The challenge: building an AI agent in-house

Merchant Growth, an alternative small business lender based in Canada, partnered with Superpanel to build Sam, a digital teammate responsible for re-engaging with past clients by phone, text, and email. But Merchant Growth didn't start with Superpanel. They first set out to build their own AI agent in-house.

When Hashem "Hash" Aboulhosn joined to lead growth, he inherited a company-wide priority: an outbound AI sales agent, built in-house on Vapi. Its job was to reconnect with past clients who might need financing again, a group the sales team rarely had time for while working new leads.

The prototype came together quickly, but live calls exposed what the demo hid: lag, robotic pacing, and an agent that drifted off script. Making it useful meant connecting it to Salesforce, scheduling follow-ups, and building a decision engine that could hand client conversations between text, email, and voice without losing the thread. 

The pivot: focus on what you do best, partner for the rest

After one or two test cohorts, it was clear that the in-house build was moving too slowly on work that would never be a core competency. Changing course meant walking away from three to four months of work on a company-wide priority, but Hash's reasoning was simple: Merchant Growth's edge is lending, not voice infrastructure. No company should build its entire software ecosystem in-house. The faster path is to focus on what you do best and partner with teams who are the best at the rest.

Why Superpanel?

1. Performance: an AI agent that sounds human

Hash had seen what out-of-the-box voice platforms could do, and where they fell short.

Superpanel's calls sounded different, and Hash heard it right away. He credits the investment behind them. Superpanel built Voco, its own proprietary voice orchestration layer, after hitting the same limits on off-the-shelf platforms like Vapi and Bland. It knows when a caller is still thinking, handles interruptions without talking over anyone, and keeps latency low enough that the call feels like a conversation.

2. Control: configuring the experience instead of prompting it

What Hash valued most was control over the client experience. With the in-house build, the prompt was the only lever, and every fix meant another warning stacked on top of the last one.

Superpanel gave him a different kind of control. Instead of steering the AI with prompts, his team was able to configure the rules in code, using Superpanel's platform: which questions get asked, when a client goes to a rep, and what's written to Salesforce. The AI handles the conversation and the judgment calls within those rules. That made a multi-step lending flow predictable, even when it ran over days or weeks.

3. Speed: a fast test with aligned incentives

Superpanel gave Merchant Growth an easy way to test a new approach to serving its clients. From the start, Superpanel's implementation team was clear about the work involved: the configuration Merchant Growth's sales flows would need, how the team would build and test it, and a cohort-based rollout with a clear decision point along the way.

The pricing matched that approach. A meaningful share of what Merchant Growth pays is tied to loans funded, so Superpanel succeeds only when Merchant Growth does. A fast timeline and an outcomes-based pricing model made the decision easy internally.

What changed for Merchant Growth

Merchant Growth started with one use case: re-engaging past clients the sales team rarely had time for. Along the way, it found a better way to serve their client: 60% of clients who reengaged responded by text only, a channel Merchant Growth had used before but not consistently, since reps defaulted to calls. Now clients engage when and how they prefer, from sending bank statements to checking on their loan via text or call.

The first cohorts also showed how much demand was already sitting in the client base.

Cohort size grew 400% from the first cohort to the third, and Merchant Growth plans to scale more than 16-fold next quarter. Merchant Growth is now deploying Superpanel across more of the client journey. The payoff: Superpanel handles outreach, follow-up, and document collection, so reps can focus on building rapport, matching clients to the right financing, and winning their commitment.

Advice for growth leaders weighing build vs. buy

Hash's view: for most businesses, buying makes more sense. Prototypes are cheap now, but a prototype isn't the system you'll run your sales on. Here's his advice for leaders making the call.

1. Spend your team's time on what you do best. Building a voice agent is easy to start and hard to finish. The hard part is the plumbing, and that's rarely a lender's or a law firm's edge.

2. Judge a pivot by speed of progress, not sunk cost. Walking away from months of work feels expensive. Staying on a slow path usually costs more. A short timeline and pricing tied to your results make it cheap to find out.

3. Set up a weekly working group. Put sales, the team that owns your CRM and operations, and your vendor in the same room every week. Each group does its part, and progress comes fast.

4. Give the AI the work your reps shouldn't be doing. Let the agent handle prospecting, follow-up, and document collection. Keep your best people on rapport, matching clients to the right product, and winning commitment. 

Two next steps

Discuss your use case: Thinking about building your own AI agent?
Talk to our team before you commit the engineering time.

Read the AI agent evaluation guide: Evaluating AI agents for your sales team? Our evaluation guide covers the questions that separate a good demo from a system you can run in production: decision logic, voice quality, integration, deployment, and escalation.

The complexity problem no one's solved

For operators running high-volume, complex customer journeys like underwriting a loan, processing an insurance claim, or handling legal intake, the real challenge isn't answering the phone. The bigger challenge is doing this at scale. It's holding onto the nuance of one customer's story across every call, text, and email until the job is done, without the experience slipping.

The most common approach is outsourcing. This enables 24/7 coverage without hiring. However, the trade-off is often the customer experience.

Against this backdrop is an emerging category of AI call centers that aspire to deliver that same benefit: immediate availability, automating the first phone call. But most of what's on the market today caps out at the same narrow set of tasks: answering the call, taking a message, booking an appointment, following up.

The majority of platforms out there aren't built to manage a complex journey that runs for days or weeks of follow-up.

Automating a conversation isn’t the same as automating a journey.

Done right, automating the journey itself, not just the conversation, is the best way we've seen to deliver a consistently exceptional customer experience, at scale.

What makes a customer journey complex

A simple interaction ends when the call ends: a question gets asked, an answer comes back, an appointment gets booked. A complex journey is different in four ways.

It unfolds across multiple interactions. The first conversation rarely contains everything needed to reach an outcome. The customer might need to find a document, talk to someone else, clarify an earlier answer, or respond to a follow-up days later.

It moves across channels. A customer starts with a phone call, gets a text follow-up, emails a document, misses a second call, and eventually responds by SMS. Handling multiple channels isn't the hard part. Carrying the same context across every one of them is.

The path isn't fixed. A simple workflow runs in a straight line: ask question A, get answer B, take action C. A complex journey branches, loops back, and stalls when information is missing. Sometimes the facts change midway through: what the customer told you two days ago isn't true anymore, and the work therefore changes.  

Success is the outcome, not the call. A simple system's job is done once it books an appointment. A complex journey's job is done when both the customer and the business get what they actually need: a qualified case, a complete set of documents, a funded loan, a conserved policy, a closed deal.

What this looks like in practice

Every example below is a real complex customer journey handled using Superpanel's platform. Names and identifying details are removed. In each one, our cognitive decision engine had to decide what to do next, how to do it, until the job was finished. 

Personal injury. Parked in her car when another driver hit the gas instead of the brake and struck her, leaving her with ongoing hip, shoulder, and neck pain. Over 4 days and 3 calls, she gave Superpanel's digital teammate the full incident and injury story, plus 1 text reply. The at-fault driver's own insurer had already acknowledged fault, qualifying a strong case for attorney handoff.

