James Pittman: Welcome to Immigration Uncovered, the Docketwise video podcast where we dive deep into the dynamic world of immigration law, shedding light on the latest developments, cutting edge practice, management strategies, and the transformative impact of legal technology. I'm thrilled to be your host on this exciting journey as we empower immigration practitioners with insights and explore the intricate intersection of law and society. I have as my special guest today Ian Almasy, CEO and founder of Immigration Finder. Ian, welcome. Thanks for joining me. You want to tell us a little bit about your background and your journey and what inspired you to establish Immigration Finder?

Ian Almasi: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for having me here, James. I guess what inspired me to start Immigration Finder is I met an immigration lawyer at a meditation retreat, started working with him, and it all kind of came from there. But I guess once I started actually working with an immigration firm, I realized that as far as building the business goes, there are more opportunities within a lot of immigration firms than there were outside in terms of clientele. And that and then I developed a background in a number of things.

James Pittman: But where were you coming from as a professional? I mean, what was your original background? Was it in tech?

Ian Almasi: Well, for a while I worked in the fishing and tree cutting industry. Then I actually started an online business wanting to help local businesses with their ads, and that was kind of the thing. Then I used to work with real estate agents. That's kind of where I learned about call centers and operations and other things. And real estate and immigration law aren't related in a lot of senses, but in the sense of the screenings, a lot of it is because you need to gather specific information, people need to qualify for things. There's generally a high volume of inquiries to a somewhat low number, like newly retained clients sometimes. Then when I met an immigration lawyer, there are all these things that were common in the immigration service industry as far as call centers, screening leads, those kinds of things that crossed over really well to immigration because it wasn't very common to have, at the time, in 2019 or 2018, 2019. It wasn't as common to have remote workers calling and doing things, whereas the pandemic become a bit more popular. So that's kind of where it all started. But overall, it's just kind of an existing skill set that meshed well with a client. I happened to meet at an event that was not related to immigration or business at all. I just went there for fun, and they're actually still a client almost five years later, which is amazing. We've been able to have an impact on the industry.

James Pittman: I always find it fascinating to talk to people who have come from other backgrounds who didn't originally seek to get into immigration and for some reason have found themselves operating in this space. That's always interesting to me because a lot of us who are in immigration, we had sort of a deep and abiding connection to immigration or something. So it's very interesting to dialogue with people who are coming in and found this as a space that they could work in. That's amazing.

James Pittman: And so Ian, your company Immigration Finder, has been successful in helping clients solve challenges such as having their skilled staff trained and retrained. I mean, can you elaborate or explain how your automation tools contribute to this outcome? And what benefits does Immigration Finder bring to law firms?

Ian Almasi: Well, one of the biggest benefits we bring is really just we want to actually build a law firm that someone wants to own. And so that's kind of the thing though, is like my mom actually owns or owned a business called the Self Care Path for It, where she literally would just teach business owners how to just delegate their time so they can take care of themselves. And that's obviously something missing from the legal industry too, in some ways. But I guess a lot of what we actually help people with is we're going to look at your business and see how does everything actually work together. Because of course, when you talk to the rep at the software company, when you talk to the payroll company you work with, when you hire somebody, how do we get this all work? Synergistically? Because how you scan the documents in your office should work congruently with how your remote workers are filing things. If you have them in a country, in another country, or in the US. Or let's say you're using Docketwise, for example, how does that actually fit into you printing stuff out in the office and then mailing it? And so that's kind of the thing is how do we build congruency? But the actual kind of value of that is we go into a business, we see where their time is going and where a lot of the stress and tension is maybe in the business. Then we focus on those key areas. We can relieve the team so that way you can build the business from more of a place of abundance towards not like, why don't we get more work and then tack more work on and then make more money. It's like, why don't we just build everything as effectively as possible, save whatever that percentage of time. Let's say it's 20%. Now, we can use that to pursue more of the opportunities that are already out there, or you can use that extra time to do whatever you want. I mean, one firm hired us and their goal was the founder. She wanted to go pick up her kids at two in the afternoon instead of her husband doing it. And that was her motivation. And now we have other lawyers that come to us that want to make a certain amount of money or they want to retire in the next few years and they don't know how they're going to do that, free themselves from the business or bring on a partner. So that's kind of the goal. So I guess the main value we're doing is really kind of giving people's time back in the legal industry, immigration in specific. And we focus a lot heavily on the employee side of the work as well because obviously it needs to kind of be a two way street between the owners and the employees of a business. So what we want to do is make the work lives easier of anyone working there, owners and employees so the business can grow that way. You can also retain staff and have happy people ideally as you're putting in the miles.

James Pittman: Having a very organized system of operations is certainly crucial for any successful business. So in the specific context of immigration practice, you've given a few of examples. Can you give any more examples of how the solutions really enhance the organizational efficiency specific to immigration?

