And so case status is designed to give clients access to their case status on their phone. They can also access it via web or get text updates. But ultimately it's designed to answer their questions so they don't have to reach out. And 93% of the time we answer clients questions just they open the app, they find what they need, and they put it back down where today they call, they email, or they're frustrated, probably all three. And so we give them another option to self service. And then from there, we're really able to help the law firm scale their client engagement, automated updates. We can help them with appointments. We can help them with clarity on tasks the law firms working on tasks the client needs to do. And then ultimately, we track client satisfaction and help them grow. And so it's a lifestyle or it's the full life cycle of client engagement.

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,

well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms. Podcast. Super excited today. We've got a great guest. Andy Seavers, is the co founder and CEO of case status, right? Andy, Yep, absolutely. This software company is absolutely on fire. Everybody's talking about you. And when I ask people you know what was up at the conference or what's happening in tech, case status keeps coming up at the top of the list. So Andy, welcome to the 10 golden rules podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me

first tell us a little bit about your journey and then resolve to the founding of case status and what you guys do. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, if you go back in time, I was in a band. We got a record deal when I was a senior in high school, and I always say my career off really early, but when that band broke up, I always joke that our lawyers were the only ones that ever got paid, and so went to Nashville to become an entertainment lawyer. And ultimately, instead of going to law school, got into tech. And then fast forward through the 10 years after that did became a software developer, started consulting for software companies, and was still pretty involved in the legal community, through some access to justice and some other things, in Nashville, and then ultimately ended up in Charleston, South Carolina, where I connected with a personal injury lawyer, and Together, we founded case status, really, to solve the pain of of client experience and engagement in the Consumer Legal space.

So in my mind, the role case status plays is, once you've signed a client, it's the client Communications Portal, and you have an app as well, and it's solving one of the biggest issues for law firms, as I understand it, is the biggest bar complaint is my lawyer doesn't update me on what's happening with my case, or I can't get in touch with my lawyer to get an update on my case. So explain how that plays out?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we always say it's like online banking. We don't download our consumer banking app to chat with our bankers. It's to have everything we need so we don't have to and so case status is designed to give clients access to their case status on their phone. They can also access it via web or get text updates. But ultimately, it's designed to answer their questions so they don't have to reach out. And 93% of the time we answer clients questions just they open the app, they find what they need and they put it back down. Back down, where today, they call, they email, or they're frustrated, probably all three. And so we give them another option to self service, and then from there, we're really able to help the law firm scale their client engagement, automated updates. We can help them with appointments. We can help them with clarity on tasks the law firms working on tasks the client needs to do, and then ultimately we track client satisfaction and help them grow. And so it's a lifestyle, or it's a it's the full life cycle of client engagement. You know, so many platforms, even these case management tools, have tried chat platforms. They've tried consumer facing applications. But ultimately it's too focused on the law firm. You have to first focus on the client and giving the client everything that they need. And when you really give the client an amazing experience, you can then start focusing on the law firm and helping them scale every part of the way that they engage with clients. And so that's where we like to sit is, is really the front office of the law firm and help them more effectively, really meet their ethical duty of care. I mean, most state bars say reasonably, keep clients updated on their case and say current on technology. And when most firms don't do that, there's a pretty straight line to to our platform.

That's great. And I've seen so many instances where somebody's got, like, the 3.4 the 3.7 out of five Google stars, yeah, and we've got to work with them to repair that, because for on the marketing side of things, you know, you just can't have a 3.4 Google stars, yes. Everybody's going to look, you know, and you're not going to come up in the local searches, in the Google Maps, and if your Google Maps isn't any good, your SEO isn't any good, yeah,

we always say that, and that's what makes case status really unique. You know, in a lot of ways, we say that you add a new data set to the management of your law firm, they've never had response time. They've never even really known if clients have been responded to. We now know how fast cases are going, but the real magic is in the client satisfaction score that we track over time, asking clients for a score through the app and actually require requiring an answer. Now you know if clients are unhappy or happy throughout the case. So marketers love us for that very reason. If you know if the firm's not doing a good job with clients, well, then how can you equip those clients with a megaphone to go back to the community? They're just going to say, Hey, don't go to this firm. And so we help solve that, that problem, really it's an effective staff management so that you know which clients to focus on and provide a better experience to. And then that becomes a flywheel for really helping the law firm scale over time.

