Joe Ruotolo: 00:00:00

The single most important reason why every law firm needs a tool like this is to not be left behind. Because the world is changing your market is changing your audience is changing what people expect out of businesses, and using technology to make their lives easier is different than even last year.

IMFLF Intro: 00:00:23

Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast, featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now, here's the founder and CEO of 10 golden rules, Jay Berkowitz.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:00:44

Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever time you're listening to this podcast. Thanks for being here. On the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. We've got a great guest today, Joe Rotolo. I'll get to him in just a minute. Couple of quick things before we get started. First off, if you haven't already, checked out registered, done your research on tgr live growth strategies for law firms live event, April 25, and 26th in Boca Raton, Florida, if you're listening to this in real time, it's coming up in a couple of weeks. If you're listening to this in past time, hopefully you can join us next year. But we've got an awesome lineup. We've got the first morning we're going to talk about cutting edge technologies I'm going to speak and we're going to have a couple of artificial intelligence speakers. Then in the afternoon, actually, Joe is going to be one of our experts on marketing and technology strategies. We're also going to have Jason mountain who's a breakout Instagram attorney, social media star, and then we've got buildings on the morning, Friday morning the 26th talking about culture for law firms and building your business side of the practice. And for the first time in North America. The law firm profit coach John McCarthy's joining us. We've got a niche panel with Dave Thomas from law tigers, and some additional technology stuff Friday afternoon. You don't want to miss it. Thursday night, in between the Thursday and Friday. conference days is our 20th anniversary party for 10 golden rules. So hopefully you can join us in beautiful Boca Raton, Florida, information on our website at 10 Golden rules.com. And one other quick request. If you liked these podcasts, if you're listening to them on on iTunes or Spotify, please give us a five star review. It just helps more people find the podcast, and then it helps us get better guests for you. And if you're watching on YouTube, please give us a subscription. Because if you subscribe on YouTube, you'll get information about upcoming shows. We've had some amazing shows recently or our most viewed episode is over 80,000 views. So someone out there likes us. And there's really great content. We recently had Mike Morris talking about EOS. And we've had incredible guests talking about chat GPT and artificial intelligence and technology. And we have 10 Golden Rules training about SEO and local service ads and PPC for law firms. So you don't want to miss that as well. So please, if you're watching on YouTube, love it if you just find the subscribe button and give us a thumbs up give us a like. Anyways, without further ado, my friend Joe Ruotolo, and I hang out a lot of conferences because intake or is there, I guess about two years ago, we put the intake or chatbot on our website, and Josie could explain exactly what that does and and how it works. But it's an AI chat function that helps people basically navigate for them, if they want to have a conversation with you, and then it connects you. And we tested it on 10 golden rules, but of course, we're running it on most of our clients websites, from a marketing perspective. Look, there's from my perspective is three ways to get leads, calls, chats, and form fills and intake or is the best way to get the chats. So without further ado, Joe, welcome to the 10 Golden Rules podcast.

Joe Ruotolo: 00:04:08

Jay, thank you. It is great to be here today. I'm

Jay Berkowitz: 00:04:12

rambling today, so I'm gonna have to let you talk. Tell us a little bit about your background first and how you got into the technology business. And then you'll tell us about in taker,

Joe Ruotolo: 00:04:20

I will my background and my journey from where I came from, to where I am now within taker. It's a bit nonlinear. But you know, my background is in education and teaching math and physics. And I did that where I lived in New York for most of my life and you know, working in education gave me a lot of fulfillment in many ways, but it didn't give me the, you know, control over my life that I wanted and it did not pay the bills to the degree that I needed to. So I decided to get into sales. That was the initial idea that eventually led me here, I wound up moving across the country from New York to California, pursuing an MBA, while I did that I was my first sales job started at the beginning, knocking on door selling and solar here in Southern California. And they did that for about six weeks. And, you know, it turned out the company I was with was not, let's say the values of the company did not align with mine. That's a pretty tame way of saying it. But I decided I couldn't be there in good faith. So I decided to quit. And on my last day, you know, I was so happy to, I didn't know what was going to come next. But just to move on to a new chapter. And I started a conversation with a guy in the elevator. And I just said, I just got to tell you, I quit my job. And I'm just so happy right now. And he said, Oh, tell me more. And so we went for a walk around the Century City Mall here in Los Angeles. And anyway, that was the co founder, Puya obca, who I think has had a few conversations. Yeah, he

Jay Berkowitz: 00:06:04

has been on the on the podcast and the webinars. That's awesome. So what a fake intervention by fate, it was