Ian Almasi: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Ian Almasi: Well, one place to give the start might to be to explain our four step process to you. So whenever we work with the business, the first step working with them is to always quantify a specific issue because what you don't want to do when you start a project is start a million different projects. Like if you want to structure the business, focus on automating a specific or structuring a specific part of it. Like, hey, I really want to get intake process my firm systematized. I want to be able to onboard clients really effectively because it's causing a lot of stress or I really just want to get the cases filed effectively like I do the review and stuff just sits around the office and it doesn't get mailed out as quickly as it could. So focus on that. But that's kind of the first step is quantify. The next step is automate, which is the actual building of the procedure. And so let's say the first step quantify. You're going to realize, hey, I want to sign up more of the existing prospects that I have. We get a lot of inquiries. We don't know what to do with all of them. They're not signing up. All right, so let's work on that. So maybe we realized during the automate phase, okay, well maybe we need to streamline the actual contract onboarding process for the firm and then instead of someone just being kind of lets out to hey, when you're interested just come back and say yes. Maybe we'll work on actually sending them an agreement that will follow up with them automatically to remind them about the service. Then third step, we call it market. We don't really do paid marketing anymore, but that's still what it's called. But that's the part where we're going after the desired result. So let's say we want to sign up more of our existing prospects we built a system for it. Now what we're going to do is we're going to actually use that system to sign up more of the existing prospects then the four steps optimize is because we've created this system and then documented it. Everything we build comes with like a playbook and a manual and built guides and Google documents, video and other tools. We can then recycle through that. So first step kind of quantify rose, hey, we want to sign up more of our existing prospects. Next step automate. All right, let's know some type of e signature payment collection. Let's just really simplify the process for the end user. Third steps all right, well let's start using the system. Let's start sending these agreements out or whatever the system is. Let's get this in there. Let's do that follow up people. Then fourth step, let's optimize. All right, well maybe now that we have we're getting more of these people signed up, maybe we want to streamline how we onboard the clients or maybe we need a paralegal. Or maybe we want to hire an intake person to prescreen the consults with a questionnaire on the phone and then the attorney can do the consult. So that way there's cut down the consult time and maybe do more of them or just cut down the consult time. That's a reward too. And so that's kind of the whole process of a lot of it. But the idea is really just in that is we can consistently grow the business without having a million projects because that gets taken care of. We move to the next thing that grows a little bit, that gets taken care of. We move to the next thing that grows a little bit. So that way we're not starting an infinite project. But then also we're repeatedly adding value through a structured system.

James Pittman: Excellent. As an overall schematic.

James Pittman: I mean, let's drill down a little bit into sort of the call and answering services aspect of it because certainly with immigration firms and other types of law firms where you're serving sort of the general public, managing a large volume of inquiries always becomes a challenge. And automating your call and answering service can certainly be a game changer. So how does immigration finder address this aspect and ensure that law firms can provide a seamless and hopefully automated communication experience for their clients?

Ian Almasi: The place to start with that is obviously a little bit of the who who's actually answering the phone and not just who specifically who in your company is being tasked with this and is that task congruent with other responsibilities they have? The person answering the phone is also responsible for a million different things. How much focus is really going to get put on answering the phone if they have all these other responsibilities? And not to say you can't do it like that and delegate out to people, but generally a really good place to start and then I used to own an immigration sales team, like a remote call center that people would outsource to us to help us to help them sign up immigration cases. A lot of what we learned is it's good to get people that are very focused on the work but then also you want to establish what baseline competency is and have some type of service level expectation like, hey, we call people back in a certain amount of time. We answer the phone a certain way each time. This is our parameters for explaining things to people because obviously you don't want to give legal advice, but if someone calls you up and asks a question like what do you actually say to them? You're obviously not going to give them the legal advice side of it, but you need to say something. So having expectations is very helpful. The other side of that is it's really important that as you bring these people on and train them or if you want to retrain existing staff, that it doesn't just become a pile of work thrown at them? Is the thing is you want to go kind of structured like, hey, first we're just going to teach you how to sign up consultations and then take notes in the CRM. Then that's going to be the first two weeks of training. Then after that what we're going to work on is maybe doing a bit more of the screening. So when someone calls in they said, hey, I want to get a marriage green card. What do you ask and how do you ask and is there some type of rubric for that? But a lot of the things if you want to improve and make the communication seamless is set an expectation that your staff has to maintain and then set an expectation with the client too. So that's inhabited writing when the case starts and that way the whole company should operate. Congruently. It's kind of the thing like if a client calls in and says, hey, we're happy to do this, we'll get back to you in the next 24 hours. That way everything is always consistent and clear. Then in regards to having the phones covered and everything, if we have a 24/7 answering service that works with immigration lawyers, have a way for people to communicate with you that is answered quickly. Even if you're not going to get back to them quickly, just have some type of proof that you're receptive to when they communicate and then you'll end up doing less work if you proactively communicate with people. So if you're the one calling them, it might seem like more work but you will prevent issues further on down the line. Like once a month just send out an email to me, hey, your case is still pending. We care. There's nothing we can do about it. That's better than waiting until people are afraid or they hear about their friend that had a bad experience with the lawyer all of a sudden call in their office wondering if they hired the right people.