So how do you go from not having case status to having case status? Let's use example of personal injury, but I know you cover other practice areas, and I guess you have to have, do you have to have a case management software like a litify or a file vine or a Clio or a smart advocate?

You don't have to have it. You know, a small segment caught less than 10% are on a an on prem legacy, maybe needles case management tool, or they're using a standalone but that is relatively rare. A lot of firms buy case status as really the second software solution to help their law firm scale. Typically, it's intake software, case management software. And we would say client engagement finance might be in there too, but we will be in that second or third category of software that they buy to start to scale. And when we integrate with the solution like litify or Clio or my case or any of the case management tools, that's when we can really unlock some some real efficiency in the law firm, automated stage updates. We use AI to help build descriptions for the client, roadmaps, frequently asked questions, videos. We do. We extrapolate all this value out of the case management tool and help them actually build value for the client. And that's where the magic is. Again, we don't if we downloaded online banking just to ask our banker or get an update via text what our bank statement is, it would just add more questions. So instead, we craft real value for the client so that we preempt those questions by answering ahead of time. And that's just transparency and visibility. We actually joke that it's access to justice. Access starts with literal access through case status and and, but that is only possible when we can help craft that value. And so the case management tool makes that easier, even if we don't have that will our AI model scrapes from their website, pulls a lot of different information, and we help build some value so it can, it can work either way, but we, but we really like when they have a case management tool.

And, you know, I had a car accident, you know, relatively simple rear end. It had lots of questions for my attorney. You know, the insurance company started calling. We were dealing with car repair stuff, and then I started with a chiropractor, and then we went for some x rays, and then MRIs. And, you know, I always had questions for the attorney, like, what's going on, what's next, you know, why is the insurance company calling me? And so I assume, you know, the reason I assume that you needed a case management software is because all that information would reside somewhere, and you all are going to pull that information, and then all the things are going to be available in my app. Because, you know, I remember all kinds of four or five years ago. Now, I assume it's a little bit more technology, but probably not things like, you know, getting the X ray to my attorney. Then I went to a next specialist, getting the X ray to the next specialist. Then he wanted an MRI. So then they gave me the MRI and a disc, you know, God love him, you know, like, what do I do with that? You know, the attorney was local, but their head office was in Tampa. You know, it's like all kinds of rigmarole that I had to go through as the customer. So, how does case status, like, jump in, and where would they solve that issue I had was constantly calling, like, the paralegal, and, did you get this medical report? Did you get it? You know, does the attorney have it? What's what? Who needs it? You know?

Yeah, absolutely. So it really starts the life cycle of how we can help over time. And so first is proactive updates on what's going on with your case. That's where it starts. You know, law firms have been historically reactive, right? You're asking for an update, and they may or may not. Give you one. So first, let's proactively send out an update, letting the client know what's going on. Now, let's give them better communication. Let's give them tools. So one of our biggest innovations that's had the most impact is we pre draft responses to clients so that we can make the staff and attorneys more effective at communicating. It uses every communication they've ever used in the past uses their website. It uses just it creates a language model specific to the the firm and really specific to the best people at the firm. So now you're communicating better, faster, stronger. Now we can start automating things like the no update, update. So when nothing's happened for 30 days, let let you know that there's nothing new. But if anything's changed with your medical history, please provide maybe it's an automation of every Monday, a reminder to go get treatment. We also have very specific features by practice area, so in personal injury, they can actually do treatment tracking within the app. So now they can contribute to their case, rather than just, you know, like, you know, it's one thing to go to get better, and now they're asking you to give you that disc. Well, now you can actually self report what happened, and now you build a log over time that the law firm can use in the demand, and really, you know, maximize your settlement. And we see, and we have, we haven't been able to, because we don't track the settlement amounts or the verdict amounts. We we can't claim a specific increase in settlements, but what our customers say is, because they are have more time, they can reach out to clients more often, and settlements end up higher because they don't miss things. Things don't fall through the cracks. You know, the client says, Yeah, my back kind of hurts. They the the staff member didn't miss that and said, they said, Hey, we need to go get an MRI, and they find out that they've got a stress fracture in their back, which could be the difference for $100,000 in the settlement could be the difference between a lifelong injury that never gets better. And so now you're actually meeting your ethical duty of care to clients by providing the best possible service to them. And so you know, all those pieces make the client relationship better. And then, from the law firm's perspective, we give them a lot of additional tools to really then start to turn the dials, like what I like to say, on scaling that efficiency. Because here's the thing, the law firm, they buy case status. We take them through that, the customer maturity models. We call that their journey to maturity, but then they don't get to the end. They go, great. They actually forget what it was like to get calls every day, and they're like, we're ready to scale and do more. How can we help? And that's when it gets really exciting, because now we can start to incentivize staff based on response time, and we aggregate client satisfaction. We can do all these things that ultimately it puts the right incentives for the law firm to help you, and that's what it's, you know, it's ultimately about. And when they're when they're happier and they have more time and they have the tools to support you, the experience is just different, and so cases resolve faster, higher silence. I mean, it almost sounds too good to be true for a lot of people, but the reality is, it's, it's what, what we're doing is we're helping standardize client management. We're helping I love

