Pond Lehocky Giordano

Before using Litify’s Referral app, Philadelphia-based law firm Pond Lehocky Giordano was manually following up on referral cases every six months. They wouldn’t know when cases were rejected until 7-8 months later and had very little success re-referring them out for second looks.

The firm had only two cases signed from second looks in January 2017, the last month before they implemented Litify.

Since using Litify Referrals, they’re able to track the status of each referral case in real-time. They can re-route cases to another firm in a timely manner and do it at a scale that wasn’t possible before.

Today, 25% of all sign-ups come from such re-routing. Fewer clients fall through the cracks while more people are getting the help they need from the right lawyers.

Now the firm is getting a monthly average of 30 signed cases they referred out for second looks. This translates into approximately $1.3M (assuming a conservative average fee) in additional revenue that they wouldn’t have been able to generate without Litify.

“Before using Litify, our Referral team had 18 staff members referring out 2,000 files a month. Last month, we sent out 2,600 cases with a team of 9.5 employees using Litify, saving us $500k in staff and overhead,“ said Shawn Lehocky, Chief Strategy Officer.

The Key To Exponential Growth: Tracking And Automation

Pond Lehocky Giordano isn’t a stranger to leveraging technology in their practice. They started using software to manage their intake and cases in 1991.

However, the system they were using wasn’t keeping up with time. The reporting, in particular, was manual and time-consuming.

Nowadays, law firms have to market their services effectively. Advertising and marketing is unique in the legal industry. It’s particularly challenging when every dollar spent has to be justified.

With the existing software, Pond Lehocky Giordano wasn’t able to track every dollar all the way to conversion – a process that could take a couple of years.

Because of the long feedback loop, it was very hard to quantify what an ad campaign was achieving and calculate its ROI.

The firm started searching for a modern and revolutionary solution.

At first, they came up short and started a project to develop their own system. When Litify came along, they dropped the project and hopped onto Litify in January 2017.

The firm’s social security disability practice has over 25,000 active clients. They’re able to keep the personal attention—treating each client as if they’re the only client—thanks to the automation made possible by Litify.

“Since using Litify, we experienced a 100% growth in the total number of cases we refer out each month. Conversion rate increased from single digit to almost 20%,” said Lehocky.

Encourage Employee Adoption Through Leadership And Incentives

Partners at Pond Lehocky are very open to changes. The executive team is always refining how they run the business and understand the value of a streamlined operation and detailed reporting.

With the buy-in from leadership, it was easy to get the rest of the office on board when Litify was introduced.

In addition, the firm builds incentives and a social component into employee management. For example, staff members get a bonus for doing more work and helping more clients. When employees saw that Litify could help them do just that, they were eager to make the transition.

But it isn’t just about “pushing paper.” Litify’s built-in workflow means employees can process more cases without compromising the quality of their work.

In addition, automated workflow enables new hires to get trained as they do their job.

In the past, it took a year to onboard an employee to do a comprehensive intake. With Litify, it only takes a week of training for a new hire to be fully functional thanks to the built-in process and intuitive interface.

“We have a full-time Litify employee in our office to help customize the software to our needs. Our leadership team meets with Litify monthly to discuss improvements. They’re very open to hearing our suggestions and we often see our ideas reflected in the subsequent software updates,” said Lehocky.

5 – 10 Years Worth Of Growth In Just a Few Months

Implementing Litify has had a significant impact on the firm’s revenue growth and operational efficiency.

In the past, the process of writing, submitting, and reviewing a monthly report took approximately 45 days before any action was taken to identify and act on issues.

With Litify, all the data is available in real-time on the dashboard so management can address issues right away.

“Litify allows us to go places that would take us 5-10 years to get to in the next couple of months thanks to the automation,” said Lehocky. “We’re very excited to be using a tool that puts us on the cutting edge of the legal industry. We can now provide the best customer service to our clients – they’re already going through a lot and the last thing they should worry about is how they’re being treated by their law firms.”

Litify Community – the Real Game Changer

For Lehocky, Litify is more than just a piece of software that gets the job done.

Litify and its Referral app is bringing together a network of tech-savvy industry leaders who are working together and helping each other grow.

“The social and business development aspects of this referral network are unprecedented in the industry. We’re seeing amazing benefits in helping each other and providing the best service to our clients,” said Lehocky.