James Pittman: Let's talk about the intake process. I mean, in immigration firms, streamlining the intake process, especially using software, is a significant achievement. How do immigration finder solutions, simplify the client intake process and lead to more efficiency there?

Ian Almasi: Well, one of the big ways we do this, there's the intake process, but just like anything, there's steps to a process. So you can reduce customer service issues considerably by just having a solid onboarding process. But when you're structuring this out, clearly define which part of the process people are responsible for. And even if it's one person managing all of it, like you're a solo attorney, just think, hey, there's the inquiry stage which is people just contacting the firm somehow. There's the filtration stage which is then pretty much filtering those down to whoever is somewhat viable. And they have to respond to emails, answer their phone, they have to potentially qualify for something. And then they have to have some degree of intent, as in they're willing to do a consult or communicate with you or do something. And then there's the sales step which is kind of consulting and then that's where they actually find out, hey, do you qualify for something? And are we going to ask you to work with us? And then the next thing is onboarding the client. So after someone signs up, how do we bridge the gap between them being a prospect and all this back and forth kind of getting to know you communication to actual legal production where you can actually provide the service that people are paying for. So those are the stages in there. But then also how do you get that actually started? Define what happens at each of those stages. What's the increase stage, filtration stage, the sales kind of consulting stage and then the onboarding so that as the team grows and you hire someone, you're not just hiring people thinking oh, I need more help with this. Like, oh I need more people to screen these leads because I'm loaded on consults and I want to reduce the amount of time it takes because I want more information going into this. So that's the thing is to get a little intentional on it, then that kind of feeds into the next part of the legal production process is you can set expectations in the sales and intake process for the legal production for like, hey, once you're assigned client, this is how it's going to be, and so on and so forth. Because I think the big things people are concerned about is as the business grows, will we maintain what we actually did to get to this point? Is it going to be clear? All that different stuff.

James Pittman: So scalability becomes we're in consideration. You always need to be scalable. And I like what you said about the onboarding process sets the tone for the entire representation of the client and the production of the legal work. So if you onboard the client and orient them toward how you expect them to interact with the firm, then you're going to have much smoother time when you get to the production stage.

James Pittman: In immigration law, production of legal work product, I mean, repetitive data entry and administrative work is time consuming and tedious. How do the automations that you employ at immigration Finder approach helping legal professionals reduce some of the manual tasks and focus on these higher value activities?

Ian Almasi: That is a great question because we have done time tracking before and realized that 2 hours of people's day is literally just packing in information and I don't want to act like that's going to just disappear if you automate your firm. So one of the big things is to realize do you have all the information that's getting entered into data in data entry or could it have been collected at some point? So the process we just talked about with that intake phase, the people that are managing that or the person managing that or whatever system is, is data being gathered there actually usable in the legal production stage? Are people just kind of taking botched notes on a piece of paper and then kind of managing it themselves? So the big thing about reducing data entry is look a few steps earlier to kind of see when it can be collected, then is there a place or a wage where that can just be transported? I mean, a quick example of that, James, is one client we worked with. They had a very manual intake and consultation process that we helped them restructure. And over the course of six months, eight months or so, we moved them from having a paper intake form into using a paper form that the attorney filled out while he was on consults and handing it to a team member to using that Dr. Wise lead CRM. Then when they onboarded the client, it was the click of a button. All the information they had from paragraphs of information from this very thorough screening would then onboard the client. There was no data entry into the system at all that could be more seamless. Not everyone's going to restructure their systems like that though. So the big thing you can do to reduce some data entry is look for ways that software can work together. There are a lot of tools like make zapier. There are questionnaires you can get your client to fill out or there are ways to know if you're doing multiple data entry. You might be able to automate it to where you fill out a form and then that form populates four different softwares on the internet so you only have to do it once. In our own business, we used to onboard clients. We'd make their online folder. We'd make all this stuff and it was about like an hour or two of just set up. But then we moved to having a form that created something in our project management system, something in Google Drive. It created a document for the media notes. We always logged in meetings in one place. And so it's not just specific to immigration law, but there's a lot of ways to just condense steps with one singular entry. And that's a good thing to do. But I guess to summarize is if you can actually collect all the information possible in the intake process and use it, a big complaint from Paralegals is they start a case and then they have no information to go with. And then you have someone that's been talking to the firm for three months, and they're like, well, what about this information? I did consult, I talked to the screening people three times. I received an agreement. I went to the office in person. I sent my CV over where's all this information? Because that in and of itself can cause some customer service issues. Because it's like, well, what have you been doing for three months? We just went through this whole console, and I just sold some real estate to afford C two Visa. Were you not taking notes?

