the first 90 days after go-live, against the quarter before:
- Inquiries that never got a callback: 11 the quarter before, 0 since.
- Median time to first callback: 26 hours before, 47 minutes now during business hours.
- Escalations to the managing partner: 5 in the first month, 1 in the second, none in the third. People started calling before the reminder came.
- Signed new matters: 9 the quarter before, 14 in the first full quarter with the system running.
The build took nine business days at a fixed price, and the firm's own staff run it now.
"The 5 o'clock list is the thing. I read it in the car. Most days it's empty, and on the days it isn't, I can still call them before they've hired anybody."
Managing partner
Same method, your front door
Contractors lose bid requests the same way. A general contractor emails a plan set to the estimating inbox on Thursday, the estimator is on a site walk, and the bid is due Monday. The same pattern gives every bid request an owner and a due date, chases it, and tells the owner on Friday afternoon what nobody has touched.
Your lead might belong in HubSpot, JobTread, Clio or a SharePoint list. The method stays the same, and we check what your software can already do before quoting anything. We run this pattern on our own website too: every enquiry to chrysisnetworks.com lands in our CRM as a lead with an owner and a next step.
What it costs
The Workflow Fix is $3,500 fixed for one handoff, about 10 business days once access and inputs are ready. A job that's clearly smaller or bigger gets a written quote between $3,000 and $4,500 before you commit. Software and licenses sit outside the price.
Fails the acceptance test we agree in writing? One free in-scope fix of up to 2 hours, then a retest. If it fails again, you choose 10% of the fee back as a partial refund or credit, up to $350.
Not sure what your intake software can already do? The $350 walkthrough is up to five hours with written findings, credited in full if you go ahead.
Asked and answered
How does a small law firm stop losing new inquiries to slow callbacks?
Give every inquiry an owner and a callback deadline the moment it arrives, and escalate it to a second person when the deadline passes. Chrysis built this for a nine-person law firm inside the Microsoft 365 and Clio it already paid for, and inquiries with no callback went from 11 a quarter to none. It's a $3,500 fixed Workflow Fix.
Does the system talk to the prospective client or give legal advice?
No. It sends one acknowledgment in wording the firm wrote, then hands the inquiry to a person. Every call, conflict check and decision about taking a case stays with the firm's people.
Who built it
Chrysis Networks is an automation firm based in Marietta, Georgia, led by Tyler Fameli. Intake follow-up is the same kind of plumbing as our access review build: something arrives, someone owns it, and there's a record of what happened next.
Find the inquiry nobody called back, before it hires someone else
Tell us where new inquiries land and who's supposed to call them back. Within one business day you'll get a written reply: whether it fits, what a fixed price would cover and the first thing we'd check.
No client names or case details needed. Not even an inbox export.