Employment law. A federal employee of nearly 20 years, terminated as "not fit for the job" months after a 20-year service award. Over 2 days she exchanged 140 text messages with Superpanel's digital teammate, laying out her full employment history and the timing of her termination, and submitted her W-2. Zero live calls. The case reached full qualification, handled entirely through text and documents

Employment law. A server, terminated over the phone after a workplace incident dispute. She spent 37 minutes on a single call walking Superpanel's digital teammate through what happened, then followed up with 8 text replies and 2 photos documenting the incident. The case reached a high-value classification, ready for attorney review.

Lending. A small business owner was contacted for a rate check-in after having already paid off her first loan. Over 6 days she had 1 live call and 2 text exchanges, then emailed 6 months of bank statements. All of it handled by Superpanel's digital teammate, start to finish.

Lemon law. A driver stuck in a dispute over a car still under repair. Out of 21 call attempts, only 2 ever connected. Over 6 days she kept replying to Superpanel's digital teammate, 21 texts in all, and submitted 9 documents: her loan contract, vehicle registration, 4 repair orders, and 3 additional dealer records. Every submission was verified, and the case reached full intake completion.

Why Superpanel can do what others can't

The examples above show what a complex journey requires: dozens of interactions over multiple days, a 37-minute call about losing a job, a case built entirely over 140 texts because that's the channel that worked for the customer, and knowing when information is missing, going to get it, and logging every document into the CRM.

Delivering those fully configurable, complex customer journeys takes a robust platform. And that's what our proprietary technology was specifically built to do.

Voco, our proprietary voice orchestration layer, handles the live back-and-forth conversation. It detects end of turn, distinguishes a pause for thought from a finished answer, and controls pacing down to micro-pauses. Voco is built into our own cognitive decision engine, not rented from a third party, so it adapts without the latency that makes AI calls feel stilted.

The cognitive decision engine manages state, evaluates what's missing or still needed to reach the outcome, and drives execution across phone, text, and email. It holds a job open until it reaches an end state, whether that's qualification, disqualification, or escalation, no matter how many channels or sessions that takes. State memory is what lets one conversation run 7 weeks without the customer repeating herself.

Evaluate how to scale your own complex customer journeys

Book a call  to evaluate how Superpanel digital teammates can help your business scale exceptional customer experiences that are always on. 

Want to go deeper on the architecture required to deliver complex customer journeys? Review our evaluation guide.

The current barriers to exceptional client experiences within inside sales teams

Inside sales leaders usually face two linked problems: prospects are not contacted quickly enough, and the operating model built to reach them is expensive to run and hard to scale.

Speed to lead slips, follow-up stops early, and calls go unanswered. HBR found the average first response to a web lead was 42 hours, while responding within an hour made companies roughly 7 times more likely to qualify the lead. Drift found only 7% of B2B companies replied within five minutes, and Velocify found converted leads typically took six attempts to reach. Most teams never get that far.

Every seat costs before it produces, and turnover compounds the problem. Licensing alone runs more than $200 per agent per month, and half of agents leave for lack of career growth (ICMI, 2024). Each departure creates another hiring and training cycle.

Underneath it all, scaling call centre operations efficiently is difficult. That is why so many companies turn to outsourcing. It is a release valve for the after-hours and overflow problem, but customer experience suffers once the work leaves the building. That is one of the top reasons ICMI respondents give for not outsourcing more.

What an AI call centre fixes first: speed to lead, follow-up, and coverage

Most AI enhancements to contact centers do a great job solving the first problem: immediate answers, persistent follow-up, scheduling, and fast speed to lead. We see that in our own data gathered across 300,000+ intake conversations. The average time from form submission to first outreach is 12 seconds; 97% of contacts are reached within 2 minutes, including after hours and weekends. We also average 5.77 follow-up attempts before a live conversation is reached.

That is real value, but it is only the easier half of an exceptional customer experience. It says nothing about what happens to the experience after someone is truly engaged in the process.

Do people actually want to talk to an AI?

The harder test is what happens after someone engages: can the AI hold a long call, gather documentation, express empathy, remember context, and carry an intake through to completion?

Those are the conditions of a genuinely good client experience. They also raise the question we hear from operators of high-volume contact centers: do prospective clients actually want to talk to an AI, and what does a complex automated journey feel like to them?

Here is what we see in the data:

What a seven-week, automated customer journey looks like

Here is one real experience handled by one of our customer's digital teammates. A workers' comp claimant, out of work and in real pain, had her intake handled entirely by AI over seven weeks: 12 calls and 68 texts, many after midnight, with no human involved.

Her own words: "You are way better than a human. Not just intelligent. Very personal. You're way better than any human I've ever spoke to."

Not every caller will feel that way, and anyone who wants a person should get one immediately. But many businesses are, rightly, skeptical that AI can deliver an exceptional customer experience. Across 300,000+ intake conversations, what we have learned is that it is possible, and often preferable for customers. The challenge is building on the right technical foundation to get there.

How Superpanel makes this work: architecture

A trained human intake specialist runs live conversations at roughly 98% accuracy. AI built as a prompt wrapped around a language model tops out near 92%, which is good, but not nearly good enough for an exceptional customer experience that can span multiple conversations over several days or weeks. It feels broken, because the tenth minute or the second text message is the one that loses the thread.

Closing that gap takes two systems built together, which is what we’ve built.

Voco, our proprietary voice orchestration layer. The part handling the live back-and-forth conversation. It detects end of turn, so it can tell a pause for thought from a finished answer instead of talking over someone mid-sentence. It controls pacing down to micro-pauses. And because it’s built into our proprietary cognitive decision engine rather than through a third-party orchestration layer, it adapts to what the conversation has established without the latency that makes AI calls feel stilted. Most vendors rent this layer from one of a few general-purpose suppliers built for three-minute appointment calls. It's where the awkward pauses come from.

Our cognitive decision engine. The part that manages state, evaluates logic, and drives execution across phone, text, and email. It holds a job open until it reaches an end state, whether that's qualification, disqualification, or escalation, across however many channels and sessions that takes. State memory is what lets one conversation run seven weeks without the person repeating herself. Guardrails are written as rules outside the conversation, covering required questions, routing, compliance, and escalation, so the AI can't skip a question or invent an answer, and every decision is recorded and auditable.

Built separately, the two sound fine on short, easy calls, but break the moment the conversation diverges from the happy path. Built together, businesses are more likely to deliver exceptional client experiences with AI than without. 

Two next steps

Discuss your use case: A working session on your operation, ours or anyone else's. No demo unless you ask for one.

Read the AI Call Center evaluation guide: The three pillars that decide production success, the questions to ask any vendor including us, and what a good answer sounds like.

When law firms calculate what their answering service costs, they start with the invoice. Services like Smith.AI, LEX Reception, and Alert Communications are common choices in the legal space, and each comes with a published rate. Kingsley Szamet was paying more than $60,000 a year before they switched to Superpanel. That's not a small number, but it wasn't the real cost either.

The real cost was the second bill: the internal overhead required to keep the service performing at the level the firm expected.