James Pittman: I mean, let's just talk about sort of how you analyze building the tech stack. I mean, that is your functions, right? So what's your sort of philosophy of building the tech stack? Sometimes less is more. There's various philosophies. But how would you approach it?

Ian Almasi: Well, the first approach is to see what people are already doing as far as what software they already have, what's the process. But we're always going to focus on the underlying workflow that exists and then how do we get a software to match that? My dad's like a custom builder. And one thing that comes up when you're building a house is something called a needs and wants list. So for example, write down what you need a software to do. Maybe you need a software that can do trust accounting for you. If you don't need that, don't look for it. So maybe you need a software that has the ability to organize PDFs in a certain format for that kind of thing. Maybe you have a litigation side of the business or another practice area. So focus on the underlying workflow the firm works, and then shop and then look for things around that functionality. So for example, one firm we worked with, they do a lot of, like, mandamus cases. They do a ton of mandamus litigation. They probably file over 50 a month on the exact number anymore. But it's quite a few of them came up. So they needed a lot of software that could very much make repeated lawsuits in addition to a lot of the immigration work they were doing with filing USCIS applications. So what we looked for was like a solution. Then they ended up using a tool called Airtable for it, in addition to some other tools. But that was kind of the thing though is they wanted to have a system for that. So focus on the underlying workflow that your firm has and then shop around that. So instead of just looking out for how do I find the perfect tool that's going to work, focus on this is what my business does and actually needs. Then shop around that component. But if you think about it, like getting a gym membership, let's say there's two people out there and one person. They work out at home, they run every day, they drink enough water, they track all the reading that that person getting a gym membership is going to have a much higher chance of success than someone who doesn't do any of those things, who thinks that going and getting a gym membership is what's going to get them. Yeah, well, it both could work. It doesn't mean just because you're not going to the gym doesn't mean you can't get a gym membership and be successful. But the underlying habits are what's really important. Then in all reality, tools change, software changes, all that stuff. Focus on how the firm works. But the thing about picking a tech stack is there's not one thing that's going to fix everything for you. Even if you have a perfect software, you're still going to need to print stuff out and package it, mail it out. That part is not going to change. You're still going to have to have someone sitting at your front desk to greet people if that's how your business works. So you need to focus on how it all works together, but get your workflow written out of like, hey, this is how we want to onboard clients, into which time frame, this is how we want to file our e two cases and this is the time frame we want to follow. And this is like how soon we want to get it out the door, then go shop based on that. And then that's a lot of how we do it is when we start working with a firm, it's always review their existing things, address their existing workflows and how the company already works. And that gives us a chance to see where the discrepancy is between what's digital and what's not. Because not everything ends up inside software, which can be difficult when you have a remote team. But some people have, they have paper case files or they have a whiteboard, they have stuff on. But overall, to kind of summarize, we assess what they actually have, we build their existing workflow and then we help them kind of shop or help them restructure their software based on that. So we can facilitate more of this stuff that needs to happen because your software is always going to be one component of a larger field in your business.

James Pittman: Absolutely.

James Pittman: How important are integrations in your thinking? Is the fact that products integrate together? Is that now a key aspect of it? Or again, is it just really sort of on a case by case basis and you see what the workflow is like? And if you can find integrated products that are synergistic, it's good, but it's not a key thing. Do you set out to have seamless integration?

Ian Almasi: I always set out and look for integrations partly because the software companies that have integrations are generally the ones that are going to update their software regularly and they're going to look to make improvements. The ones that don't tend to be a bit more static. So aside from just the integration itself, the companies that are looking for ways to integrate and improve their products are generally better companies to work with because they're looking for ways to integrate. So that's another thing to think about, is like Dockerwise has way more integrations now than they did when I started using it three, four years ago. And that makes a big difference that people can integrate their QuickBooks and integrate my case and they don't have to jump ship to use this different tool. It could fit into existing stuff.

James Pittman: Personally, I consider it a major oh, it's super important.

Ian Almasi: Yeah, super important.

James Pittman: And that's the entire trend of everything is becoming more integrated.

Ian Almasi: Well, I guess one of the main things to look at is when people are kind of thinking about integrations and that not everybody wants to abandon their existing tech stack and that can be difficult to do. You have something customized that you've used for a while and just kind of used to it has a lot of your data. But in regards to actually kind of integrating something and looking for those things, there are a lot of third party tools, like Zapier is one of them. And if you go to Slash apps, you can actually look to see how Docketwise can integrate with other tools that aren't listed on the integration site. And so there's a lot of different ways to look up how things will work together. But this kind of goes back to in the workflow planning we were talking about. We could look at their existing workflow and then look for the things that they may not even know is an option or is potentially available.

James Pittman: Well, let's talk a little bit about getting clients, which is a practice. So worrying about where the next client will come from is a paramount concern for many lawyers. So how does immigration finders approach to automation and streamlining? Assist your client firms with attracting and retaining clients?