your enthusiasm. I think you told me the other day as a case study for like, a firm in Philly, yeah, so maybe walk us through, like, again, I try and make these things, like, super simple for people to get, yeah. So you're a firm, and you've got your Clio, your litify, your smart advocate, whatever. And, you know, you start hearing about these, the ability to communicate with clients directly. And I think you mentioned that most of the case management folks gave up on trying to do what you all do. So, you know, what are the steps like? They got to get a new app. They got to subscribe to something. They've got to connect you all connect to the case management software, and then what starts happening, like, make it really tangible?

Yeah, absolutely. So when they the law firm purchases case status, we you get a dedicated implementation manager that ultimately you'll have a dedicated customer success manager for the life of you know, the time you're with case status, and we help you, first integrate with your case management tool, import your cases and clean up your data. We have some AI tools to help with that, craft your practice areas. Again, we use AI to help drive that. We use a lot of different data sources to help you create these roadmaps. And then ultimately, we train your staff, and then we phase invite. So a lot of firms have a backlog of unhappy clients and a backlog of questions. And so we found that if you do a mass invite, 30 to 50% of your clients will download the mobile app in the first hour and the last questions. And so what we want to do is we want to help you get through that backlog of kind of bad client experience to ultimately get everyone to a good starting point of trust and happiness, and that invite is as simple as a text invite that goes to their phone from the law firm. They click on the link, and it takes them to iOS or Android, and then they're in a firm branded app. It's always case status in the App Store, but we can but it's always been firm branded app. Or that, and it becomes the hub, you know, for really all, or a majority of your client communication. We don't remove phone calls, but we make those phone calls more impactful. Now, your in person meetings are more impactful, but this becomes really the centralized communication hub for everything else, replacing email, replacing any other texting tools that you're using today,

great. And maybe tell it again as the case study for the guys in Philly and how they signed on and some of the results they had.

know if you want to get into price point, but like, what size of firms should start thinking about adding this in their tech stack

No, that's great. Congratulations. What's your why? What gets you most excited every morning? Well,

So this next question, the answer can't be used case status, okay, but I'm sort of formulating this question because I'm seeing a lot of firms where Firm A and Firm B are in similar size markets, and they're, you know, more or less, their web traffic looks the same. They get the same number of leads, but one firm signs 20 cases a month. One firm signs 80 cases a month. What's the difference between, you know, the winners and the not not winning as much. What makes for a great law firm?

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I can't speak to maybe every scenario there, but I mean, when you peek behind the curtain, you find some firms are spending a million dollars a month in advertising. You know that more than most, some firms have prioritized the client. Even if they don't have tooling, they've prioritized the client the best that they know how to do it. Some firms are turning down more cases than anyone else because they've said, Look, we can't support you. And so they've gotten specific. We have a law firm where they only do traumatic brain injury, and everything else gets referred out, and then a lot gets referred in, because that's their specialty. So, smaller, firm, big cases, a lot unique, you know? And so, so I think that there's, there are a lot of potential answers to that question. I think it's the ones who take every single case that comes in the front door is it can be a little bit of a red flag if they don't have the staff or the tooling to support it. And so I don't know if that's a great answer, but that's