Joe Ruotolo: 00:06:12

it was it was in an elevator that we met, and we took a walk and, you know, told him where I was at, he told me what he was working on. And, you know, new startup with automation, for law firms blend blending AI into the chat and things like that. And yeah, I was I was gaming. So I came on as, like the first full time employee. That was in March of 2020. And so we were in the office together about two weeks. And then you know, we shifted to work from home for about eight months, I did not see him again, after my first two weeks, for about eight months, we kept to Slack and video calls. Anyway, that was the rest

Jay Berkowitz: 00:06:49

of us. But most of us didn't start a new job. Two weeks before the world imploded. And you've done a great job, you really become the face of the company or today the voice of the company. But first, you know, tell us, you know, I want to hear about that story. But, you know, tell explain to everybody what, what is intake? Or why is it such a great tool to have incorporated on your website? And you know, you'll tell us about the new, the new announcements. Joe's got a great, exciting new announcement today, too.

Joe Ruotolo: 00:07:17

Yes, we do on the product side? Well, I think best describe this, we can consider two things. Number one, what are the pain points for a lot of law firms, when they're thinking about intake? And number two, from the consumer side or the user perspective? You know, what are some of the challenges that they face if they're trying to connect with a law firm, and I know from the firm's perspective, and take is all about two things, information and speed, you need the right information to decide is this a case of someone that you can help it's their case. And number two, you need to get that information collected quickly, you need to get to your team quickly. And you need to get connected with that individual as fast as possible, especially if it's like a web chat or form fill, you know, whereas if it's a phone call, that's kind of a different story, because they may have already picked up the phone, there's a bit more urgency a bit more pain, usually on the consumer or the client side. To start with that call, but for chat, whether that's you know, someone is chatting off hours, after work weekends, maybe they're not ready to talk on the phone, or they're just tired from a long day and they'd see that option. We know it's an effective way to get leads. But from the user's perspective, there can be issues if they're reaching out to a firm on a web site. And either the response time is very slow. Like if it takes more than 30 seconds to get a response if you write something and you know, every time it's a 32nd delay, and you don't even get their name right away. And to you know, take a minute and a half just to get a name and maybe a phone number in the chat. It's not a clean experience when we talk about traditional old school live chats that have a live operator sometimes, but also sometimes that are just this combination, right is half automated, half live person on the other side, but it's still slow. A lot of the traditional live chats that are still popular with law firms have speed as kind of a big issue. Right? So from the user perspective, making sure that it is clean, it is fast efficient, and that it's an easy process. on the firm side. It is about what we mentioned getting the right information whether that's more than just you know name and phone number and if it's an accident case, like I know a lot of your clients j are in the personal injury space, you know, data, the accident location as well as details where if it's a car accident versus a truck accident or a slip and fall you might need to know other information right for like a premises liability case. Knowing is it you know, government property, commercial property, private property, all that is going to be helpful upfront, versus if it's something like you know, a truck accident you know, you might want to collect other details including the past possibly like the name of that trucking company, other information upfront, that's just going to help move the conversation forward faster when they get to connect with either an intake person or even a lawyer on the phone. Those are some of the initial problems when in taker first came about that we were looking to solve, and most importantly, doing it quickly, you know, so that there's not that delay since then. Other things like live call connect bridging conversations, starting on website chat, giving people the option to move that to a phone call, and then connecting them to an attorney or an intake person, directly through the chat experience is another way that we've been able to innovate and take the response time down to the seconds between when someone starts a conversation on a website, and when they are able to be speaking to someone live on the phone with all the information they need in front of them.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:10:52

So what's the importance of chat, like I've heard different percentages, and I often say, you know, look, there's a certain amount of people who are going to be homeschooling their kids, or in line at a bank. And they're searching, you know, for car accident attorney or, you know, divorce attorney, and there's no way in front of their kids or their co workers. And nobody ever does non work related searches. while they're at work, right. And they're, they're searching for a divorce attorney or a bankruptcy attorney, there's no way they're picking up the phone, to call that law firm while they're sitting there at work. And then, you know, the, there's a certain number of people who are just never going to give you an email, they're never going to fill out the form on your website. Because they, you know, it's maybe they're just doing research for their aunt, you know, it's they didn't have the accident, there aren't was, you know, hit by a truck. So there's a certain percentage of conversions that can only come from a chat, because they're not going to give you their form, they're not going to call you at that time. And they might not find your website, when they do the search later at night at home, you might have missed that one opportunity for that prospect. So chat falls into that sweet spot that I always say, is worth 1020 30% more leads, because literally the other two lead forms were not applicable for that person. Do you know what that number is? And then explain how intake or chat works a little bit better than some of the other types of chats on a mathematical percentage basis? Very