Answering services run on humans, and humans require managing. When a new rep starts, your team trains them. When a rep makes an intake error, your team catches it. When your qualification criteria change, your team restarts the training cycle with the vendor. None of that work appears on the invoice, but all of it belongs to you.

At Kingsley Szamet, the intake operations manager was spending roughly 50% of her time managing the vendor relationship. That's half a person, every week, on top of the annual service fee. When they added up the full cost, the math looked different than the invoice suggested.

Why the overhead doesn't go away

The overhead exists because of how answering services are built. A human team has variability. Quality depends on who picks up the phone. Reps cycle in and out. Scripts change. Every change to your intake process has to go through a third party you don't control, putting the customer experience at risk.

That creates a permanent QA function on your side. You audit calls to catch what the vendor missed. You re-enter data the vendor logged incorrectly. You retrain reps who drift from your process. You troubleshoot the gap between what you asked for and what you received.

For firms handling a few hundred calls a month, this overhead is manageable, annoying but survivable. At higher volume, it doesn't shrink proportionally. More calls means more to audit, more errors to catch, more data to fix. The overhead scales with volume, and no vendor change addresses that, because the overhead is built into the human model itself.

What changes when you replace the human model

Firms that remove the human oversight loop describe the same change: the time their operations and intake teams previously spent managing the vendor relationship comes back fully. It goes to the work the firm actually cares about: reviewing strong leads, building client relationships, and closing cases.

With Superpanel, qualification logic is configured before a single live lead runs through it. Every call follows that logic exactly. When criteria change, they change immediately in the platform, with no vendor coordination and no retraining cycle. Every interaction is logged with a full audit trail: what the agent asked, what the caller said, how the system decided. That's available in real time, not in a weekly report.

Across 300,000+ intakes handled by Superpanel, the sub-4% escalation rate reflects how rarely firms need to intervene. The system handles qualification, follow-up, document collection, and retainer signing autonomously, across phone, text, and email, around the clock. Off ramps to a human are built in from day one, because not every caller wants to complete intake with an AI. Those callers transfer immediately. The other 96% stay with the system and complete the process.

How to see your real cost

If you're evaluating your answering service costs honestly, the calculation has two parts. First: the invoice. Second: the internal time your team spends on vendor management, QA, data correction, and retraining. Estimate the hours per week, apply a loaded hourly rate, and add it to the invoice.

For most high-volume firms, that second number approaches or exceeds the first. Kingsley Szamet was spending more than $60,000 a year on the invoice, with an operations manager absorbing half her time on top of that.

If you want to see how Kingsley made this calculation and what changed after the switch, read the full case study: real numbers, what they were paying, and what changed when they changed the model.

If you recognize the cost pattern in your own firm and want to understand what a model change would look like for your specific operation, we're glad to walk through it with you. Every firm's intake setup is different, and the math looks different depending on your volume, your case types, and how your team is currently structured. A conversation costs nothing and usually surfaces numbers firms haven't added up before.

Talk to us about your use case

Ready to see what Superpanel can do for your firm's intake? Get in touch with our team at superpanel.io.

The challenge: extending coverage without growing the overhead

Kingsley Szamet Employment Lawyers, a California employment law firm, partnered with Superpanel to build Sophia, a digital intake co-worker running across phone and SMS.

The challenge wasn't volume. It was coverage. The firm's intake team handled calls and forms during business hours, but a prospective client in distress calling at 7 p.m., or filling out a web form on a Sunday morning, would reach no one.

To extend coverage, Kingsley had been using a traditional call answering service: a fixed pre-screen, live transfers during business hours, no web form handling. The cost ran north of $60,000 a year. That was only the visible half.

The hidden half was the time Kingsley spent making sure the service was delivering the experience the firm expected. Most call-center reps don't know employment law. Every script change, every edge case, every new rep meant another round of training, correcting, and auditing. That feedback loop was eating roughly 45 to 50% of the intake team's time.

Kingsley was paying twice: once on the invoice, and again in the operational cost of keeping the service performing at the level the firm cared about.

What was different: Sophia learns, and Superpanel listens

The traditional answering service offered a narrow set of capabilities: inbound call answering, a fixed pre-screen executed by humans, live transfers during business hours, no web form handling, and feedback loops where corrections recurred as new reps cycled in.

Sophia, built with Superpanel, now manages a substantially broader set of work:

• Customization that scales. Teach Sophia once and the change holds across every conversation.

• Deeper qualification, beyond a basic pre-screen.

• Multi-channel engagement across phone and SMS.

• Immediate follow-up on inbound web form leads.

• Pre-retainer document collection.

• Real-time live transfers when leads qualify.

• Pricing aligned to  hard outcomes - retainers signed.

What surprised Eric Kingsley, the firm's founding partner, the most wasn't a feature on the list. It was the partnership. Superpanel listened deeply to how Kingsley actually worked, including qualification logic, client experience standards, and the operational rhythms of an employment law practice, then customized Sophia accordingly.

Adoption: 98% of callers stay with Sophia, some over multi-day conversations

Like many leaders evaluating AI today, Eric brought a healthy degree of skepticism to the rollout. The question wasn't whether AI could pick up the phone. It was whether AI could deliver an intake experience that clients in distress would not just tolerate, but actually engage with.

The early data answered the question. Only 1 to 2% of callers ask to be transferred to a human. The remaining 98% stay with Sophia and complete the intake. More importantly, they aren't just tolerating her. They're engaging with her over multiple days of back-and-forth that spans phone calls, follow-up text messages, emails, and document submissions.

Inside the firm, confidence built quickly. Eric's weekly check-ins with Kim kept coming back clean. For Kim, the inflection point was live transfer go-live: once she saw Sophia successfully hand qualified calls to the intake team in real time, Sophia had crossed a threshold of sophistication. She wasn't just answering phones. She was carrying weight inside the intake process itself.

The outcome: 45 to 50% of intake-team time reclaimed, redirected to deeper work

Kingsley's team isn't using that reclaimed time to chase more leads. They're using it to go deeper on every lead Sophia surfaces. Sophia gathers more information up front, which lets staff have richer, more substantive conversations with prospective clients. That depth produces higher-quality leads and a better experience throughout.

Client experience is the part Kim watches closely. Many of Kingsley's clients reach out in distress, and an unanswered phone or a long wait compounds the stress. Faster, more consistent intake reduces the surface area for negative interactions.

Ready to see what Superpanel can do for your firm's intake? Get in touch with our team at superpanel.io.

When most law firms try to scale, something breaks, and it’s usually the client experience. 

The emails get slower. The updates get patchy. Clients get frustrated. But it doesn’t have to be that way. 

In this episode of The Scalable Law Blueprint, I spoke with Robert Gallander of Quill & Arrow LLP about how his firm scaled from a small office to a mid-sized powerhouse in California’s lemon law space, without losing the clarity and trust that clients need. 

Here’s how they did it, and how you can too. 

Stop Talking Like a Lawyer 

Most clients have never been through litigation. That means legal jargon isn’t just confusing, it’s a trust-breaker. 

