What if booking a legal consultation didn’t have to start with a calendar?
When someone reaches out to a law firm, the traditional process is pretty straightforward: Here’s an attorney’s calendar. Pick a time.
It’s simple enough, but what if you could ask a few questions before handing someone a calendar?
A standard Calendly link is just an automated version of the traditional process.
A Calendly Routing Form adds an important step before that. A prospective client answers a few questions, and Calendly uses those answers to determine what happens next. Depending on how the law firm sets it up, the person can be directed to a specific event type, shown a customized message, or redirected to the appropriate webpage.
Instead of a client requesting a consultation and immediately being able to snag time on an attorney’s calendar, you could have them answer a few questions so that they would automatically reach the right calendar.
That small change can make the scheduling process more intentional and cut down on the back-and-forth it sometimes takes to get the right person into the right appointment.
It can also help with basic pre-screening. Let’s say a law firm only handles matters in states where its attorneys are licensed. In our example, the firm has attorneys licensed in Florida and Georgia.
The routing form could ask, “What state is your matter in?”
The responses might look like this:
Florida → Continue
Georgia → Continue
California → “Unfortunately, our attorneys are not licensed to assist with matters in your state or jurisdiction.”
For a matter in California, no calendar invite would be necessary, and there would be no appointment to cancel later. Most importantly, an attorney wouldn’t discover five minutes into a consultation that the firm can’t take the case.
A firm could also use a routing form to ask what type of legal services a prospective client is looking for. If the firm handles family law and estate planning, but not criminal defense, for example, that answer could help determine whether the prospective client should continue to scheduling or receive different information.
There’s an important distinction, though. A routing form can help with basic pre-screening, but it shouldn’t be presented as a substitute for a firm’s actual conflict-checking process. If conflict checking is handled through a separate system, the protocol should be maintained and appropriately integrated.
The goal isn’t to put up more hoops for the prospective client; it’s to make sure they end up in the correct place.
When a few simple questions can do some of the sorting up front, everyone spends less time playing calendar ping-pong.
The Betties Take
At Back Office Betties, we’re big fans of getting the right information to the right person at the right time.
And sometimes, that starts before anyone ever opens a calendar. The best legal calendaring software
shouldn’t just make it easy for someone to pick a time; it should also support the intake process associated with the appointment.
The last thing a law firm needs is an in-demand attorney spending valuable time before learning that the prospective client has a type of case that the firm doesn’t handle.
That isn’t a consultation; it’s a calendar problem that has now become a meeting.
Technology like Calendly Routing Forms can help law firms ask the right questions upfront, route prospective clients appropriately, reduce scheduling back-and-forth, and make the experience easier for everyone.
Getting someone onto the calendar is only half the job.
Getting the right person onto the right calendar? Now you’re working smarter.
