EP075: Utilizing Case Management Software to Triple Your Revenue with Lead Docket’s Joshua Hostilo

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, whatever time this podcast finds you. Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. We've got a great guest today, Josh Hostilo from lead docket and file vine. I'll get to Josh's intro in just one second. Couple things first, upcoming, we've got a couple awesome live workshops. And if you haven't been to our live workshops, they have been viewed over 300,000 times on YouTube, but always great to catch them live. We have one of the law industry's real rock stars. On our next episode. It's EOS for law firms with Mike Morse. He's built a $200 million pie firm in Michigan, the largest pie firm in Michigan. And he credits a lot of his success to the Entrepreneurial Operating System EOS. And he was one of Gino Whitman's first clients. He's the author of traction and the creator of Eos. So you don't want to miss that one. And if you do miss it, it'll be available on our YouTube channel. And also in February, we're going to do Google screened LSAs, the local service ads, and people tell us all the time, we just can't get back in the top three of the LSAS. So we've got our secret algorithm for getting in the top three of the LSAS. And we've got folks who always tell us, we were in the top three, and then we fell out of the top three. So we'll be covering LSAs, and EOS in the next two live workshops. Also, don't miss a couple great podcasts we just did. If this is your first 10 Golden Rules podcast, check out episode city 66, Charlie man shared his $500,000 Referral Engine. If you don't really have a nailed down referral game, Charlie's the guy's got a great strategy for building those referral relationships in your local market. And the law firm accelerator and culture guru Bill Biggs is on Episode 64, just to name a few. So check out some of our past shows, if you're just coming to the podcast. And if you like him, we really appreciate you for a five star review. Anyways, without further ado, let's get into our guest, Josh was kind enough to be with us. And you know, for me, there's a really critical tool that they have at file vine, which is a legal case management software. And it's called Lead docket, and they acquired a company called Lead docket. But I call it an interstitial. But that's probably not a real name for it. But it's what happens in between the lead. And in between your case management system. It's mission critical to track those leads properly, assign them to someone on your team for follow up. And you know, get the data so you can follow up with people set up an email series, set up a follow up sequence, even for your internal office people to make sure they're getting back to those leads. And then the beauty of it is we can track it from a marketing perspective. That's why I'm so excited about it. We know which leads came in from SEO came in from Pay Per Click came in from LSAS. And we can track the performance of each of those programs. When you hook up lead docket to your case management system. Now obviously, it's built to sell with Filevine, but it can actually work with other legal case management's and CRMs. So let me tell you a little bit about Josh Hostal. Oh, he's a seasoned professional known for his contributions to law firm case management. He's the product owner at lead docket. But the cool thing about Josh, he worked at a law firm, and he really did it. You know, he implemented this technology with the firm. They built the firm, he'll tell you, you know about the scale, they got to and we learned a little bit about him as we get into the interview. So without further ado, let me introduce Josh Hostilo, from lead docket and Filevine

Absolutely. So, you know, went to school here locally, where I'm from, I went to a school called Columbus State University. When I got out of school, I really didn't know what I was going to do. You know, I had a background in biology and a minor in Chemistry and really was, you know, not really, you know, focused in that direction. And I played sports all my life. And so I went into the sporting business and training athletes and I did that for about nine years and grew up pretty, pretty big business there. And then after that, I had a family friend and cousin of mine who ran a law firm, and he was looking to expand and grow. And with my previous background of growing, growing that business in the sports facility world, took a lot of what I learned there and helped to grow that law firm for seven years grew up from three offices to 13 True Little revenue, and were able to really optimize how they ran their law firm. You know, I started from the very beginning, I kind of just wanted to learn the firm, even though I was, you know, working on growing, and I wanted to learn everything about how a personal injury law firm worked from how they got cases to, you know, how they work, the cases, and even how they dispersed the clients. You know, we worked really hard for the first couple of years, just really optimizing a lot of their marketing and things like that. And then eventually working into their technology side and how they, how they were able to change their technology to help grow the firm and reduce cost internally. But additionally, get get him done faster, get these cases done faster, and get these clients the money they deserve faster. And of course, as everyone knows, you know, if your clients are getting paid faster, you're getting paid faster as well. So did that. And in the process, one of the technologies we use was ball, Vaughn, and eventually lead dokkan in there, and then the E signature tool and bind sign. And so we're working with all of that it led me to the technology world and really like what this technology could do for each one of these firms. And so in 2022, took the leap of moving to the lead docket side, and really started helping grow this product as well, this product is is used by over 1000 law firms across the United States, Canada, a couple other countries, and we are continually expanding the reach between fall on lead docket and our E signature platform and binds on. So