Ian Almasi: Immigration is not always an immediate need, so we're a big proponent of long term follow up. So there's kind of two things. There's getting new clients and there's getting returning clients. And both of which you need to focus on because all of your clients that got married that need removal. Conditions in two years. Those are a great prospect base, but do you have a plan to follow up with them? And a lot of tools have a task platform where you can actually mark a follow up form or you can schedule an email that literally goes out a year and a half later. You're on top of those things. So as far as it goes, definitely you want to farm within your existing client base. And that can involve asking for referrals, checking with people to see if they need renewals. Those are two big things. And then if you're consistent with this, you can get to the point where 10% to 30% of your business are just these returning clients that you're just calling up. And then they're kind of lay downs. So that's the next thing. And then the next thing you need to ask yourself is, do I have enough inquiries to actually build the business to the level that I want? And that happens a lot where firms come to us like, hey, we want to get clients and they actually have enough inquiries to do that. They're getting thousands of inquiries from social media. It's just not manageable. And a lot of the inquiries they're getting, the easy ones are signing up. But the people that need a bit more convincing or maybe they're a few months out are there. So have a system for screening people that aren't ready yet and a way to keep in touch with them. It's very easy. Like, we hire a lot of people from Latin America just to do those calls. People that just got engaged that want to get married a year later. And that sounds like a lot of work. Oh, I got to call them in a year. But when it gets to the point where you're making calls like this every single day and you're signing clients on a regular basis from people that are a year ago, it can get to the point to where that's very helpful. I mean, actually about half of immigration finders clientele are people I met a year ago plus that decide to start working with us. So it works in any business. As far as getting new clients goes, like, let's say you don't have as many of those inquiries. A few things to do is obviously there's a lot of free stuff on social media, those things. If you're not quite as into making content, there are a lot of people that can make the content for you and then post something a bit more generic. There are tools like Doodly that can make video content kind of cartoon animated, and those are very visually engaging. That's a very good way to describe things because it's visually engaging. Like, we made seven ways to speed up your immigration case video for one of our clients and it was one of them. You know, your congressman, the next one know, call USCIS. And there was a few other things in there and those are normal pro. So there's still options for people. So as far as getting the new clients goes is one, have a system for signing them up and screening them because not everyone's going to be ready immediately. Generally about 2% of prospects are ready to buy immediately. And then secondly is have a system for the people that aren't ready immediately which just kind of goes back to the first thing but actually use a system for it, have some type of task platform for it. And then third thing is ask for referrals but also reach out to people that need to renew their cases. If you've been a lawyer for more than a few years and you've been in business, you definitely have filed cases that be renewed, that need their condition removed, people that are eligible for citizenship, let's say you filed an F One visa two years ago, email them, ask hey, have you got job offer all? Do you have plans to stay in the US? Do you have this? That is a much warmer prospect. And then also like an F One student that's in school is probably around a lot of other international students. Maybe it's not them, maybe they want to do it so far within your existing base. But then also if you need to get new inquiries, go to the easiest places to get those which is generally online social media immigration is very search heavy and so that's something that is a good thing about this industry is because there are people that are looking up answers to questions actively on a daily basis. There are YouTube channels out there that have hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the immigration industry, which is a fairly small industry in the big scheme of things. And so that's a big thing on there. And then the next thing is there is the option to do paid ads as well to get clients. But we mostly focus on the intake and onboarding process just because when that's in place, generally every type of marketing will produce some type of fruitful result or you'll actually know if it was worth it. If you have a structured intake process you'll be able to say this didn't work because this intake process that we have worked with getting clients from social media, worked with, getting clients from buying leads from this company, but this specific marketing campaign didn't work. So that way you're not gauging it based on did I get clients? It's like did my process produce what it needed to?

James Pittman: You're not actually hands on involved in the digital marketing aspect, but do you assist the clients with finding digital marketing professionals if they should?

Ian Almasi: Ask yeah, absolutely. So the only part of the marketing process we don't do is paid ads but everything else will set up. So a lot of what my company does is we monetize existing marketing and we help people get more leads from their existing marketing. So like a client that just recently signed up with us, they have about 100,000 viewers on the YouTube channel which is awesome, but they're not using that YouTube channel as a conduit to their business. And then one thing we do quite a bit of is we write marketing plans out. So we'll write out this is how much you need to spend on this ad. This is how this campaign needs to work. We do build a lot of funnels and landing pages which are like these mini websites to screen things because a lot of the people that come to us, they're getting leads but they want to get specific leads. Like they want to do a specific case type or they want to advertise to even if it's not a specific case type. We want to work with professionals like the family immigration side is totally thriving. It's good but we want to get more business immigration cases or we want to get more mandamus cases or whatever it is. So kind of fine tuning that is a lot of what we work on. So one thing we do with marketing is we plan, we monetize existing content then we build up the automation and sales procedures to actually turn those leads into paying clients. And when you come from kind of more of like a cold calling call center background you kind of have a different perspective on how to actually follow up with people on that which is something I really like to bring to the table.