Robert shared how his team reviews communication through the client’s lens. If the language isn’t crystal clear to someone outside the legal field, it gets rewritten. This “simplicity-first” approach has helped prevent confusion and dramatically reduced support calls. 

Prioritize Proactive Communication 

One of the biggest insights from Robert: silence kills trust. 

Even if there’s no update on the case, clients want to know that, and they want to hear it from someone they recognize. That’s why the firm is moving to a hybrid communication model: 

• One main point of contact from intake to settlement 

• Specialist support (e.g., attorneys for legal advice) introduced intentionally

• Automation used for updates, but always routed through a human’s name or number 

This reduces confusion, avoids repeat questions, and helps clients feel like someone is owning their case. 

Automate the Robot Work 

Robert doesn’t view efficiency and experience as opposites, in fact, he sees them as complementary. 

Clients want speed. But they also want someone who knows their case. 

By automating repetitive admin tasks, like processing documents or triggering follow-ups, his team has freed up more time for real conversations and faster resolutions. 

His litmus test for automation? If a smart system can do it better and faster than a person, it should. But the moment a human question comes in, a real person should respond. 

Internal Change = Internal Coaching 

Scaling a firm means changing how people work, and that’s never easy. 

Robert emphasized the importance of coaching teams through new systems. He uses the analogy of a golf swing: it may feel awkward at first, but it produces better results long-term. The key is showing people how automation reduces grunt work and lets them focus on more meaningful contributions. 

The Future: Choose Your Own Client Journey 

Looking ahead, Robert predicts a world where clients personalize their own legal experience: 

• Phone calls or app-based updates? Their choice. 

• Texts, emails, or human check-ins? Tailored to preference. 

• Legal support, faster and more transparent than ever before.

And the law firms that win will be the ones that build for that reality now. 

We explore all of this in our recent episode. Watch on YouTube or Listen on Apple or Spotify 

Intake is undergoing a structural shift. After working with high-volume plaintiff firms and building AI-powered intake operations that have evaluated more than 220,000 cases, collected more than 57,000 documents, and helped double monthly signed cases, we see clear patterns in where intake breaks, where it scales, and what drives consistent conversions. Across firms and practice areas, the operational pressures and client expectations are remarkably similar.

At Superpanel, three shifts will define the year ahead. These insights come from real interactions, measurable outcomes, and ongoing conversations with firm owners and COOs.

Shift 1: Consumers expect availability and responsiveness. AI is the most reliable way to deliver it.

People contacting a law firm want immediate direction, simple next steps, and confirmation that their case is moving forward. They do not care whether that clarity comes from AI or a staff member. They care that the response is fast, consistent, and delivered through the channel that is most convenient for them, whether that be phone, email or SMS.

Across the 200,000 cases Superpanel has evaluated, more than 95% of consumers complete intake without escalating to a human staff member. Many, including senior citizens, say they do not distinguish between AI and human-led intake when the experience is clear and reliable.

To meet these expectations, intake systems must retain context and guide clients through a predictable sequence. Firms that are readily available and provide quick clarity convert at higher rates because clients immediately understand where they stand. The firm that responds first often wins the case.

Shift 2: AI will move from automating tasks to completing the full intake job

Early AI tools handled isolated tasks such as drafting documents or scheduling a call, but they did not change intake outcomes. The shift now underway is toward systems that manage the entire workflow from first contact through qualification and document collection. This requires firm-specific rules, continuity, exception handling, escalation, and complete files ready for attorney review.

When AI takes ownership of the full workflow, results improve. Superpanel’s digital teammates use a cognitive decision engine designed to deliver outcomes, using each firm’s SOPs and communication tools to execute the steps needed to qualify a case or complete a workflow.

The impact is significant. One high-volume firm doubled monthly signed cases and shifted more than half of its manual workload to Superpanel. Another increased conversion from 8% to 29% by enabling AI to run intake end to end. As these systems take on broader responsibility, firms treat them as part of their staffing capacity, improving cost per signed case, throughput, and overall capacity.

Shift 3: Intake teams will manage and tune AI, creating a new role inside firms

As AI-driven intake becomes standard, responsibility for deploying, maintaining and improving these workflows will shift from engineering teams to intake operations. This creates a new role: the AI Manager.

AI Managers will use user friendly, non-technical interfaces to launch and adjust workflows in hours instead of weeks. They will understand qualification standards, identify edge cases and workflow friction, and refine operations to align with firm goals and compliance requirements.

Firms adopting this model expand capacity quickly. As one COO described after transitioning to Superpanel’s AI-supported intake: “With intake no longer a constraint, we’re focused on whether we have enough lawyers to handle 1,000 cases a month, not whether we can intake them.” 

This shift will develop over time, but we are already preparing to deliver self-service experiences for our more forward-thinking customers, and we expect the AI Manager role will become standard as AI handles more early-stage work.

How Superpanel fits within these shifts

Superpanel gives firms a digital teammate that manages intake using firm-specific logic, consistent follow up, and full auditability. It delivers early clarity, completes the full workflow rather than isolated tasks, and allows intake teams to review, coach, and refine decisions without relying on engineering support.

As expectations rise, firms that adopt engineered, end to end intake infrastructure will widen the gap between themselves and those that do not.

Julien & Dingyu
Co-founders, Superpanel

Most conversations about AI in law firms still center on chatbots, scripts, or task automations. But as legal ops consultant Jamie Park explains in Episode 5 of The Scalable Law Blueprint, the real shift underway is the rise of agentic AI — cognitive systems that plan, reason, and operate like digital teammates, managing complex multi-step workflows from end to end.

For operations leaders, the implications are significant: higher capacity without new headcount, shorter evidence cycles, and new digital pathways that make previously unprofitable cases viable.

1. What is Agentic AI in Legal Operations?

Traditional automations react to triggers. Agentic systems operate differently because their workflow is built around three core components:

• Goals: The system is given a clear outcome to achieve, such as qualifying a lead. It continues operating until it reaches that outcome or determines that human escalation is required.

• Tools: The digital teammate has access to the same communication channels and operational systems your intake team uses, including phone, SMS, email, CRM or CMS platforms, document storage, and signing tools. It uses these capabilities to carry out multi-step interactions, maintain context over time, store and process documents, and update case files in real time.

• Logic: Each workflow is governed by the firm’s rules, SOPs, qualification criteria, and escalation parameters. The agent evaluates the client’s evolving situation against these rules, determines the next appropriate step, and documents the reasoning behind each action. When data is missing or something falls outside the defined logic, it escalates to a human exactly the way a trained staff member would.

This enables firms to automate entire intake and evidence cycles instead of handling isolated interactions.

2. How Agentic AI Expands Capacity

Firms using Superpanel’s agentic workflows are already seeing 60 to 95% automation across key intake stages, faster retainers, and higher conversion rates, all while improving accuracy through escalation logic and human-in-the-loop oversight.

As Park notes, the question is shifting from whether firms can reduce headcount to how many more cases they can now accept with the same team size.