you were kind of like the guy from I think it was Remington, this is a really old reference. But there used to be a TV commercial, and the guy's like, this razor was so good. I bought the company. That's

right. That's right. Yeah. Now, you know, I think that I just, I love the people when working with valve on and implementing that product. And we had, we're bringing in about 4500 cases a year. And so you can imagine you spend a lot of time with your technology and implementing that and getting that right, for the firm. And I spent a little over a year with their implementation department at Fall vine and really met Ryan Anderson, the owner of fall Vaughn, and kind of learned just how that company, you know, was built and made and got to where it was. And it was just fascinating to me and led me to the point of saying, hey, I want to make that transition.

So just break it down. Super simple, because I know some some folks haven't transitioned yet to using a case management. And then we'll talk about lead doc and the role that plays. So what is a case manager? And how does you know what is file line? You know, really give us the basics? And then then we'll go to the LF intermediary. Yeah,

definitely. So you know, here's, here's what, in my opinion, and many others opinion on case management is how you handle every case that comes in the door. Back in the original days, lawyers had, they had folders and they had, you would see them to carry these red folders around, and they'd have every piece of documentation that happened in this case, imagine that your case management platform is that red folder for every case you have. And so every one of the community, every communication that goes on in that case happens in Fall vine, and that is the case management platform that has that red folder, anything from documents, to text messages to emails, you have everything in one place, as this world evolved, imagine that that red folder, you can't put a text message in there without forwarding that text message to someone's email and then printing that out. And it's this, you know, inefficient process. So a case management platform really brings all the efficiencies to your actual process within your law firm, and also helps you be able to track all the processes that are going on so that you can improve on those. You know, again, I think that we have to evolve, as we're working legal matters into being able to communicate with our clients being able to communicate with other firms or working with or even, you know, the defendant parties that you're dealing with as well. And that's what follow up on is it's a it's a case management platform that takes all the communication pieces and all of the legal matter pieces and puts them in one central location for your team and not just you to, you know, work those cases.

couple interesting things you mentioned, like you said, you were very astute in the previous firm of using technology to get speed to resolve the cases and get your clients paid faster and get paid faster. I'd love to probe into that a little bit. How does the case management technology help you move cases quicker?

Absolutely. So a couple of things that the very base level is you're able to set up predefined a task by dates and times, that you're able to follow up with a client or follow up with an insurance company or follow up with a medical provider to be able to get all the information into the system whether you need metrics, or you're getting a counteroffer or you're getting the settlement check coming in. So these are things that can be pre set up based off of where the it is in the process in the case. So every case has worked in a very similar fashion. Not only So once you have that set up, then you're able to track those times of how long it takes to get these things completed. Once you have real metrics, you can then start to see where you're falling through the cracks and being able to speed those processes up. What I noticed is we were really good at the time of bringing in the door and really getting to that initial offer from an insurance company. But once we had the offer, once we had the acceptance, we it took too long for us to be able to get the check in the door and get the client paid. So originally, it was over 30 days from the time we accepted an offer till we dispersed a client with these metrics, we realized that we could add a couple steps in there to be able to speed the process up by saying, hey, once you get that acceptance, we want an automatic letter to go out within the first 24 hours. And then also on top of that, we also wanted a follow up call every 24 hours that it didn't happen that we didn't have that check in the door. And so what happened is we were able to improve it from over 30 days, to 19 days. So it was it was a roughly about a 12 day decrease that we saw, which means that we're able to start bringing in money faster in the door to be able to get people the checks and the money they deserve. Also getting medical providers paid faster. And eventually, obviously getting the firm paid faster.