James Pittman: That's one of the things I always loved about the immigration field was that there is so much repeat business that you can get certainly still have to do marketing but really so much of your business, I mean what percentage, what was it did you quote? A percentage? What percentage of do you strive for in terms of seeing a client's business come from repeat business from their existing client base or referrals from their existing client base?

Ian Almasi: Generally if you can get 10% to 30% of your top blind revenue in the business being repeat clients as in like e. Two renewals, removal of conditions naturalization or some type of succession of service is a good mark. That's obviously going to take a while because if you're just starting a firm I'm just going to file a case and two weeks later they'll come back and if they do it's not always for the next service. So that's kind of part of it but generally we want to get to that point to attend to 30%. Are there quick ways to actually get it? There is email market regularly. You could host webinars or lives online, have a Facebook group or some way for people to just be exposed to on a regular basis. Not everyone that researches immigration is someone that actively needs a lawyer. So that's one thing then a percentage coming from referrals that's obviously going to vary by firm and then also it's going to vary by their client base, the types of cases, those kinds of things. But generally with a lot of that data, start tracking, it a lot of CRMs. You can put in a lead source and it'll tell you automatically as long as it's tracked, like what percentage it comes from. And it can vary over time too. Obviously referrals can go in phases, those things can and then it's good to track the types of referrals you're getting. Was this a referral from another lawyer? Was it a referral from another business? Like, let's say there's an accountant in your local area that works with a lot of local businesses and then they refer clients to you that want to sponsor people for visas because they need employees. That's a different referral than a client referral, for example. So look at those differently. But part of getting more referrals is nurturing the relationships. When a client refers someone to you, do you call them and thank them or do you do make some type of effort to thank them? One firm I spoke to, they said, oh, we get a lot of work from referrals, but they're not really actually referrals. I advertise on TV and my clients kind of say that, oh hey, that's my lawyer. And then they end up contacting me like that. So that's a little bit different than someone putting you in a CCD email with someone they need help with.

James Pittman: What are some of the things that you could do in terms of communicating with your existing client base to kind of prompt them to send you more referrals?

Ian Almasi: They just have to remember that you exist. Not everyone is walking around thinking about their lawyer all the time. Ideally they're not, because if they're not thinking about the lawyer, you generally did a good job so they're not stressed out about it. Yeah, but good things to do are definitely email marketing. You could stay on top of them, have a monthly newsletter if you're recording content online, send it out, those kinds of things. Having like a direct mail card periodically is one thing. When people do get a case resolved or let's say someone like you close a case like they're done being your client for the time being, send them a card, say thank you on there. And then one of the other things you can do is we do this quite a bit is we used to do it a lot a few years ago. We do something called a verbal newsletter with a lot of firms is anytime there's some type of breaking immigration news that's interesting, you can have someone from your firm just call all of your past clients in your database and then just very quickly say, hey, did you know there's an update with this immigration thing? And then there generally are a lot of immigration updates that affect a lot of people. We did one of these once with DACA where we just started calling out and saying, hey, you know any DACA recipients? Like when DACA blew up at the end of 2020. I think it was, it was a good way to do it, but it was a great way to start new conversations with people and it was very light because you weren't asking for anything, you're just sharing this. The main way we do it is email marketing, of course, because it just keeps top of mind. And then the other thing is like the verbal newsletter recording lives. And then I guess the other thing is though, is when your current clients contact you or when you get referrals and they contact you, do you reach out and thank the person referred them? And then many tools, cleogrow for example, actually has a platform where you can track who referred who and it's built into the system so it's not difficult to do by any means. But I guess the way to get more referrals is to be grateful. You get referrals and express that gratitude to people because it's really easy to send a card out. We use a tool called send out cards a lot to send mail out to people. You could easily do that in there time someone refers, you just send a quick card out, have your assistant do it and then it's two or $3 to send a greeting card can go a long way.

James Pittman: Do you think remembering client birthdays is an important thing to do? And about mailing, do you think sending actual postcards or actual postal mailings is still something people should be doing?

Ian Almasi: I mean, if you're working with immigration clients, they're going to be getting mail anyways, so it's a part of their life when they're paying attention to it. We send mail all the time. A lot of our sales prospects, we actually send a pack of brownies and a card to them. So I think it definitely makes a difference. It is kind of a unique tree because most people just get bills in the mail. So when they get a card saying thank you, it does make a difference. And it can be an email, it can be a number of things, but I think the mail portion definitely does still work. And then most of the people mailing aren't small local businesses thanking people for referring to them. So it's kind of unique in its own.

James Pittman: Let me just ask about the verbal newsletter. So the verbal newsletter is actually you actually would have people placing outgoing telephone calls to the clients.

