When a consumer is interested in filing bankruptcy, they will normally contact a bankruptcy attorney in their area or merely walk into their office with no prior appointment. The average consumer will also want to know how much it will cost to file bankruptcy, at which time the attorney should gather enough details about their financial circumstance to supply a reasonable quote for services. The majority of attorneys do this by providing a free initial consultation.
Unfortunately, this method is proving to be extremely unsuccessful for many Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy attorneys. For example, a modest law practice in Denver, Colorado recently said that she often only coverts 2 out of 10 totally free consultations to actual bankruptcy clients who retain her services. This is a wonderful loss of time and cash in reality, about 80% of it.
Yet another attorney in Los Angeles, California said that he spends about 25 hours of no cost consultations per week to average three new clients who pay a retainer. And still, yet another attorney in Phoenix, Arizona said that he is spending so much of his time with free of charge client consultations that end up resulting in a total loss of income, that he has little time to dedicate to clients who have retained him. He is taking into consideration hiring an in-home attorney or law student but is afraid he can’t afford it correct now.
Problems like these, and thousands far more like them are not uncommon in the average Chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcy office today. Even so, attorneys are obtaining the necessity to streamline operations just to keep up with the increased workload within the bankruptcy business itself. They no longer can afford to invest 3, four or more hours per day interviewing clients, only to locate out they either are ineligible to file bankruptcy or even worse, to discover there are possible difficulties that might cost far more time for the attorney or paralegal that had been not anticipated throughout the initial client meeting.
A Proposed Answer
The Initial Intake Form, a tool lately developed by Colorado Bankruptcy Training, is developed to enable law firms to meet these time saving goals as well as accomplish a lot more.
The Initial Intake Form is a four-page form that is fundamentally comprised of yes and no questions. This makes it quite easy and fast for prospective client(s) to fill out and total either at the law firm or over the net by accessing the law firm’s web site. The information gathered from these yes and no responses is created to be straightforward and quickly for the attorney to interpret also. This is accomplished by means of the really detailed, 75-page Operations Manual that comes with the package.
In order for the Initial Intake Form to present maximum positive aspects to bankruptcy law firms, the form is provided to attorneys in the following formats:
1. The HTML version is created to totally integrate with the existing law firm internet site. Potential clients visit the internet site, fill out the form and the responses are automatically emailed to the law firm. The attorney interprets the answers from the form and if the attorney decides to take the case, contacts the clients to schedule an appointment to sign the Retainer Agreement as well as conduct the client intake interview.
2. The Adobe Acrobat version is form fillable meaning that it can be completed online from the law firm website as well or any laptop or computer in the office. The PDF form is also fully customizable so that it can be produced to comply with internal law firm operations.
3. The Microsoft Word version is also fully customizable and can be opened by both Word and WordPerfect users.
As previously mentioned the primary heart of the package is the extensive, 75-page Operations Manual that helps the bankruptcy law firm to rapidly and easily alter their present operations in order to attain the following objectives:
Goal No 1
The 1st major goal of the Initial Intake Form is to present the attorney with sufficient info so that he or she can much more accurately project the figures for Schedule I and J of the bankruptcy petition. This will enable the attorney to a lot more accurately figure out the complexities of the case as well as the possibility regardless of whether this case will most likely become a Chapter 7 or 13.
Objective No 2
The second goal of the Initial Intake Form is to offer the attorney with enough details to ascertain the complexity of the case by examining other areas outside the monetary method discussed in Goal No 1.
Objective No 3
The third objective of the Initial Intake Form is to present the attorney with enough information to reasonably give the client(s) a more accurate fee quote.
Objective No four
The fourth goal of the Initial Intake Form is to cross-reference responses from other questions to guarantee the information supplied by the client(s) is consistent and accurate. This permits the attorney to preserve better due diligence which is a requirement under the bankruptcy code.
Goal No five
The fifth goal of the Initial Intake Forms is to assist in streamlining intake operations. This is important nowadays due to the fact of the massive growth of the debtor bankruptcy field. Old strategies that employed to work no longer work due to the fact of the fast moving needs and requirements within the industry itself.
To discover out a lot more and watch a product demo VIDEO about the Initial Intake Form Kit, visit:
http://www.coloradobankruptcytraining.com/items_intakeform.html