Talking about the role of file by and plays in medical chronologies, and I understand there's a lot of simplification and automation that is available now. Yeah, yeah,

definitely. So one of the things that we have the spirit fairly recent is we have the use of AI within within valve on and we're able to take the medical records and be able to put them through our medical chronology, AI, and it's able to pull out the dates of treatment, the CPT codes, all the things that you may be looking for, so that you're not having to read through hundreds of pages, we can bring it into a simple text field to be able to see all the dates of treatment, the CPT codes and maybe even some different things that you're looking for within them, you can ask the AI to pull out any red flags, any discrepancies within the treatment, things like that between the doctor's notes and maybe what it was billed for. So that we're able to really, you know, bring that to the attorney's attention, and then the paralegals attention as they're working those

cases. That's awesome. And I've seen some demos of is demands AI a different product. It's

built in fall on its, again, we have several AI features within within fall Bong, and lead docket and even our other platform outlaw. And so the demands AI is paired from fall on and outlaw and we're able to really take all of the treat the information within the case, and bring that into an actual demand using AI. So we're actually pulling all the information in building a demand letter with artificial intelligence, and then having that reviewed by a team of attorneys to be able to give that to the firm for them to be able to say, hey, yes, we'd like this, we'd like this to go out to the insurance company from there. So it really what we've noticed is it's been able to reduce time to get the demand letters down by you know, somewhere between seven and 14 days right now.

Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, look, you know, Chat GPT 4 passed the bar exam with like, the 90th percentile. So yeah, clearly, we're coming to the realization that the AIS is just as good or in some cases better than humans. Absolutely. It's more just, it makes fewer errors. Now, almost every in almost every category of artificial intelligence, you know, everybody's gonna say, Look ever experienced lawyer look at it first. That's true with, you know, any of the work we're doing, we definitely have an experienced search engine optimization expert, look at everything that we're generating, with some experimenting, we're doing an AI we're scratching the surface to. So your real specialty is lead docket? And, you know, I call it an interstitial. I know that's not No, I don't think anyone else uses that term. Lead docket is seems to work really well in between, like the leads we generate as a digital marketing agency. And then my interest in this these products has always been, you know, we send the leads to the law firm. And then they go in, sometimes they go into a deep dark hole. And what ideally what we want is really good feedback. You know, like, how did the Google lead to workout? How do the local service ads Google screen leads workout? And how do the SEO Leads workout? And when I mean workout, what I mean is, you know, what percentage of the leads each month, turn into a sign client, right? So if we can get that feedback, we can give that back to our teams. And we're like, hey, you know, these 10 SEO Leads, you know, five of them signed his clients. And then we can go back and figure out what blogs those people came in on and write more blogs, like the ones that worked. So you know, same thing with keywords and same thing with the Google screen local services. So We were we've loved lead docket and our clients that are using it is it's in between the case management system and the lead. So the lead comes in goes, use lead docket with the intake teams, and then goes into file vine. And then it reports back on the cases and even the case value. You know, after six months, if you could say, hey, the Google string cases were all worth $30,000. And the Pay Per Click cases were worth $20,000. Now, you know, you know those Google's at I don't know, this, that data. So I'm done. Yeah, Greg. But we definitely do know the data of of the percentage of cases that convert, and that we get that information from lead docket. So go ahead and tell us about lead docket. And tell us about how it interplays with, you know, the leads and the CRM and the case manager on the other side? Absolutely.

Yeah. So just to explain the docket at a very basic level lead docket manages all of your marketing efforts in one location. So for anything that you're advertising, whether that be on Google, Facebook, you know, the back of a phone book to a park bench, there is a number there is something that is associated with how they're reaching out to you. Lead dockets has a way to track all of that. You mentioned, like, you know, Google click, you know, the the ads, the campaigns, the LSAs, we can track all of those in lead docket, the best part is we can break them down by individual each individual marketing effort, right? So we just named three, just on Google alone. So you can imagine, that's just you know, you may have multiple campaigns running, and you need to know which campaign is converting the best, right. And so a couple of ways that they're all integrated directly. So when somebody goes on, and they click on and they click on an ad, or they click on an ad campaign, and they go to a website and fill out a form, well, we're tracking, tracking that glue, Google Click ID all the way through. So that we can actually tell you that came even though the you know that it came from your website, we know that it actually they got to your website, but coming from Google, and a specific campaign, and how they got there. So we track all of that we actually store all that in the system, as well as visual for the for the customer and the firm. But additionally, we use web hooks to pass that information back to these the ad agencies. And we're able to say, Okay, this particular campaign resulted in this new signed case, and this is, you know, this is where it is in the process. Additionally, if it's declined, or if it's rejected, we also can pass that back with web hooks as well. So we call them Google offline conversions. So you're able to see those awesome. But additionally, once you sign that case, up, it goes into fall on it has worked through the process, and eventually that case should settle. We have a cool integration directly with fall, Vaughn as it's our parent company, is that we actually have what they call phase mapping. So involve on your phases, one of the phases is going to be settlement, once it goes into settlement, and then it's settled and the numbers are in there, we actually pass that information back to lead docket. So we'll give you real time ROI, by campaign by marketing source. If you're using other integrations, like call rail or call tracking metrics, we're able to actually tell you which numbers are getting called the most how we're linking those to the leads. And additionally, how those are resulting in dollar value down the road. So we can look at cost per lead, we can look at cost per acquisition. But additionally, we can look at things like what the settlement values were on this and give you like a real percentage of ROI on each one.

