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The Install: The Missed Call Money Map in a Small Law Firm
Monday's teardown priced TrueFlow Plumbing's missed calls at 126,000 dollars a year. This Install walks the Missed Call Money Map into a two partner law firm, where the ticket is a retained matter, the caller in trouble never leaves a voicemail, and one lost client a month can fail the salary test on its own.
The caller in trouble does not leave a voicemail. Here is the map at work in a small firm.
Somebody who just got served, or just got hurt, calls three firms in ten minutes and retains the one that picks up. Your voicemail box is not a queue, it is a record of clients who went somewhere else. Same tool as Monday, walked into a different building.
The Friday Log Pull and the After Hours Split
Pull one week from the phone system on Friday and split it two ways: business hours and after hours. The after hours column is the one partners have never looked at, and in most firms it is where the emergencies live. Somebody arrested on a Saturday does not wait until Monday. Count both columns separately, because they get different fixes.
The Never Came Back Cross Reference
Do not price a missed call at a service ticket. Price it at what a retained matter is worth in your practice area, which for most small firms sits somewhere between three and ten thousand dollars. Then run the missed numbers against your matter list and mark the ones that never appear. Those are not missed calls. Those are clients, and they are already someone else's.
The Conflict Safe Script and the One Hour Rule
An answering layer does not need to practice law, it needs a script that cannot create a conflict: name, number, one line on the matter, no facts, no advice, and a promise of a callback. Then the rule tightens. A plumber can call back the same day. You cannot, because your caller is calling three firms this morning. Within the hour, or assume they are retained elsewhere.
The printable Missed Call Money Map one pager is inside the free Small Business MBA.
The five steps, the retained matter worksheet, and the conflict safe script, ready to print and hand to whoever answers the phone. It is free, it is not a trial, and every tool this season lands there as a one pager, right next to the full operator course library.
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