Webinar Recap: Driving Revenue for Law Firms: A Marketing & Sales Leaders’ Guide

Every time a lead comes into a law firm, that moment is shared between marketing and sales. Marketing did the work of getting that potential new client to raise their hand, but what happens next decides whether that person becomes a client or hires someone else.

In this session, Sarah Bottorff, SVP of Growth at Lawmatics, and Jess Stricklin, SVP of Sales, walked through how they handle that handoff between marketing and sales, and what law firms can learn from it. Some of the vocabulary may be different when marketing a law firm and software, but the work is the same: qualifying leads, responding fast, and training a team on how to close. Treating law firm intake as a sales function, converting more of the leads you already have, is essential to driving revenue and growth — and it doesn’t require breaking the marketing budget to do it.

Time stamps of key takeaways

10:41 – What a “good” lead actually looks like

Sarh and Jess talked through why a codified, shared definition of a “good” lead is the foundation for everything. Without one, prioritization becomes guesswork and the team wastes time on inquiries that were never going to convert. Jess also notes that the definition should evolve: a lead that was a good fit for the law firm a year ago might not be the same today.

16:14 – The revenue gap and speed to lead

Jess points out that any prospect reaching out to your law firm is almost certainly reaching out to others at the same time, which is one reason why speed to lead is so important. An immediate, personal, human response sets the tone for the rest of the relationship.

29:01 – Why intake stays inconsistent at law firms

One overarching problem that affects almost all law firms: no matter what the definition of a good lead is, no matter what the process is for handling one — that procedure tends to live in the heads of one or two tenured staff. When they’re on call, things go well. But when their bandwidth is limited, quality drops. Building a repeatable process, documenting it, and making it something a new hire can pick up quickly — that’s what turns a strong intake process into a durable one.

33:18 – Where to put the next dollar

If your firm had an extra dollar to spend, would you put it toward more marketing, or toward increasing conversion rates? Sarah’s take is to put it toward conversion rates. Virtually every law firm gets more inquiries than they’re converting, so the highest-leverage growth opportunity is often improving the process, not adding more volume to the funnel.

41:48 – Intake as a sales function

The firms that Jess and Sarah see grow the fastest treat intake as a sales function. It’s proactive, has clear definitions, routine coaching, structured processes, and incentives for staff. Jess makes a case that selling legal services well is a matter of being organized, confident, and consistent about the value that the firm brings to a client’s situation.

Webinar slide deck