Ian Almasi: Yeah, let's say there's like that's not too labor intensive. It definitely can be labor intensive. But when you start getting clients from it's well worth it because one, you're not paying for all those leads and data. And then secondly, is there's generally a wave of people that have additional questions or consults that help to come from it. And then the third thing is a lot of when we do a verbal newsletter is when we're doing some type of database outreach. And then the other thing is you don't have to do this personally is there are a lot of call services like answering services and that that will do this on a per work basis. So it may be a lot of work. But also, if your lawyer called you, or not the lawyer themselves, but if the law office called you to let you know about a piece of news that is potentially interesting to you, that's really appealing, because that means that this person is staying on top of current events, that they're paying attention to things. They can do it. So yes, it definitely is labor intensive. Most of the firms aren't going to do this and that's fine if they yode as too much. But the other thing is the amount of credibility that it gives you that you're actually calling your client base to inform them about news that they would otherwise likely not learn about is definitely valuable.

James Pittman: Do you think it's ever appropriate to use any Robocalling technology? I mean, have a recording that you then have dialed to?

Ian Almasi: Yeah, well, definitely if you're looking into that, look up your local laws. We have done that before because it is very easy to record a voice message. And then this is another spot where text marketing can come into place where you can message them like, hey, there's a new law that came out, want to let you know about it, read about it. Here that simple thing. And more and more people want to communicate on various avenues which be text, WhatsApp messenger, all sorts of things. But the pre recording can definitely be good. And then as far as Robocalling or auto dialing, as long as someone's live on the phone, I don't have an issue with it. There are laws around it, of course, and then fortunately, a lot of large companies are using this in a very non ethical way. So it's not always leaving the best taste in people's mouths. A lot of who we hire for the law firms because we have a remote hiring services, we hire remote call center agents in Latin America. Then instead of working in a big facility with 500 people, we'll work home for immigration lawyer. And so this is oftentimes not uncomfortable for someone to do who has that type of background. So that's kind of the thing. But I don't have an issue with using any of this technology as long as it's used for a specific purpose. And then this can be part of a larger campaign too. Like let's say you send out a big voicemail blast saying hey, this new law came out, then generally about 5% of people that receive a voicemail blast will call you back. So if you are going to do that, you got to think if you send 100 out, you get 510 calls back very quickly. A lot of people will call back. So a good way to, like we talked about earlier, farm within your existing prospect base. And then the next thing is when you're actually using this, you can make it part of a larger plan like, oh, hey, maybe we're going to send out a case update. Maybe we're going to email, broadcast the case update. Then maybe we want to let our list know or advertise online that we're going to do a webinar. That way everybody's a little bit more engaged before we ask them for something. And then after the webinar, we're going to follow up with people that engage through all this to see, hey, who in here actually needs legal services? So this can be part of a larger plan. And then if people are happy just getting a voicemail with some more information, that's fine. But then there are going to be people that engage that actually need help. And then a lot of people hire lawyers and are not happy with the service that engage well with them. So it does happen quite a bit that people end up moving lawyers. Not that that's always a good thing, but it does happen. So staying top of line with these people is definitely important.

James Pittman: Let's talk about client satisfaction because that's really paramount about the legal services industry. If we took sort of the wheel of client satisfaction, what would the various spokes be that sort of lead into client satisfaction? How do you arrive at client satisfaction? What goes into it?

Ian Almasi: Having clear expectations is a good way to because the legal cases last so long. I mean, not everyone's going to remember a ten minute conversation you had with them two years ago. So having things written down and then is something. But actually most client satisfaction is going to be based on how well you communicate with them. I mean, if you're in an immigration firm, very rarely, I would say pretty much never is a client actually going to know that you're filing a good immigration case for them or providing proper legal representation according to that. They're really kind of trusting you on that side because obviously that's their expertise. But the other thing is they're mainly going to gauge it based on their communication with you and the firm, how well their questions are answered, those kinds of things. And then also expectations change over time. So as far as meeting their expectations goes, it's very important to define clearly what they should expect from you, is the other thing. And then one of the big things is obviously immigration cases take a long time. And when someone files one immigration case with you, obviously if you own a firm filing one case, that's not enough to keep the doors open, you're going to have a lot of clients, new clients, past ones. It's a lot like imagine someone's at the hospital and their family member is in one of the hospital rooms and they're asking the nurse or the doctor how's my uncle doing? Or whatever that doctor is thinking about whatever the 30 other patients he has then. But that person only cares about that one patient which as their family members. So it's important to not kind of lose your bedside manner on that side, but to realize that that's their perspective. And then the other thing is like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So the more proactively you can reach out to them. And whether or not you say you have time for this or not, it will save you time to proactively, reach out to your clients and then say, hey, just so you know, we have. And even if it's just an email, phone call, something, and you can pre schedule these too, like, hey, just so you know, we still care. We're in the same boat. USCIS is at the same stage it was a month ago, is kind of that you'll actually prevent a lot of the things coming in. And that's kind of that same thing we brought up earlier, though, is like, oh, my lawyer reaches out to me or my law firm or whatever it is, whoever does it, and lets me know that, hey, this is how my case is doing. And that's the type of stuff they're going to tell their friends, because the things they brag about, that people brag about is the customer service, how well they communicate. Did they get back to me? Do they answer my questions in a way that I understand? Like when I need something, do they get back to me? Or do they only call me when they want money? When I call them asking a question, do they actually listen to me or do I only hear from them when they need to bill me for something and have me fill something out? And it's a hard thing to manage. It's never going to be perfect, of course.

