A Solution to Streamline Chapter 7 and 13 Bankruptcy Law Firm Operations
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Released
on: March 25, 2010, 01:27 am
Author:
Colorado Bankruptcy Training
Industry:
Law
When a consumer is interested in filing bankruptcy, they will normally
contact a bankruptcy attorney in their area or simply walk into their
office with no prior appointment. The average consumer will also want
to know how much it will cost to file bankruptcy, at which time the
attorney must gather enough information about their financial
situation to provide a reasonable quote for services. The majority of
attorneys do this by providing a free initial consultation.
Unfortunately, this method is proving to be extremely unsuccessful for
many Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy attorneys. For example, a
small law practice in Denver, Colorado recently said that she often
only coverts 2 out of 10 free consultations to actual bankruptcy
clients who retain her services. This is a great loss of time and
money; in fact, about 80% of it.
Another attorney in Los Angeles, California said that he spends about
25 hours of free consultations per week to average 3 new clients who
pay a retainer. And still, another attorney in Phoenix, Arizona said
that he is spending so much of his time with free client consultations
that end up resulting in a total loss of income, that he has little
time to dedicate to clients who have retained him. He is considering
hiring an in-house attorney or law student but is afraid he cannot
afford it right now.
Problems like these, and thousands more like them are not uncommon in
the average Chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcy office today. However,
attorneys are finding the necessity to streamline operations just to
keep up with the increased workload within the bankruptcy industry
itself. They no longer can afford to spend 3, 4 or more hours per day
interviewing clients, only to find out they either are ineligible to
file bankruptcy; or even worse, to discover there are potential
problems that may cost more time for the attorney or paralegal that
were not anticipated during the initial client meeting.
A Proposed Solution
The Initial Intake Form, a tool recently developed by Colorado
Bankruptcy Training, is designed to enable law firms to meet these
time saving goals as well as accomplish much more.
The Initial Intake Form is a 4-page form that is basically comprised
of yes and no questions. This makes it very simple and fast for
potential client(s) to fill out and complete either at the law firm or
over the internet by accessing the law firm’s website. The
information gathered from these yes and no responses is designed to be
simple and fast for the attorney to interpret also. This is
accomplished through the extremely detailed, 75-page Operations Manual
that comes with the package.
In order for the Initial Intake Form to provide maximum benefits to
bankruptcy law firms, the form is provided to attorneys in the
following formats:
1. The HTML version is designed to fully integrate with the existing
law firm website. Potential clients visit the website, fill out the
form and the responses are automatically emailed to the law firm. The
attorney interprets the answers from the form and if the attorney
decides to take the case, contacts the clients to schedule an
appointment to sign the Retainer Agreement as well as conduct the
client intake interview.
2. The Adobe Acrobat version is form fillable; meaning that it can be
completed online from the law firm website as well or any computer in
the office. The PDF form is also fully customizable so that it can be
made to comply with internal law firm operations.
3. The Microsoft Word version is also fully customizable and can be
opened by both Word and WordPerfect users.
As previously mentioned the main heart of the package is the
extensive, 75-page Operations Manual that helps the bankruptcy law
firm to quickly and easily alter their present operations in order to
achieve the following goals:
Goal No 1
The first major goal of the Initial Intake Form is to provide the
attorney with enough information so that he or she can more accurately
project the figures for Schedule I and J of the bankruptcy petition.
This will enable the attorney to more accurately determine the
complexities of the case as well as the possibility whether this case
will most likely become a Chapter 7 or 13.
Goal No 2
The second goal of the Initial Intake Form is to provide the attorney
with enough information to ascertain the complexity of the case by
examining other areas outside the financial method discussed in Goal
No 1.
Goal No 3
The third goal of the Initial Intake Form is to provide the attorney
with enough knowledge to reasonably give the client(s) a more accurate
fee quote.
Goal No 4
The fourth goal of the Initial Intake Form is to cross-reference
responses from other questions to ensure the information provided by
the client(s) is consistent and accurate. This allows the attorney to
maintain better due diligence which is a requirement under the
bankruptcy code.
Goal No 5
The fifth goal of the Initial Intake Forms is to assist in
streamlining intake operations. This is important today because of
the massive growth of the debtor bankruptcy field. Old methods that
used to work no longer work because of the fast moving needs and
requirements within the industry itself.
To find out more and watch a product demo VIDEO about the Initial
Intake Form Kit, visit:
http://www.coloradobankruptcytraining.com/products_intakeform.html
Contact Details :
Victoria Ring
Colorado Bankruptcy Training
www.victoria-ring.com
www.coloradobankruptcytraining.com
1670 East Cheyenne Mountain Blvd, Suite F257
Colorado Springs, CO 80906
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