That's crazy good. What stage of a law firm. Should they have a case manager, a CRM? Like? Who are the best folks to use? File vine and lead docket? Yeah,

you know, I get this question. Pretty much every every time I come on either a podcast or some type of webinar. And here's the thing, if you're spending $1, on advertising, you have have to have a way to track it. You have to have a way a way to say I spent money, how am I getting a return on my investment? Because at the end of the day, what is the point of marketing, if you don't know if it's actually returning anything to your law firm? So I say it all the time. Like, if you're spending any money in the marketing world, there should be a way to to know exactly how many cases you're bringing in. And if that's resulting in, if it's not resulting for you need to move to the to the next, the next venture, whether that's, you know, another another social media platform or whether that's, you know, getting involved with the team like yours, Jay? And really, how should we mark it?

Awesome. What tips do you have, you know, you said you're signing 4500 cases a month, you know, what tips do you have? You're obviously you're seeing probably hundreds of law firms performance, you know, Should folks be doing, you know, on the basic marketing stuff, and what's maybe some more sophisticated tips you would give folks? Yeah,

I think the number one thing is having a brand, a consistent brand across all marketing platforms. You know, you see a lot of law firms and they have, they don't they have a one one lawyer on a billboard, and they don't really have a slogan, they don't really have anything to remind someone who They are some of the best firms that I've seen in our platform. And additionally, as I was in the, as I was in the law firm space, our competitors at that time, the people who are performing the best have a consistent brand. No matter if you see them on a commercial, or you see them on a billboard, or you see them on Google, you know, who that is based off a color, or a name or specific slogan that they're using. And those are the things that I feel like, have shown the best results. Additionally, another part of it that a lot of burns because

I was swept up in it. Yeah, hold on that point. Because for a long time, our clients would ask us, like, you know, what should we have on our landing page? If we're doing ads? You know, we have a big check, or, you know, hey, where can we get you the most money? Or should we have, you know, lawyer with boxing gloves? We fight the insurance company? Or should we have a picture of a car accident? And you just gave the right answer, which is, you should develop a consistent brand message that represents your firm. And then you should be consistent with that. So if your brand is, you know, we fight the insurance companies on your behalf, you consistent on the on the Billboard, and you're on your Google ad, and on your website, and on your social media. And that should be a fit with your firm is one thing I've found is like, you know, some firms are the local family firm that cares, and gets back to you and deals with your case, one on one, you know, obviously some firms business models, like volume and settling cases, but their message should be well, you know, we'll fight get you the check. Right? Yeah.

And that's the thing that I again, I think the consistency, right, like if you're changing branding monthly, it's hard for people to know who you are and who to call. You know, it's we're in the day and age now that you'll see many billboards that don't have a number on them anymore. And it's because you're there to remember their name. And so because everybody's using Google, right? I make this I make this joke that Google is like the new telephone book, right? Like back in the old days of marketing, somebody went to a telephone book, and whoever had the biggest ad on that page, or whoever had that square that box, they were there, or you named your law firm ABC. So you could be the first person you saw in the law firms, the yellow pages,

right, because, you know, obviously, it's critical to get phone calls, too, right? Yeah, absolutely. We find phone calls convert much better than the clicks to websites do data? Yeah,

no, definitely. I think that one of the one key lacking features is a lot of law firms have a number, but they're not tracking that number in some fashionable way. You know, again, I mentioned to earlier with call rail and call tracking metrics, those are the two that are the most common that I've seen in this space. But they are, they give you the most data in our in our opinion, from what we've seen. And additionally, we have, we do have direct integrations with them. So we are able to pull into that data. And to be able to track those phone calls. I completely agree that a phone call has a higher conversion rate, because you're getting you're providing a personal touch and answers to an immediate question.