Oh, yeah. Well, and they're being forced to make decisions like that faster than ever, because there are more and more attorneys showing up, you know, law firms showing up in every market. But there aren't statistically. There actually aren't more accidents. There aren't more legal cases happening. And so that means, if you're doing the same marketing, if you got kind of the same declining client satisfaction, if all these things remain the same, your your firm will shrink and and that's what you know, kind of post COVID boom of cases. Everybody's now looking around saying, Oh, wow, things are a lot harder than it used to be. It's not as easy to advertise on Facebook and on Google as it used to be. It's man the the not as many people are going into the office. The eyeballs are harder to get on billboards. And it's like one thing after another that really starts to snowball. Where, you know, hiring a firm like yours to to help them is, you know, extremely impactful, because you actually, at least have your ear to the ground of what's working in a market, and ultimately what's not

awesome. Well, you know, for years, we've done this podcast now, and at the end, I always ask the quick one liners, and I get some great tools and ideas from this. So first one is, what apps or techniques do you use for personal productivity? Yeah,

one recently, which maybe is an obvious one, is the chat GPT desktop application, and so I've got it's options. Space Bar on my Mac shows up a little window, same like spotlight. So command spacebar makes spotlight show up. Option, spacebar makes chatgpt show up, ask a question, enter. I mean, that is literally a thing that I use five to 10 times a day, and now that I don't have to go to a web browser, it's just such a simple thing, but that type of shortcut, it just becomes, then my default motion of how to get an answer. Simplify, write a post something. You know, there's all sorts of things it helps with. I've

started using Google, and partly it's because I want to see how Google gives the AI answer. But those AI overviews are popping up almost all the time now. What do you think about Google's initiative into competing with chat GPT on answering questions?

Oh, I love it. I'm, you know, I've, I say I have no loyalty. We, you know, we've integrated pretty heavily with open AI, but we, but we've got, we are in the G Suite, the Google business suite, and so Gemini is live on a number of our our our staff members accounts, and so bringing that into the the workflow in our email and things like that is really interesting, too. So we're always exploring and and really interested in this race to be the, you know, the dominant player. And I think the reality is there's just going to be lots of dominant players. I mean, apples is they keep talking about it's going to come out on the iPhone, and it'll start to be baked right in there, versus the, you know, the open AI or the chat GPT app that I have on my my iPhone.

No, no, it's amazing, amazing new world, and it's faster every day. What are your best business books that you recommend?

Well, you said Eos, so traction is my, is my number one. I talked to a lot of business leaders, other businesses that have scaled like us, but maybe differently, flat structures, you know, 50 developers, no management structure, and they're saying, hey, what do we Andy? How have you guys done it? And we, you know, traction has allowed us to subscribe to EOS and, and we very much believe in the L 10 meeting in in 10 year, you know, 10 year vision, three year forecast, one year operating plan and, and we follow a lot of it religiously. And there's bits and pieces we take, but I always I keep a stack of traction books here behind me and, and if anyone asks, I write a little note for him, and I give him the book. It's just, it's something that I that I think is it's a good even if you just take pieces of it, it directionally. Is really good alignment for a team.

Yeah, and I always mention this because we It seems like everyone who's successful these days that I'm talking to is running Eos. Uh, you know, nine out of 10. And the one thing I always give people as a tip are two things, I guess. One is not everybody's like Andy, and they can read traction, because a lot of the visionaries get stuck in traction, because it includes a lot of the operating system in there. And I think you mentioned that you're a visionary and an integrator, and you had to give up the integrator role, which means you, you know, speak on behalf of the company. You're really a true CEO. You're not in the day to day operational stuff. Yeah. And so there's a second book called Get a grip. And I give out both. I don't keep the stack here. I send them out, but get a grip is written in a case study format, and it's like a parable, and it's easier for some of us. So I tried to retraction eight or nine years ago, and it wasn't till and I tried a second time, like everyone's talking about this Eos, I've got to figure it out. And then someone said, Oh, read, get a grip. And then it all became crystal clear to me. So we we were self implementing for a couple years, and now we're fully on board with the OS. And the second thing I mentioned is we did a great webinar, just like this format on Eos, and we had Mike Morris, and we had our implementer, Gerardo Escalona, and we really explained Mike Morris is the $200 million Michigan Law Firm, and he was one of Gina Whitman's first clients. So we had, you know, an attorney client running us for many years. We had an implementer. It's how we rolled it out for our company. So that's a great you if you go on the 10 golden rules YouTube channel, that's a great quick study if you want to learn Eos, if you're less of a book reader, but definitely check out. Get a grip or traction. Any other best business books come to mind?