3. A Blueprint for Scalable Service Delivery

Agentic AI does not replace attorneys. It replaces friction. When repetitive intake, follow-ups, document gathering, and CRM updates run autonomously, firms can:

• Reallocate staff to higher-value conversations

• Respond instantly to more inquiries across all channels

• Maintain consistency without constant QA

• Unlock profitable pathways for smaller or lower-margin cases

This forms the foundation of a coming e-commerce style legal services model where significant parts of the client journey are handled end to end through software, with optional human off ramps at every step.

4. Impact on Accuracy & Quality Control

Accuracy concerns often mirror the same challenges that come with onboarding new staff. Agentic systems simply make performance easier to measure. Escalation rates, structured testing phases, and auditable decision logs provide a clearer QA framework than human-only teams.

Key Takeaways for Legal Ops Leaders

• Treat agentic AI as additive headcount that scales capacity without adding payroll.

• Deploy digital pathways for routine workflows so staff can focus on high value decision making.

• Use measurable QA practices such as escalation rates and workflow audits to ensure accuracy.

• Start with one workflow, prove performance, then expand automation step by step.

• Prepare now for a market where consumers expect fast, guided, fully digital legal experiences.

Listen to the Full Conversation

We explore all of this in this full episode of The Scalable Law Blueprint available on YouTube and all major podcasting platforms. 

Most firms want to grow. Few build the operational foundation to sustain it.

In our latest episode of The Scalable Law Blueprint, Michael McCready founder of McCready Law, a 125-person, multi-office PI firm, shares the systems, metrics, and mindset shifts that allowed him to scale intentionally over 25 years. His perspective is direct: growth isn’t about luck or marketing volume. It’s about running your firm like a business.

Here are the five most actionable lessons for managing partners, heads of intake, and operations leaders who want to build a scalable, resilient firm.

Scaling a Law Firm Requires Thinking Like a CEO, Not a Practitioner

McCready describes a progression he sees in every firm that scales:

1. Become a great lawyer

2. Become great with clients

3. Learn to run a business

4. Learn marketing

5. Build culture

Firms plateau when leadership never moves beyond Stage 1. The inflection point comes when you stop thinking like a practitioner and start thinking like a CEO—someone responsible for people, systems, and growth.

2. Hiring and Training Systems That Scale a Plaintiff Firm

Most firms take a reactive approach to recruiting. McCready did the opposite: rigorous screening, cultural alignment, documented SOPs, and role-specific onboarding.

Even before hiring a full-time trainer (around 80–90 employees), he built a culture of writing down every repeatable step. As he puts it: “Anything you have to repeat more than once should be written down.”

This mindset compounds—reducing errors, protecting consistency, and accelerating new-hire productivity.

3. Turning Intake Into a Predictable Client Conversion Engine

McCready is clear: attorneys should not run intake.

Why? Lawyers overanalyze, lack the necessary empathy on the phone, and don’t have the time to nurture callers who won’t become clients—despite the downstream referral value. His non-attorney intake team:

• Delivers the empathy callers need

• Converts at predictable rates (~30%)

• Generates five-star reviews even from declined cases

• Feeds a high-quality referral pipeline

For firms experiencing inconsistent conversions, intake specialization is usually the fastest win.

4. Running a Data-Driven Plaintiff Firm: Metrics That Predict Growth

McCready runs his firm through numbers—not gut feel. Daily, he reviews:

• Lead volume

• Signups vs. withdrawals vs. referrals

• Case manager capacity

• Settlement flow and cash timing

With these inputs, he forecasts hiring needs, predicts cash flow, and adjusts marketing or qualification criteria in real time.

He describes the job like operating a soundboard: if one lever moves, you rebalance the others to keep the entire system in sync.

This is the operator mindset many firms say they want—but few adopt.

5. Using AI to Automate Workflows and Improve Law Firm Operations

“AI is going to leapfrog case management systems because AI is going to know what to do without you having to program it.”  

Long before most firms embraced technology, McCready treated tech as a core value. Today, his team uses AI to:

• Grade intake calls for empathy and clarity

• Provide real-time coaching

• Autogenerate letters

• Draft briefs from 25 years of internal precedent

His view is that AI will leapfrog case management systems—moving from task automation to workflow decision-making. But the non-negotiable foundation is data integrity: keeping systems closed, controlled, and audited.

Firms waiting for clarity on AI will fall behind—just as those who resisted websites, SEO, or social media did.

Listen to the Full Conversation

If you're building a modern, scalable plaintiff firm, this episode is a masterclass in operator-level decision-making.

 Listen to The Scalable Law Blueprint on YouTube or on any podcast platform to hear the full conversation.

Most firms say they want to scale. Very few build the infrastructure required to do it. In Episode 3 of The Scalable Law Blueprint, Todd Richheimer—CEO and co-founder of Lawfty—breaks down what actually drives sustainable growth, drawing from 12 years spent building a vertically integrated, data-driven PI operation.

1. Why Law Firm Growth Requires Systems (Not Heroics)

Todd’s early insight was simple: you can’t scale what you can’t measure. Most small firms operate on fragmented tools and inconsistent data practices, making it impossible to forecast or compare outcomes. Lawfty built a system that tracks a case from the first click to final settlement—sometimes years later—creating the clarity needed to invest confidently at scale.

2. Scaling a Law Firm: How Letting Go Unlocks Sustainable Growth

Like many founders, Todd began by doing everything—including answering intake calls for 18 months. But the real inflection point came when he hired specialists and delegated work he wasn’t uniquely suited for.
His observation: most firms plateau because leadership refuses to relinquish control—even when processes are fully teachable. “If Amazon can delegate millions of tasks, you can delegate your inbox.”

3. The Key Law Firm KPIs that Predict Long-term Revenue

High-growth firms focus on levers that determine long-term revenue—not vanity metrics. Todd shared the KPIs Lawfty manages against:

• Cost per qualified case

• Long-term monetization curves

• Intake efficiency

• Capacity vs. pipeline volume

• Settlement velocity

This isn’t reporting—it’s operational orchestration. Each metric influences the others, and the system must stay in balance.

4. Law Firm Intake Optimization: Why Lawyers Shouldn’t Be Doing Intake

One of Todd’s strongest views: lawyers should not be doing intake. Legal expertise often hurts intake performance; clients need empathy, clarity, and speed, not legal analysis.

Lawfty’s trained intake team consistently earns five-star reviews, even from declined clients. That level of trust compounds.

5. How AI Is Transforming Law Firm Operations (Without Replacing Lawyers)

Todd is clear-eyed on AI: it cannot run a case end-to-end anytime soon. Critical infrastructure is still missing. But AI can replace large swaths of administrative overhead today: scoring calls, drafting follow-ups, processing standardized components, and spotting patterns across years of data.
The opportunity for firms: use AI to shrink infrastructure costs and expand capacity—not to replace attorneys.

The Takeaway for Modern Firms

Scaling isn’t about doing more—it’s about building a machine that grows responsibly and profitably. The firms that win the next decade will be the ones who:

• Build measurable, repeatable systems

• Delegate aggressively

• Treat intake as a specialized function

• Use AI as an efficiency engine, not a replacement for legal judgment

Those who don’t risk getting left behind as the industry undergoes its most significant shift in decades.