Joe Ruotolo: 00:12:29

good question. And it is dependent on a few factors, it's dependent on the audience depends on the practice area depends on the tool that you're using, can it few, and for example, I might talk to firms that are, you know, they use chat, because they don't want to miss out. But historically, using older technology, they'll get maybe 5% of their leads, or 5% of their viable leads through chat. So for them, it's like this doesn't really make that much sense. It doesn't drive the needle that much, you know, to give too much consideration to that. Other firms that are using in taker that I'm thinking of a worker's comp firm in the Philadelphia area that's been with us and you know, they get almost 30% of their leads from chat, Berman taker, which is incredible. The other half comes from phone calls. But I'd say you know, just to throw like,

Jay Berkowitz: 00:13:23

like is that the practice area that people would just rather chat and call? I

Joe Ruotolo: 00:13:28

think there's a few things I think, you know, the audience, it could be different for imagine, like, estate planning firm, you know, maybe if the people are a bit of an older demographic, you might not get 50% of your leads coming from chat. So I think the age of the audience matters. We know that millennial and Gen Z are very much, you know, bigger users of chat. But also, you know, the fact that they've been there, the website experience is kind of designed that way, they have different call to actions placed on the website that can, you know, say chat with us or something that would pop open the chat. So instead of just clicking on the chat, there are different ways that a company or a law firm could use a chat tool to engage engage folks. And so traditionally, a lot of you know, law firms might have like a button that says, you know, contact us, that could go to a contact form. And that information might be good. But if you had the opportunity to pop open a chat and get more details, again, to make that initial phone call a lot more productive, and to even do some of that basic screening, where if you know that someone's not going to be a potential, you know, good fit for a client, capturing that information upfront. So I think there's a few things that can support that. But you know, the number one is the speed, right, what I mentioned before, speed, and I guess we can call it empathy, right empathy, meaning, how does the chat experience kind of mirror you know, a natural conversation or or some Think that's at least like a helpful interaction. Because remember, the thing about and taker is fully automated. Like you said, Jay, you know, we're not pretending to be a live agent. But we do build empathy into the product into the experience. So when people do go through it, it feels natural. And when we ask questions, it doesn't feel, you know, intrusive or like a weird thing, giving some of this information to the bot. Ultimately, everything that we ask is meant to help the law firm help this person. And we do our best to communicate that. And we can also talk a little bit about like how the video fits into that, because one of the things that is also going to change, I know you use this Jay and taker and 10 golden rules, and a lot of your clients use the video feature where it's managing partner or someone from the law firm, giving that welcome giving that note to someone letting them know, if you were injured in an accident wasn't your fault, and you're looking for the right legal team to help you then you know, you're in the right place. So reach out, we'd love to see if we can help you. And just that little 510 20 or 32nd Note builds that trust builds that connection, and lets people know who they are going to be working with when it comes to that firm. So that first impression. I know, as a marketer, you already know this. But being able to use video in the front end of your chat experience, will just set your firm apart from so many other firms that might be having a great brand video, and they might be doing TV and you know, OTT and things like that. But when it comes to that point of conversion on the website, if someone comes there and they see you and they feel your energy, you're going to be more likely not just to leave their information, but ultimately to have that conversation potentially hire you when it comes to next step. You know what I mean?

Jay Berkowitz: 00:16:44

Yeah, exactly. And so what's the difference? You think, between intake or an intake or with video, and percentage engagement?

Joe Ruotolo: 00:16:53

It's a very good question, as a question I get often, and I wish I could give more of a clear answer, I'm going to give like a lawyer answer and say it depends. And the reason I do that is because we've had videos where you'll see double digit increase in conversion, after they use it. We've also seen, you know, situations where like, we do an intervention, someone puts up a video that doesn't show the firm and so on. And so, you know, we keep an eye on numbers and for our clients, you know, we work with about 1000 law firms. So we do our best to keep a careful eye on everyone and their numbers, and see, you know, if someone's using a video making sure that it's, you know, supporting the the the engagement and not hurting. So in general, you know, good videos. And here's the thing, it's not like, there's one thing like, you know, using a video is going to maximize your conversions, there's a lot of little things together. And one of the nice things that you might find different between in taker and other products, there's all these little details that added together, you know, will lead to a massive increase in conversion, compared to, you know, engage Apex old, traditional products that built the industry in terms of chat, but you know, are maybe not as much oriented towards where the market is going, especially when it comes to the AI next level thing, which I know we're going to talk about, because you know where in taker is going, and I'm sure if your audience is listening to this, they already know how Chad GPT and other AI tools have transformed what people expect out of technology, even when it comes to the level of response, you know, efficiency, and you know, what kind of help they can get from it, how it can help them. And so I mean, I'm really excited. Maybe I'll say it now and then we can dive in when you're when you want to. But you know, having the option to use AI agents as a way to continue the conversation off script, do whatever those next steps are, to make sure that you're able to get you know, deeper qualification for leads. Even you know, as far as like getting appointments booked or, you know, making phone calls on behalf of you know, the person or the law firm, just to connect them with a live operator quickly. AI agents is another area where we're all in right now. And that's you know, powered by the latest models of open AI GPT. Four if you know if your audience knows about that. It's it's pretty remarkable letter

Jay Berkowitz: 00:19:28

with a demo. Maybe you can explain it. What's the difference between the AI chat on intake her and an AI agent? Which is your this is your big announcement today, right?