Any other best business books? So I always talk about, never split the difference. So many different use cases. So it's a It was like one of the New York's first hostage negotiators, and he talks about, you know, we in, like, especially the US talk about negotiation, like, I'm gonna say five, you're gonna say three, and we're gonna end up at four. But he says, when you're talking about hostages, you don't play that game, like, we get all 10 hostages, and that's it. That's, that's the game we're playing. And it really opens up, really strategy about negotiation is more emotional. It's like, what? What emotional things to the person you're talking to is going to get in the way of you both getting what you want. And I think it's just, it's so it's just like, how to be empathetic with people, how to understand, how to just understand, like most people just want to provide their for their families. And so if you know that's true, then don't do something that's going to make them look bad in their business or lose their job, like, how can you help them look good and you get what you want at the same time? And so I I recommend that to our sales team. I recommend it to to everyone on our executive team, because it's just such a just, it's just empathetic communication, you know what? And how, questions can go a long way, versus just saying why? When you ask, when you're asking someone, a question can put up the defense, but what and how questions can really just simple tactics to help soften the communication style. I

love it. Chris Voss is the author. Never split the difference. Love that one, too. What blogs, podcasts or YouTubes Do you subscribe to? And when you open up your feed in the morning and you see that one, what? What's the one that you always skip everything else for?

I'll say, I'm a man of many hobbies, and so my time on on podcasts and and blogs and things like that is is maybe less frequent than we I live six blocks from the office, so, so I golf cart to work a lot of days, so I don't have a lot of extra time, but, but I do, so I'm a pilot as a hobby. So I will engage with an aviation specific podcast, probably less less interesting to this listener base. But I think it's, there's, there's some level of I live and breathe case status and all that we're doing here. And sometimes I do need things that completely take me out of work for a minute. And so sometimes focusing on other hobbies or things that I like to engage with is a is a helpful way to recharge and then ultimately dive back in

which feed catches you the most? YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram, well,

I tried to simplify and I'll say I still have LinkedIn and YouTube on my phone. I will, I'll say that LinkedIn is probably the area I engage with the most. It's just a good feed for just seeing what's happening in the in the partners and in my community of other tech entrepreneurs and other SaaS companies that are growing, it's, it's just good to know what's happening in the market. I mean, it was exciting that when we announced our most recent fundraise was, was the same day that even up had announced their fundraise, and we were both at Cleo together. And so that was, that was just. Kind of a fun thing to be able to know that that was happening. Really not we should know because they were there, but we knew because of their post on LinkedIn.

Great, congratulations.

Thank you.

I always ask your NFL team, and you told me before, it's the Eagles,

yeah, yeah, I went the game this past weekend. It was a close one.

And what's a great introduction for you guys? Like, who do you want to meet? What type of firms?

Yeah, I mean, we always say that firms have to be ready to start investing in their clients. They have to be ready to start investing in scaling their client service. And so introductions are great. But for us, we we just want the opportunity to be able to share the resources we have to help people get there. I mean, I love when I find firms are on Eos, because they have a vision for where they want their business to go. And all you have to do is have a vision for how you want to impact your firm, and we can help. But I can't tell you how many law firms I talked to or the managing partner. It's like, I'm going to retire one day. I don't have a kid that's going to take over the firm, I don't think I can sell my name, so we're just going to go to zero at some point. I can't help that firm. That firm is fine collecting a check at the end of every year, and

he doesn't want any more complications technology, right?

So maybe it's an introduction to a firm on EOS we love to I mean, it's just something we all can nerd out about and and again, if it's right, I mean every, pretty much every, consumer based law firm, in most corporate law firms, to have challenges with clients. And if we can help, great if not, look, I nerd about the legal industry and the changes with lawyer, you know, non lawyer ownership in Arizona and some other states, and what's happening, how the bar associations are changing and getting more more deliberate. It's, I'm just, I'm really interested in all that, so I'll nerd out about all that. And hey, if you want to learn about case status, we can also talk about that

great last question, Where can people get in touch with you? Yeah,

case status.com, is a great way to learn more you can. Andy at case status.com it's not, not a hard, I'm not hard to find, and, you know, happy to have have a conversation and

talk about whatever and you check your LinkedIn feed. So that's another tip, yeah, that I do. Andy, this was great. Thank you so much for being here and giving us your story. Yeah, thanks

for having me.

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 you.