Listen to the Full Conversation

We explore all of this in this full episode of The Scalable Law Blueprint available on YouTube and all major podcasting platforms.

Legal intake is undergoing a structural shift -  not because of technology alone, but because consumer behavior has changed faster than most firms have adapted. In the debut episode of The Scalable Law Blueprint, we sat down with Jamie Park, an intake operations leader who’s rebuilt intake systems inside high-volume plaintiff firms. What she shared is a clear playbook for firms that want to scale without losing control, quality, or trust.

Key Insight + Why it matters:
Firms that don’t modernize intake workflows lose good cases, frustrate staff, and waste ad dollars. The real fix isn’t more people — it’s better systems.

Key Takeaways:

• Consumer expectations changed — intake didn’t.
  Clients expect that intake moves just as fast as the rest of their digital lives: instant, transparent, and always-on. When firms respond too slowly and make clients have to chase responses by phone and email, trust drops and your leads disappear.
  

• Generic AI tools fail because they’re not purpose-built for intake
  Early attempts flopped due to poor logic, no training, and more cleanup work for staff. Firms need tailored, trained systems that mimic real workflows.
  

• Breakthrough: Onboard AI like a teammate.
  Train it like a new hire, test in small batches, audit performance — then scale. Once trained, it operates nonstop without burnout or errors.
  

• People are the real bottleneck.
  Slow follow-ups, missed docs, and lead misclassification kill conversions more than any “robotic” voice ever could.
  

• Marketing spend won’t fix broken intake.
  More leads just widen the cracks: overwhelmed staff, rising drop-offs, and flat results. Intake must scale before marketing does.
  

• Systems > staffing.
  Adding headcount increases costs and inconsistency. A well-trained “digital teammate” enforces quality and grows with you — instantly.

Listen to the Full Conversation

If you want the full breakdown including real examples and operational pitfalls to avoid, listen to Episode 1 of The Scalable Law Blueprint available on YouTube and all major podcasting platforms. It’s a fast, practical discussion for leaders who want to run a more efficient, data-driven firm.

Today we’re excited to launch The Scalable Law Blueprint, a new podcast for law firm leaders who want to scale with clarity, consistency, and modern operations.

Law firms are in the middle of a structural shift. People now expect the same speed and clarity from law firms that they get everywhere else online – immediate answers, digital convenience, and clear next steps. Yet inside many firms, intake and operations workflows still struggle to deliver any of that reliably or in a cost-efficient manner.  

This podcast exists to help firms close that gap.

What Law Firm Leaders Will Learn in This Podcast

Each episode of The Scalable Law Blueprint brings you conversations with innovative operators and managing partners who dive into real-world strategies and tactics: 

• How to streamline intake and client communication

• Using automation intentionally (not reactively)

• Reducing operational bottlenecks that limit growth

• Building teams and systems that support sustainable scale

• What a modern client experience looks like

No hype. No trend-chasing. Just the real decisions, frameworks, and stories behind firms that are growing with discipline and clarity.

Why Modern Firms Need Scalable Operations

Your team is busy. Your caseload is growing. And the pressure to deliver fast, accurate, always-on client services isn’t slowing down.

This show is for you if you're asking questions like:

• How do we grow without adding more headcount?

• How do we modernize intake without losing control or quality?

• How do we create consistency when demand spikes?

• What does a scalable, systemized firm actually look like?

Key Insights From Episodes 1 and 2

The first two episodes of the Scalable Law Blueprint spotlight two shifts redefining modern legal practice: rising client expectations and the evolving role of the entrepreneurial lawyer. 

Episode 1: Jamie Park breaks down clients’ expectations for immediate, clear, digitally-powered communication—and why firms often hesitate to adopt automation despite the operational benefits. 

Episode 2: Michael McCready from McCready Law breaks down the three stages of growth for lawyers—mastering the law, mastering client relationships, and mastering the business itself. He shares how operations, marketing, and culture shaped his firm’s expansion into a multi-state practice.

Where to Listen

Episodes 1 and 2 of The Scalable Law Blueprint are now live on YouTube and all major podcast platforms.

If you’re building a tech-forward, efficient, scalable law firm, this is your blueprint.

I got this comment from a LinkedIn post last week. 

As a lawyer, the single most valuable thing you can do to grow your practice might be this: make it easier for people to tell you their story.

The lower the barrier to entry, the more potential clients will reach out and go through the process— and the more great cases you’ll find. 

Clients aren’t looking for perfect websites or long credentials. They’re looking for the easiest path to be heard, understood, and guided. 

We’ve seen lower barriers to entry in other industries drive significant growth:

• E-commerce exploded when checkout processes were simplified. Amazon’s “Buy Now” button is worth billions.
  

• Telehealth platforms grew fast by letting patients book in minutes instead of waiting weeks to see a doctor in person.
  

• Fintech apps took off by letting people open accounts without walking into a branch or filling out stacks of paperwork.
  

The lesson? Fewer barriers = more users, more growth.

It’s no different in law.

If your intake process is fast, empathetic, and easy — instead of slow, formal, and confusing — more people will go through it.  

Here’s what helps:

• Let clients record their story and use AI tools to analyze it, then review it with them.

• Provide AI intake options for people to record everything that happened to them and let AI tool organize it for you to spot the good cases. 

• Ask simple questions that invite storytelling, not legalese.

• Let people stop and start on their own terms and have everything auto organized for them so they can confirm it’s correct.

  
  

Lower the barrier. The best cases are behind it.

Want to learn more about lowering the barrier to legal services with consumer-first intake? 

👉🏻 Book a call here

Superpanel, a legal intake platform built around a coachable digital teammate that transforms how law firms qualify and onboard new clients, announces its launch with $5.3 million in funding. The round was co-led by Outlander VC (backers of Scale AI, Stripe, and Gusto) and Field Ventures (investors in Wrapbook, Bikky, and Suppli). Other participating investors include LOI Venture (co-founded by Hootsuite founder Ryan Holmes), Zenda Capital, 8-Bit Capital, and Behind Genius Ventures. The funding will accelerate hiring and expand the product’s capabilities.

Founders Julien Emery and Dingyu Zhang combine backgrounds in scaling customer experiences and deploying AI at enterprise scale. Emery was one of the first ten employees at Hootsuite and later founded a SaaS underwriting platform for self-insured health plans (sold to Novo Connection). Zhang built conversational AI systems handling millions of transactions and led enterprise wins over Amazon Alexa, Microsoft, and Google Dialogflow.

Plaintiff law represents tens of billions in annual fees, yet firms lose strong cases every day because manual intake cannot keep up with modern consumer expectations. Staffing shortages and rising inquiry volumes make scaling even more difficult. For the first time, AI can reliably handle the reasoning and multi-step decision-making required for regulated workflows like legal intake. Superpanel enters at this critical inflection point, helping firms grow without sacrificing the consistency or oversight.