Joe Ruotolo: 00:19:39

Yeah. Yeah, walking me back just a bit because you know what? Announcement

Jay Berkowitz: 00:19:45

exclusive on the 10 Golden Rules podcast.

Joe Ruotolo: 00:19:48

It actually is our very first time on a platform like this announcing. Yeah, it is it is hey, I'm happy to be here with you man. The difference if you can think of it intake, you're on a law firms website is meant to do what I've said before, you know, have that warmth, that empathy, have that speed and get the right information. To do that intake for basic qualification for a law firm is going to be different, whether you're doing bankruptcy, whether you're doing family law, estate planning, criminal personal injury, or any other practice area, the information changes. But when someone law firm, you know, get started within taker, they get to choose which of those options not just the practice areas, but specific case types that they want to highlight in their chat. And if someone so for example, I keep going to PII, because it's, you know, biggest of our clients, and might be the biggest segment of your listeners, but, you know, knowing what are your top five case types, right. And so I mentioned before, that could be car accident, truck accident, or even, you know, maritime, if you're in an area where there's a lot of boats, and that kind of thing, whatever those are having them broken out on your website to match your law firm. And then when someone goes through the questions that end taker will ask them or prescriptive, they're already set, so that the conversation is not going to go far off the rails. And that might be an issue with other live chats where they're a bit more open ended. And before we even know, if this person is the right fit for the law firm, you know, the conversation may go in a different direction. So the difference within taker, as it is, everyone uses it today. They're prescriptive conversations meant to prequalify leads, get the right information to the firm, and walk people through the next steps, whether that's booking an appointment, you know, connecting on a phone call. So that is you know, what the chat is today, where it's going with AI agents, there's a couple of different use cases. Now, Jay, you said something earlier, which is, you know, the ways of getting leads, which are form, chat and call, you know, I found that there are tools and other ways that some firms like to get leads, which is, you know, using text, using texting as an option where they might have a button on their website that says, text us, traditionally, that is labor intensive, someone has to get that message someone at the law firm, or you know, outside agent, and now have the whole conversation which would have been done on chat, now done over SMS, you know, the nice things are you get the phone number, and you can, you know, you're on their cell phone right away. So that's the benefit there. But the downside is it takes time and energy to have someone actually do that job of having that conversation, it's kind of a time intensive and not like a high value task that you want your team doing, necessarily. So one of the ways that you can use like, the new that I'm talking about AI agent within taker, is having a text us button on your website that just goes to instead of one of your team that now has to respond, it goes to this AI agent, which can do the whole same thing, get the right information that you need, do all the pre qualification that you want, you know, even get, if it is, you know, consent to you know, make a phone call, you know, between such and such hours, whatever it is, and then pass that information on to the law firm. But not only that, have all that information structured in a place that they can go back and easily reference. Again, I've gotten ahead of myself a few times in this conversation. So I'll just take a step back and mention. The other area that in taker operates other than website chat is in the lead management space. So for a CRM, the way that it worked, just to give people a very quick orientation. Chat was where we started, website, chat can capture qualify leads, get them to the right place quickly, that lead to the next problem, which is, hey, we're getting our clients all these leads, but they're not converting them as effectively as they should. Law firms were not using the right best practices, when it comes to taking their website leads and turning them into clients. It's a little bit different if you run a practice that's, you know, 80 90% referrals, and then you get these web leads. And you think that you could do the same thing with them, as you typically do with your referral sources. It doesn't work that way. And so for a lot of our clients, there was that element of, you know, there is a gap. And so we were able to provide or build those new tools with CRM with automation, kind of as the core because one of the things if people the less work that humans have to do when it comes to getting leads, sent to the right people at the right place, pre qualifying them and getting them on the phone, right. If you can automate as much of that as possible, you're just gonna get more results. So the CRM that we developed was very closely tied to in Take your chat, and has a lot of those automated actions that I was talking about. And now the next step of these AI agents, I'll give you two use cases. I mentioned one about the texting, having you be able to text these leads on, you know, automatically from the website, if someone wants to engage that way, but the other area is,

Jay Berkowitz: 00:25:21

so how does that work? Someone comes to your website. And there's an option to engage with this text agent, or this chat agent. Or you can say, hey, please text. And then you own an agent doing the text. Exactly, exactly. Sorry, I gotta dumb these things down. So I can understand and explain them to people in the future. But is that it's basically it's more streamlined text option. But it's, again, it's an AI agent, doing the texting on your behalf following following a protocol that you've set out with, with the law firm.