I'm just validating all the good facts here. So you were gonna I never interrupted you on the brand topic. Tell everyone the best marketing strategy, and I interrupted you. So go. Yeah,

no, I think at the end of the day, the the best marketing strategy is the one that someone always remembers who you are. Because you never know. Like, let's just,

from our luck gonna give us the really good tactics. It's

just, yeah, you know, the hard part, the hard part about giving a tactic is all based off of law firm, be the person that always answers the call, that'd be the first thing. When the call comes in, don't have a press one for new client and press two for existing, right? Like, the longer you make somebody wait, the more likely they are to go to the next person on the list. We had a role that there was a 90 to 90 seconds to convert. I mean, at the end of the day, you can ask from a personal injury perspective, you can really ask four to five questions and know exactly where that case lies. So that's the you know, my thing is always be responsive, be quick to answer. So there's so many other firms out here doing the same thing that you're doing. Amen.

So a couple quick questions. What apps or techniques or tools do you use for personal productivity? We've got the technology guy, how do we get more efficient? Yeah,

from from our perspective, on the product side, I use, we use a lot of things like air table or Miro to track user activity. Also, we use we use an app called PinDot. That allows allows us to see that you know, what the users are clicking on how often they're on different pages, things like that, and really just documenting our side of how everything kind of the user journey of how they're using the product. And that helps us provide feedback to you know, our team to be able to make it more efficient or, you know, add different features or different requests from the customer. You know, I'll say that I use Calendly for a lot of my like meetings that need to be set and just got to

have Calendly Yeah, email like, Hey, can you meet at three or four and then the day later and you missed them All right, awesome. If you guys don't have counted, got it, check it out. Yeah. What are some of your best business books? Like if you meet a young person, you know, doing their business school or their law school? What are a couple books that gotta read out of the gate?

So mine are kind of all over the place. Number one, I gotta give a little shout out to Michael mogul, Game Changing attorney, if you're an attorney. Those are the that that one right there even as even from the marketing side and being on the firm side, I learned a lot from that. From a business side, Good to Great. You know, Jim, yes, great, great book. But from a product side, you know, I've got some some really great ones. I've got inspired, which is a really good one by Marty Kagan. And then additionally, I think, obviously, you mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk crushing it any any game, Gary Vaynerchuk book, in my opinion, is going to kind of point you in the right direction and make sure that you're, you know, just most motivated, really, that thing does go up

and give you some good tools.

That's right. That's right.

Well, last question. Or second last question. Give me some blogs or podcasts or YouTube that you follow.

So a couple that I follow Steve Fretts and be that lawyer. Good to be social. Good one. Obviously, Jay, your podcast is wonderful. Your YouTube channel is wonderful. Leading up to this. I watched a good bit of your things and learned a good bit about how you guys work. I

love it. For some reason, YouTube started loving us and it's blowing up, or like over 250,000 views on YouTube. And it's like 50,000 a month now. It's just like the crazy hockey stick. Yeah. And last question, Where can people get in touch with you?

Yeah, so my my email is my first and last name is Joshua Hostilo@filevine.com. Additionally, LinkedIn, Joshua Hostilo I do you have a Twitter page, same thing. So my name is on each one of these. They can reach out anyway. Doesn't doesn't matter to me.

Awesome. Josh, thanks so much for your time and all your information. And we'll look forward to hearing more from you guys. Were file mine, Dr. Kane Elliott's going to speak at our event. tgr live in April. So lots more information on all this to come. Thanks, everyone for being here. Josh. Give me the last word, buddy. Definitely.

Jay, I appreciate your time. Again, if you're looking in the marketing world and you're trying to try to track this things, look at lead docket take your time, really evaluate each one of the products you're using in your business. Awesome.

Thanks so much.

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