Superpanel provides a coachable digital teammate that manages intake end-to-end, from first contact through qualification and document collection. Purpose-built for legal, it follows each firm’s specific intake logic, applying criteria such as case type, geography, and required documentation. Safeguards are built in: every workflow is auditable, compliant, and escalated to a human when needed. Once a case is qualified, it is handed to staff to build relationships and close, freeing teams from repetitive tasks.

“I’ve seen firsthand how access to legal support can be life changing, yet too often the system fails people before their case is even reviewed. Ninety percent of those who suffer harm don’t know they have a legal case and never contact a lawyer,” said Julien Emery, Co-Founder and CEO of Superpanel. “Superpanel exists to fix that. We’ve already helped over 150,000 people to tell their story and get their cases evaluated, making it faster for firms to identify strong cases and easier for people to get answers.”

“Superpanel embodies our Service-as-a-Software thesis, transforming intake from a costly manual process into a digital teammate that delivers accuracy, scale, and reliability,” said Richard Kerby, Partner at Field Ventures. “Julien and Dingyu bring a rare combination of consumer-grade product thinking and enterprise AI expertise to a legal market overdue for change.” 

Beta Results

While in private beta with customers, Superpanel delivered measurable results:

• Shifted 50%+ of the intake workload to the digital teammate, freeing staff for high-value conversations.

• Over 95% of intake workflows finish smoothly without premature human intervention, with continuous oversight and auditability.

• Already helped over 150,000 people tell their story and get their cases evaluated.

• Adopted as a true team member in law firms: tracked in dashboards, factored into staffing budgets, and even awarded performance bonuses.

• Enabled firms to handle up to five times more inbound inquiries without growing headcount.

“The return on investment was immediate. Within months it paid for itself. What sets Superpanel apart is that it is not just software, it’s a teammate that never forgets, never needs retraining, and keeps our team focused on signing more cases. With Superpanel, we are no longer intake constrained. If law firms aren’t thinking about this, they will be left in the dust.” – Eamon Graziano, COO at The Consumer Protection Law Group (and several other law firms).

About Superpanel

Superpanel helps plaintiff law firms scale intake without adding headcount. Its AI-powered digital teammate qualifies clients, collects documents, and follows up across every communication channel. Unlike generic AI bots, Superpanel is coachable, auditable, and tailored to each firm’s workflows and jurisdictions. Consumers get a modern, guided experience that makes legal help simple and responsive. Firms get an always-on teammate that never never burns out and helps staff focus on the cases that matter. Founded in 2024, Superpanel has already evaluated over 150,000 cases and is trusted by leading plaintiff law firms. Learn more at www.superpanel.io.

Why we started, and why the time is now

For me (Julien), the problem of legal access has always been personal. When my mom was in a serious car accident, she couldn’t work for two years. A personal injury lawyer fought for her and kept our family afloat. To us, that lawyer was a hero. Years later, I watched a close friend burn through $40,000 and meet with over 20 attorneys just to learn if he had an employment case. He kept repeating his story and organizing documents until someone finally agreed to help. And as a Canadian navigating the U.S. visa process, I experienced firsthand how opaque and intimidating getting legal help can feel. Different situations, same reality: getting legal help is too complex, too costly, and often out of reach.

On the technology side, intake was historically considered  too complex for automation: long conversations, endless documents, firm-specific rules. I (Dingyu) spent years building conversational AI systems at scale, and until recently it wasn’t possible to tackle legal intake. That has changed. With today’s advances, AI can reliably handle these workflows when coupled with the right product architecture. Superpanel combines language models with a cognitive decision engine designed specifically for legal, producing consistent, auditable results firms can trust.

It was our shared experiences – seeing the pain consumers felt and the limits of current systems – that pushed us to start Superpanel.  Our investors share that conviction, backing us with the capital and expertise to scale because intake is one of the largest unsolved challenges in a tens-of-billions market, and the tools to fix it didn’t exist until now.

How Superpanel works for firms and consumers

Superpanel is a digital teammate for plaintiff law firms.

For law firms: It automates over half of intake work, reduces missed opportunities, and frees up staff to focus on higher-value client work and revenue-driving activities. Firms can coach it, audit it, and trust it like a real team member. The result is sustainable growth, with intake that’s consistent, auditable, and no longer constrained by hiring.

For consumers: It makes getting legal help as simple as telling your story, sharing documents, and receiving a clear answer without repeating yourself to different people.

Unlike generic bots, Superpanel is purpose-built for legal: coachable, auditable, and safe by design.

The problem with intake today

Nine out of 10 people who suffer harm that could become a legal case never contact a lawyer. For the consumers who do try, intake is confusing and discouraging. They get stuck repeating their story, re-submitting the same paperwork, or waiting for a call back. For firms, that frustration shows up as lost leads, wasted staff time, and marketing dollars that never convert. Fixing intake gives people a clear, guided way to engage, while giving firms steadier conversion, predictable ROI, and growth without adding headcount.

Proof it works

We’ve already seen what happens when firms put Superpanel to work. Today, it’s helping thousands of people every week, quietly doing the work intake staff used to chase down.

Firms report more than half of manual intake work offloaded, with conversion steady or improving, and far fewer leads lost. 

One early customer said it best: “I can finally grow without hiring more intake staff. We’re not dropping the ball on any lead.”

Where we’re headed

Our mission is to turn intake from a manual burden into a digital system that makes legal help accessible for people and scalable for firms.

Because getting legal help should not depend on who you know, how much money you have, or how many hours you can spend on the phone. It should be as simple as telling your story and knowing someone is listening.

We are now live: superpanel.io. Schedule a call here to see how Superpanel can scale your intake team.

Julien Emery & Dingyu Zhang, Co-Founders, Superpanel

We’ve worked with many law firms that were curious about using a digital employee but weren’t sure how it would actually fit into their day-to-day.

If that sounds like you—curious about AI but unsure where to start—you’re not alone. We know it can feel overwhelming. That’s why we don’t just hand you a tool and hope for the best. At Superpanel, we build digital employees that actually work for you—designed to match your firm’s processes and deliver real results.

Here’s how we make that happen:

1. Deep-Dive Discovery

We begin by learning your workflows in detail. We study how your team operates, what slows you down, and where automation could help—not just in theory, but in the context of your actual operations. This understanding ensures your digital employee is tailored to your firm’s unique way of working.

2. Benchmarking Against Humans

Next, we build and test your digital employee side-by-side with your human team. We benchmark its accuracy, speed, and reliability to ensure it performs just as well—if not better—on tasks like lead follow-ups, document collection, data entry, and client updates. This phase is all about proof, not promises.

3. Long-Term Partnership

Once your digital employee proves itself, we go live—and stay with you. We monitor performance, support your team, and continuously improve the system so it grows with your firm. It’s not a handoff; it’s a partnership.

So if you’re ready to explore how a digital employee could help your firm scale without needing so many people, let’s talk.

Schedule a Call—and let’s explore what a digital employee could do for your firm.