Joe Ruotolo: 00:26:03

Yeah, that's right. Now the difference there is it can it's a lot more of an open sandbox environment. One of the things that I mentioned before about how intake or has more on the website, it's more predefined conversations. That might mean giving people when you ask them a question, a handful of choices to choose from instead of having every answer be, you know, open text response. So intake, you're on website, you can guide the conversation, build it out, however you want, just to make sure that the information you're collecting matches what you need to know about the case. What we're talking about now, and kind of the new avenue, whether you're doing texting leads, or even using LSA messages as another channel for leads, because I know LSAS are big for law firms especially. And it's more than just phone calls, right LSA messages have become, you know, a channel in its own right for some firms. But being able to take that more of an open sandbox environment where the conversation can go in any direction, and having an AI agent, be able to answer basic questions about the firm, whether that's, you know, our hours at location, can have all the information that you need about the firm built in, so we can answer those basic questions. And then if someone, but it's meant to do that pre qualification, get the lead intro and pass it on to actual real human. But also, if the person does, you know, want to like ask a legal question. Having a system that knows, what is what it can answer basic information about the practice, versus a question that say, Hey, you know, I'm not an attorney, so I can't answer that. But I can't get you to the right person. So would you mind providing XYZ, so having a system that is built out and again, it's built on the latest GPT four model, it is so cool, we just did a live demo at our event last week for product Lab Day, which is where we made these big announcements for the first time just to our customer base, about what's coming. And you know, we're almost at the end of the q1, but you know, q2, and q3 are going to be massive for law firms who want to leverage more AI and the practice, especially in their intake, it's, I'm happy, I'm excited to be here, man, it's really cool. And I know you're gonna love it, too, when you see it.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:28:31

That's great. And our teams, we're doing a lot with the local service ads, like Mark team is probably one of the best in the business, and helping lawyers figure out how to get in the top three. And for those listening, you've probably seen a couple of our webinars about, you know how to get in the top three, how to crack the code or help I've fallen, I can't get back up for people who've fallen out of the top three and need to get back in the top, the top of the local service ads Google screen, some people call it LSAs, or Google screen. But our team is really excited because he gave us the heads up last month at NTL. And you said that in taker chat. And now we'll have the ability to service and support the LSAS to Google Local Services. How does that work?

Joe Ruotolo: 00:29:17

Very good question. So there are two channels. I'm sure a lot of your audience knows this. But for those who don't. The two channels within Google screen local service ads are phoning in, right just clicking an option to click on a phone, click to call. And the other option, not every firm uses it because it takes a little more. A little more consideration is the LSA messages. And that gives someone the chance to the way that they might go to your website and you know, leave a contact form or engage in a chat. They can just leave a text response to text to your firm, which typically someone at your firm needs to get Go in there. And, man the conversation, which if you have someone dedicated to that role, it works great because you can respond quickly. And you're not going to, you know, worry about getting dinged, the issue that firms run into is if they're getting LSA message leads, and they're responding a day later, then Google can see that they can see that your response rate is not very quickly, there's a few reasons why you don't want to do that, as a law firm, if you're gonna get wait a day to get back to your leads, no matter what practice area, especially if they're from Google, it's not a good business move. Oftentimes, you're gonna go elsewhere, I don't need to get into that I'm sure your audience is educated. However, the other thing is, it'll say it'll be a banner when people see the LSA on even if you're in the top three, or if you're in the long list, it'll say typically responds within minutes, typically responds in a few hours, typically response in a day. So it's important for everyone listening, if you're using LSA, for messaging, that you are not sitting on those responses, what we've been able to do in our initial requests with, go ahead

Jay Berkowitz: 00:31:12

and get in trouble for that the other day. Ah, I had a screenshot of that exact thing at National Trial Lawyers in my presentation, and they, I was honored, they asked me to speak about the local service ads. So I had a screenshot and it says typically responds within a day. And another attorney typically responds within 15 minutes, someone in the room, took a picture of the screenshot, and sent it to the guy who responds within a day. And he was mad at me. And I'm like, Hey, I'm sorry, dude. Like, Google doesn't lie. You know, it's like, go go get mad at your team, because they obviously had at least a bad day. And probably a bad several weeks, because I'm, I'm sure Google is not, you know, reporting on one day's activity. So anyway, sorry, for jumping in with that. I thought it was kind of like that. He was like, hey, you know, first of all, you're not a paying client. So you don't get to complain.

