LegalShield to Increase Technology Capabilities
BY APRIL WILKERSON
THE JOURNAL RECORD
ADA – By its nature, technology is
triggering change at Oklahoma businesses
and industries. But a longtime
Oklahoma business has spent decades
harnessing technology to create the
quality it expects. In the early 1990s,
LegalShield in Ada launched a software system
developed in-house to
monitor its provider firms’ customer
service and quality, as well as providing
attorneys information and reports
to better serve their clients. That
technology has been upgraded over
the years as the need arose, and in the
next few years, the company plans a
software redesign that incorporates
its electronic secure transfer capabilities.
Leslie Fisher, vice president of
attorney resources for LegalShield
said technology is crucial for quality
control among its provider law firms
in 49 states and four Canadian
provinces. The company has invested
millions in hardware, software and
support, and has no plans of slowing
down.
“We’re in constant contact with
our provider firms – daily, weekly,
monthly – and that’s all based on technology,”
Fisher said. “The reason why
we have to have a lot of technology is
because we get 2.3 million requests for
service a year. To be able to manage
that high volume of intake with the
same high level of service, you must
have cutting-edge technology.”
When Harland Stonecipher
formed LegalShield in the 1970s,
the company began with an open
panel, or attorney of choice, approach,
Fisher said. That initial desire to let
people choose their own attorney
soon changed, because customers
(LegalShield calls them “members”) didn’t
know who to choose, made bad
choices or used up their LegalShield benefits
without finding a solution for
their problems, she said. In addition, LegalShield
simply couldn’t monitor the
quality of its attorneys or meet their
training needs with that approach,
Fisher said. So in the early 1980s, LegalShield
switched from attorney of choice
to its “provider law firm network system.”
“We wanted to have one provider
firm per state and develop special
software for them, maintain their
technology requirements on the telecom
side and make sure our members
were getting state-of-the art technology
and quick service,” she said.”We
also wanted to work with the attorneys
on their customer service skills.”LegalShield
developed its software inhouse
rather than trying to find a
commercial product to fit its needs,
Fisher said, and its 80-member IT
department keeps the technology
humming. The monitoring aspect of
the software is real-time, and each
morning the company gets a report
that details how quickly the phone is
answered, how promptly a customer’s
request was handled, when a letter (if
required) was mailed out – 15 benchmarks
in all, she said, although none of
it includes a customer’s proprietary
information. If something needs to be
addressed, LegalShield visits with that
firm on how to correct it.
The software also tracks the types
of issues the provider firms are handling.
In the first half of 2010, real
estate issues were the leading legal
service request among LegalShield customers,
followed by consumer
finance, family law, collections and
estate planning. That information
helps firms know if they need to hire
more attorneys in a certain area of
expertise or refocus their priorities in
another area, Fisher said.
Melvin Hall, who handles employment
law and civil rights issues for
Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison
and Lewis in Oklahoma City, said the
software system saves his firm preparation
time.
“It provides us invaluable information,”
he said. “If a member calls in, we
automatically have all their information
– how long they’ve been a member,
previous calls they’ve made, what
issues those calls concerned. All of
that information helps tremendously
to provide service.”
Larry Framme of Framme Law
Firm in Virginia said LegalShield's monitoring
approach isn’t punitive; if it
were, the results would be less favorable.
But that information is used to
help a firm grow and better serve its
customers, he said.
But the outcome of the monitoring
isn’t only about quality control. Pre-
Paid Legal also rewards and trains its
provider firms. Attorneys and customer
service representatives who
score excellent ratings or receive
“praise letters” from customers are
recognized, and LegalShield's WOW:
Service from the Heart customer
service training is offered at all firms.
Some firms opt to extend the training
to the non-LegalShield part of their business
simply because it works so well,
she said.
“We have excellent law firms, but
sometimes they need a little bit of customer
service training,” she said.
“We’ve been doing it two years, and
we’ve seen an uptick from good surveys
to excellent because the attorneys
are learning how to be more
compassionate and how to have better
communication skills on the telephone.”LegalShield
will soon redesign its
software system for the future. Using
new interface technology, the company
will build in its secure file transfer
capabilities, Fisher said. LegalShield discourages
its provider firms from using
e-mail, especially on delicate matters,
because of its lack of security and concerns
about waiving attorney-client
privilege, she said. But the next
upgrade will remedy that.
“We want to stay up with technology
where members don’t have to use
a fax machine or snail mail, so what
we’re using now is secure file transfer,
and it will be integrated into the software,”
Fisher said. “We’re always trying
to stay ahead of the curve with
technology to provide better service
for our members and have the law
firms be more efficient.”
Framme said the upgrade will take
provider firms into the future without
a significant capital investment of
their own.
“The expanded services they will
offer will not just allow us to record
our initial consultations, but be able to
do everything as a firm on the program,”
Frame said. “We’ll be able to
keep case files in digital format; now,
most firms keep them in hard copy
form. It’s really the wave of the future.
Very few have gone to this, but it’s
where we have to go. All of the
provider firms, whether small or large
or sophisticated technologically or
not, will be able to share the same toplevel
electronic system as a big New
York or Washington law firm. It will
take some firms ahead light years in
one step.”
Rich Figley
Independent Consultant
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