Talk soon,

Julien Emery

Co-Founder

Superpanel

Hey {{first_name}},

Referrals are supposed to be a growth engine—but they can feel more like a black hole. You send cases out, then cross your fingers and hope to hear back. Sound familiar?

At Superpanel, we help plaintiff firms take the guesswork out of referrals. Our digital employees don’t just send referrals—they actually get updates from your referral partners for you. No chasing, no wondering, no missed opportunities.

Here’s how it works:

• Every referral gets captured. Whether it hits your inbox or your CRM, Superpanel grabs it so nothing slips through the cracks.

• We gather the extra info needed for referral partners. Before you refer a client, we can collect any missing intake details so you're referral partner has what they need to decide on the case.

• Double opt-ins, handled. Your digital employee confirms that both sides want the intro—keeping you compliant and organized.

• You get updates on cases you referred out. Your digital employee checks in with referral partners about the cases you sent, keeping you in the loop.

This isn’t just automation—it’s relationship management done right. And the best part? You stay focused on delivering for your clients, while we handle the tedious stuff.

Want to see how much more referral revenue you could be pulling in?
Schedule a 15 min call here—we’ll share how it works and what your firm could be missing.

Talk soon,
Julien
Co-Founder
Superpanel

P.S. If you’d like to learn about the 13 ways a digital employee can work for your intake department, just reply and we’ll send you our exclusive guide.

Hey {{first_name}} ,

Most of us have bought into the idea that America is wildly litigious—people ready to sue over a stubbed toe or lukewarm coffee. But what if the truth is actually the opposite?

In our latest Masters of Growth podcast episode, I sat down with David Engel, longtime torts professor and author of The Myth of the Litigious Society, and what he shared floored me.

Here’s the stat that’s haunted me since: 9 out of 10 people with a legitimate injury case never even speak to a lawyer. Not one. They just… do nothing.

They “lump”—a legal term for quietly absorbing harm without seeking justice.

In this conversation, David breaks down:

• Why injury victims are far more likely to suffer in silence than file a claim

• The emotional and cultural forces—like self-blame, religious beliefs, and what society calls “normal”—that keep people from pursuing justice

• How our assumptions about who sues and why are not just wrong, but harmful

• What this massive hidden population means for law firms like yours—and the people you’re meant to serve

If you care about reaching and helping real people—not just marketing to leads—this is one you’ll want to hear .

👇 Watch the full episode below 👇

Cheers,
Julien Emery
Founder, Superpanel

PS - Want to trade notes on ideas, strategies, and tactics for growth, book a call with me 👉🏼 here.

Are you aiming to grow a plaintiff law firm?

Aleigha is an operations leader for plaintiff firms who recently helped grow a firm from 16 people to 60.

Aleigha worked in almost all areas of personal injury firms before moving into an operations leadership role. Aleigha also works with other firms on a fractional basis, giving her exposure to personal injury practices around the country.

In this podcast, Aleigha shares her expertise on marketing, intake, and operations, offering actionable strategies to boost revenue, improve margins, and cultivate a great workplace.

This discussion emphasizes the importance of aligning vision with budget, strategic marketing investment, and optimizing the client intake process for sustained growth and profitability.

Here are a few key discussion points from our conversation:

Strategic Financial Planning: Have a well-defined budget, particularly for marketing. Aleigha advises allocating 20-25% of projected or previous year's revenue to marketing efforts, while closely tracking the ROI in terms of cases acquired, not just revenue.

Optimize Intake: View your intake team as sales team. Hire people with customer service and sales experience who are empathetic. Use performance based incentives in your compensation and be sure to provide thorough training, repeatedly.

HR and Company Mission: Be sure to hire an HR leader once a firm hits around 20 employees. Also recognize how important it is to have a clearly defined company mission that aligns the firm, employees, and clients.

Importance of Digital Case Acquisition: The world consumes more and more digital content every day, be sure to master digital channels and social media for marketing.

This is a great episode for anyone interested in growing a law firm.

Want to trade notes on ideas, strategies, and tactics for growth, book a call with me 👉🏼 here.

Whether discussing books, business, law, or stories from the Military, I always enjoy learning from Eamon Graziano - he brings a unique and valuable perspective to company building.

As a former Marine Corps Officer, MBA, and COO for multiple law firms, Eamon Graziano joins us to shed light on the strategies that lead to successful growth of plaintiff law firms.

Below are a few key take aways but you’ll get a lot more from the full episode above.

Understanding the Role of a COO in Multiple Law Firms 

Eamon provides insights into balancing responsibilities across several law firms. With a focus on process optimization and consulting, he manages strategic oversight to ensure all departments align with the firm’s mission. This includes everything from marketing and case intake to document processing and readiness for litigation. A COO’s role, Eamon explains, is KPI-focused and involves continuous improvement both of processes and team capabilities.

Lessons from the Marine Corps Applied to Law Firm Leadership 

Reflecting on his Marine Corps experience, Eamon draws parallels between military leadership and law firm management. He emphasizes three key principles: self-awareness and continuous improvement, ensuring tasks are understood and completed, and deploying team members according to their capabilities. These principles guide his approach to managing law firms, highlighting the importance of leadership training and strategic task allocation.

Hiring and Developing Talent for Long-term Success 

Eamon underscores the significance of hiring based on attitude over skills. While skills can be taught, the drive to improve and accountability are the core attributes he looks for in new hires and promotions. This approach not only fosters a culture of growth but also identifies individuals capable of becoming core team members who contribute significantly to the firm’s success.

Key Operational Challenges and Solutions for Law Firms 

Eamon’s experience reveals common pitfalls in law firm operations, such as reliance solely on referrals for case acquisition and inadequate KPI implementation. To combat these issues, he advocates for an early investment in marketing and a consistent focus on measuring efficiency through relevant KPIs. Additionally, he warns against promoting solely from within without bringing in external expertise to avoid groupthink.

Mastering the Art of Case Intake and Client Onboarding 

Intake processes can be complex, and Eamon offers insights into managing large teams efficiently. He advises on structuring intake departments with clear roles for quality control and real-time analysis to ensure consistent improvement and compliance. Eamon recommends signing clients early in the process while maintaining transparency about case investigation, to secure client commitment in a competitive market.

When to Bring in Operations Leaders in Law Firms 

Eamon advises bringing in operations leaders as soon as financially feasible, especially when handling pre-case processes. As firms reach higher case volumes, an operations leader becomes crucial for overseeing the litigation and settlement processes. Their presence helps prevent inefficiencies that could hinder growth, allowing attorneys to focus on winning cases and generating revenue.

Final Thoughts: Managing by the Numbers 

For those entering the law firm industry as an operator from a non-legal background, Eamon emphasizes the power of data-driven management. Managing by numbers helps facilitate decision-making, aligns staff performance with firm goals, and provides clear metrics for success. This method ensures that firms are not just following tradition but are strategically optimizing for growth and efficiency. Eamon’s journey from the military to law firm operations provides invaluable lessons for those looking to propel their legal practice forward. Embracing leadership principles, focusing on strategic hiring, and leveraging data-driven decisions are key to unlocking the full potential of any law firm.