Joe Ruotolo: 00:32:09

It drives the point, you know, and the other thing, I think this might be an education moment, because I learned this going through helping a client of mine go from, you know, started, you know, typically replies in a day to now after a couple of weeks, typically replies in a few hours. Now, it took a few weeks to make that change. And the main reason is, it's a 90 day average, that Google looks at all of your leads over the past 90 days. And the response. An important thing to note here is that initial response, the initial response to when you get an LSA message lead is what Google, how they come up with that bracket that you fall into. But you know, when when, before it was taking a day, and now it's happening in under a minute, because the nice thing about the intake or, you know, what, using AI agents for this is being able to respond to leads that come in, not instantly, but in under a minute, it's going to be pretty impressive, you know, to most folks. And so that is

Jay Berkowitz: 00:33:11

and to clarify this works on the messaging leads, not on the calls right now.

Joe Ruotolo: 00:33:16

Yes, yeah. Yeah, for the call center, you know,

Jay Berkowitz: 00:33:19

so how do you set it up? Oh,

Joe Ruotolo: 00:33:22

so we announced this new feature, we have a little weightless going. So if you want to learn more about this, go to intake her website, you know, putting your own inquiry, and you can message mentioned Jays podcast, and we'll, we'll we'll make sure to get you what we have the information get you on the waitlist right now. But you know, I'd say like intake or clients who are using this on Weber are going to be really blown away when they see this rolled out. So right now, you know, this is like a close data. We're working with a few firms pretty closely on this, but the initial results, like I said before, quite impressive. And I'm just excited to see where this goes next. Because whether, you know, that's I mentioned a couple of important ones, but I know there's like immigration firms that really like using WhatsApp or you know, Facebook Messenger and these other tools to, you know, get like leads from different sources. So, I'm not promising that we're going into these other areas, you know, right away, but using AI agents in any communication setting where yeah, the conversation is happening over text. This is going to just be a game changer. I mean, for two reasons. You're getting your clients information and helping get the information you need as fast as possible. But the other area, you're taking so much pressure off of your staff or for your team, who typically are, you know, feeling the weight of having to you know, get these response times and they're doing a great job. covenants, it's you know, taking a lot of effort and energy, or they're not doing a great job. And then it's, you know, hurting the company. And I'm sure there's other issues that arise. So being able to do that and just avoid the issue of mistakes, right? I mean, I love the technology, nothing is perfect. But what we know is that if you put like a live person next to like an AI when it comes to a simple job like this, it's a different story when it comes to the level of reliability. So we'll have more as we go. Like I said, this is kind of the first announcement. The Stay Stay tuned. And it's really exciting for you know it when it's live for everyone. And

Jay Berkowitz: 00:35:38

thanks for sharing it here first or second. I mean, you told your clients first, but you're telling the public here first, tell us if you could simplify it, you know, why do you want to chat on your website? Why do you want to have in ticker chat on your website?

Joe Ruotolo: 00:35:53

To answer the first question, I would go back to what you said, chat is a vehicle for people who don't like to talk on the phone. And relying on contact forms is not a great move in 2024. So there's going to be an increasingly large part of your audience. I'm talking to the lawyers, your client audience, who we're not going to be thrilled to pick up a phone and make a call. We know millennials, Gen Z. Ask anyone you know, in that age bracket, you know what they prefer to text to chat to call, they're going to tell you to either text or to chat. It's just a cultural thing. And so if you are not leveraging that channel, when you start leveraging that channel, you're gonna be surprised what you get. Now, the tool matters. When it comes to, you know, chat, not all products are equal. And making sure you're using something that is number one speed, it's quick. It's fast, no one has to wait. You don't have to wait to get the information. I know, some products, you know, will send all the right information, 15 minutes too late. You know, that's not the most helpful, getting the information quickly capturing it even faster from the user perspective, not having to wait, if they're looking for help, just from a client centric law firm mentality, making sure they have everything what they need quickly. And then, you know, some of the other things for the website in tickers built for law firms. Right, we've got 1000 different options, more than than that, for those different case types that have specific qualifying questions for any area of law. And this is a challenge. If you're listening, and we don't have you don't think we have what you do, we'll build it for you. We do you know, one off work or you know, custom thing through for folks that are outside the box for their, you know, very niche practice area. But just making sure that you're getting the information right away, and it's not generic, you know, name, phone number and story. Yeah, that's important, but you need more details, especially like family law, conflict, check, knowing the name of the counterparty so that if there's an issue, or if you run into that, you find that out early, and that too late after a 30 minute conversation with this person. 30 minutes that you're not going to get back. So these

Jay Berkowitz: 00:38:18

are things that you script into the chat. That yes, you know, and the lawyer has the ultimate ability to customize what the chat bots gonna say. So it's not a random, you know, chat GBT that it's hallucinating different case types and stuff. This is all scripted and systemized. But the beauty of it is like to say funnels, you know, it's like you start with Hi, how can I help you today? And like on our website, it's like, are you looking for a new website? Or you're looking for SEO, local service ads pay per click or other? You know, so it just then once you answer that, then it asks you specific questions about that, then it tries to, you know, generate a lead for us. And same thing on the legal side. You know, last question about in ticker. And then I want to get into the short snapper, as I warned you about. What does someone do to get started? And what's it like? What do they have to do to get this, you know, to get 20% more leads by adding intake or to the website? Hmm.

Joe Ruotolo: 00:39:22

So one of the things that when we first began working with law firms, we wanted this to not be another painful process of onboarding. Because if you are setting up like a new technology for your firm, usually it takes weeks or months and it's expensive, and it's you know, not a great experience. So if you wanted to get started, one of the nice things is we're pretty hands on with our clients. And we would walk you through an onboarding call where we would help you and actually do the setup for you and About an hour, takes one hour of your time to learn everything that you need to learn, whether that's only the chat or whether you're looking to get started using some CRM, lead management tools that we offer as well. After that, you know, everyone has like an account executive and then a dedicated support person. So every client has two points of contact, if something breaks, or if they have a question, or they need help. We're, you know, we built redundancy into the process. And I'd say the best way is just to reach out on if you go to intake your.com, you'll, the best way to get in touch with us is to put a chat in through that. If you want to insert, you go

Jay Berkowitz: 00:40:39

to integra.com. And you use intake her to have a conversation with intake her. And so you can see how the chat works. You know, one of the coolest things I think about intake her is it's a way to start using artificial intelligence today in your law firm, and have an advantage over other firms. You know, what's the one single thing that's most important about using artificial intelligence within taker today? Think about this one. Jay, you could start out with the single most important thing about using artificial intelligence of intake or is.

Joe Ruotolo: 00:41:14

Now it's a very good question. And I want to give you an answer from from the heart as thought out, if you had to ask me, the single most important reason why every law firm needs a tool like this is to not be left behind. Because the world is changing. Your market is changing your audience is changing what people expect out of businesses. And using technology to make their lives easier, is different than even last year. I used to say it's different than five years ago. It's not even a comparison anymore, to see what your clients expect, today, versus even just 12 or 18 months ago, it's night and day. Most firms are not going to change. But some of them are, some of them in your market certainly are. And it's up to you. If you want to be on the side that's adopting technology and getting ahead to go further faster, to outperform your competitors. Or if you're going to look back in six or 12 months and wonder why you're hitting walls that you were not heading before. So don't ignore the changes that are happening on the bigger picture beyond your law firm. Because if you take this time, if you capitalize on this opportunity, you're going to be in a different place a year from now, five years from now. And if you don't, you're definitely going to be in a different place. But it won't be one that you want to be. Yeah, it's

Jay Berkowitz: 00:42:54

interesting, like, basically customer service, you're not competing with other law firms. You're competing with every other single business out there. And you know, if other industries have figured out how chat can simplify booking a flight or making a restaurant reservation, and apps are making everybody's life so much easier. If you don't adopt the technology, the consumer is expecting it, because they we have it in every other industry. So that's a great answer. Joe, thank you. So I'd mentioned that the short snappers couple of quick things. You know, I love to ask everyone this, it's a question I've learned so much over the years. And with now I get to ask the AI guy. What are some of the apps or techniques for personal productivity that you're using? Or maybe the team at intake or is using?

Joe Ruotolo: 00:43:45

Man, great question. I can speak mostly for myself. And some of these apps are on mobile, some of these apps are on pen and paper, you know, they're just techniques that I use. I have become a big fan of notion just for organizing a lot of different content ideas. And, you know, deliverables especially now that I've been doing a lot more marketing, there's a lot more content across my desk. And so for anyone who's you know, whether you're doing blogs, you're doing videos or anything, you just need a system to keep it organized. So what are how does it work? notion is let me see, can I explain this simply no notion is actually like a, a, like a notes tool, where I am able to keep notes and kind of nest group things together. If I want to have you know, pages of notes that are organized inside other pages of notes. It's just a very helpful way for me to between my personal work and my personal life between what I do it in taker and then what I do even you know, like spirit for specific clients helping some of them you know, they their content needs to overall, it's just a great way to keep all that information organized for me.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:45:05

So you can score lists and ideas and create stuff like that. I Evernote, as a matter of fact, I'm looking at my Evernote right now, because I have a standard interview template for podcasts. And there's questions I don't want to forget to ask. It's

Joe Ruotolo: 00:45:19

very cool. I think they're pretty similar notion and then Evernote. So I got into it maybe six months ago, and I've been, it's helped me I have a lot of big ideas, you know what I mean. But sometimes it's the details that will throw me off. And so having a way that I can organize those little details, without losing kind of the big idea how they all fit together, that's been the game changer for me. And then, you know, this other one is not so much an app, but is, is just a way to plan set goals and achieve them on a timeline. It's called RPM, it's Tony Robbins time, productivity time management system, but just is a, you know, results focused, purpose driven, massive action plan that allows you to take whatever goal it is that you want to achieve. Make sure you understand all the reasons behind the why why is it important? Why is it a must, and then all the action steps between where you are now and where you need to get to, to close that gap. So anyway, you know, RPM is another tool that I use just for keeping myself accountable and not falling behind when I set a goal. Again, whether that's personally whether that's for work, making sure that I've got a system and I know what targets I need to hit. And you know, using a tool like notion helps me just keep track of those other details that I said set up and in my rpm. That could be for any, any particular goal. So those are two that I

Jay Berkowitz: 00:46:47

mentioned. No, I love it. That's great. I'm a big fan of Tony walked on fire twice with Tony Robbins. How about you? Did you Did the

Joe Ruotolo: 00:46:54

firewalk I did yeah. The firewalk it Unleash the Power Within last year took a buddy of mine out to see him and yeah, it you know, changed my life not for the reasons that I thought it would. But it was still a pretty magical experience. And yeah, thank god fans.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:47:09

Yeah, I always joke to people that you know, it's not that it's hard enough to take that first step on on fire like when you step on fire, but it's really easy to take the second third and fourth step but uh, definitely something everyone should do really go see Unleash the power with go spend three days with Tony four days with Tony and Unleash the Power Within the firewalk is just a bonus. What are some of the blogs, podcasts YouTubes that you subscribe to and you never miss like when it comes in your in your feed? You're clicking on that one first.

Joe Ruotolo: 00:47:44

And that is another great question. I've been big into Bob Proctor and his ideas. He wrote a book called you were born rich, and did his own rendition of Earl Nightingale lead the field program, which was like one of the first business coaching programs ever in the 60s. And they've been going through and you know, his organization, the Procter Gallagher Institute, Bob Proctor, who passed on two years ago with his partner, Sandy Gallagher, have just great content, man, great information. And you know, some of it might seem a little woowoo to people, laws of success, but it is it is grounded in very practical wisdom. And so that is something that I just if I need to get my head clear of whatever, you know, daily muck, you know, whatever might be hitting me that day. I always just like to take I guess you could call like a mental bath and something more positive. And so that's been

Jay Berkowitz: 00:48:52

Yeah, it's interesting that he's repurposing some of the old content. Russell Brunson has been doing a lot of that he's bought a lot of the old content, like thinking grow rich, and read. Repurpose reissuing it, bringing it to a younger audience. I love that. Simple question. Your NFL team?

Joe Ruotolo: 00:49:10

Oh, I'd have to say the Jets. I understand that you had a conversation.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:49:19

He likes the Jets too. Right? Yeah. Gary Vee. Yeah, if you heard last week's podcast, Gary Vee talks all about his dream of buying the Jets. Last question, Where can people get in touch with you?

Joe Ruotolo: 00:49:31

Oh, man, personally, go to LinkedIn. search my name Joseph Rotolo. You'll see it in the episode title. And if you want to get in touch with intake or just go to intake or.com And you can learn everything you need to know about the product there. We're going to be changing the website adding more stuff, but for the meantime, just reach out either myself or one of our team will be happy to chat with you and see if we can help you take your law firm to the next level.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:49:59

Awesome. Well, Joe, this was great. And if you made it this far, you know, as I as I asked you at the start, please do me a favor, either on YouTube, give us a subscribe on iTunes, give us a five star Spotify. love you for it. Joe, thank you so much for doing this. This was great. You're

Joe Ruotolo: 00:50:16

awesome. Jay. I can't wait to see you and everyone else listening hopefully at tgr live on coming up in April 25 and 26th. I think I got it right. Yeah, we'll

Jay Berkowitz: 00:50:26

see you there. That's right. Joe will be there. So don't miss it. Thanks so much, Joe. Have a great day. Thanks, Jay.

IMFLF Intro: 00:50:34

Thank you for listening to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Please send questions and comments to podcast at 10 Golden rules.com. That is podcast at t e n Golden rules.com.