James Pittman: Are you involved in helping firms optimize their billing practices? Is that part of it?

Ian Almasi: Oh yeah, absolutely. We do it a lot, a lot.

James Pittman: Of firms, that aspect of it. And how do you approach collections and so forth.

Ian Almasi: So those are two kind of heated questions on there. So obviously collections is one thing. It's like one firm we worked with, 9% of their bills weren't getting paid, which when you have about 1800 open cases, that's a lot of people not paying every month. But the big thing with setting up a billing practice is having some type of online ledger system that works well and then secondly is having some type of subscription. But so a lot of what we help with on creating billing systems is first off, you got to set the right expectation with the client because you don't want them to feel like they're just another one of your bills. And then also some of the cases last for so long, they'll start to kind of ask themselves what they're actually paying for. But a lot of what we help with at billing is if you can turn your law firm into as much of a subscription model as possible, like let's say you're filing perm cases, for example, there's a lot of stages to perm. You might bill them every six months or a year, like whenever the stage transitions. Maybe you just want to factor in, okay, this case is going to take about three years to process. Maybe we make this a monthly bill where we charge them a few hundred dollars a month instead of a few thousand every six months or whatever it happens to be. So that way it becomes a bit more clear because you want to build billing procedures that aren't awkward. Because also not everyone that's going to like, let's say you have a paralegal who's a great paralegal. They're a good person, they're great at focusing, they're a bit more introverted. They're good at sitting there and then focusing and doing the work. Is that really going to be someone that's going to be good at calling up and saying that, hey, you owe us $3,000, we're going to need to collect this before the next part of the process starts. And then that kind of goes back to that call center agent we referenced earlier. That person would probably have no problem with that because that's kind of their background. So you want to build these procedures in that aren't quite as awkward. And a lot of that can come down to making subscriptions, creating a billing model that's consistent and that also provides cash flow for your business, which is really important. One thing that happened a lot during the pandemic is a lot of the courts weren't moving forward, a lot of the cases weren't getting processed and people couldn't bill their clients because the production stage wasn't even met. And tons of things can happen with there. It doesn't have to be a worldwide pandemic. I mean, it can just happen to be like a case delay or they might have not told you they had a criminal conviction because they didn't want to tell their wife. Then all of a sudden you can't collect from your client because it's not at certain production stage that you agreed on. So it's a big thing is make billing procedures that aren't awkward. We always want to work towards having the clients work on like a subscription style, style kind of model that provides cash flow for the business and it's not quite as awkward. People get used to that few hundred dollars coming out a month. They set up a few thousand every six months. Bit easier for them to plan for it. And then the third thing is in regards to actually collecting on all this stuff, bill them on time obviously you got to follow up with them somehow. But as much as you can turn it into subscription model as possible is good. But one firm we worked with, they actually had issues in the past where they would just charge credit cards automatically. But then some people filed disputes with their bank and it made it difficult because one, they were afraid their payment processing would get frozen. Which meant that it wasn't just that client that didn't pay, it was every client. Essentially the money wasn't able to be transported to their bank. So that's kind of the thing but overall have a clear expectation for it. And then the big thing about we see in a billing procedure is just don't become another one of their bills. Let's say you have a U Visa filing and you have to collect a lot of money over the course of a number of years. Reach out, send a letter to them every few months, quarterly, have them on some type of letter service or just email them. You can have them on an email list that you can automate and then you can do that where they feel like they're actually paying for something and that'll help you collect on quite a bit of things. And then also there is a point where if you are actually having a lot of collections issues there are call centers that do this. You can call it. A lot of the times people hire us because they want someone just to call their current clients and collect on that. One of our clients actually overdue payments. They bring in about $40,000 from all these overdue payments that they've kind of given up on just from having hired somebody to just call and make those calls every single month to do that. So the collections are kind of there and then a lot of these roles. There are so many call centers out there that have these types of things and there are a lot of these call center agents, the people working in those that are happy to have a remote job where they're working at home, not having to bust it to a call center.

James Pittman: And it's really interesting hearing you talking about how to optimize the billing practices. It's so incredibly important. I mean, we have a little bit of time.

James Pittman: I did want to ask one question about artificial intelligence. Have you started utilizing any of the newer AIpowered tools in terms of in your implementing of solutions for firms? Well, that's one question and then sort of do you have any thoughts about where you see that going in the future with some of the newer tools that you think could be used in sort of the optimizations that you've been talking about?

Ian Almasi: Well, the first question is kind of how do we use it is one thing is set parameters on how to use it because obviously you as a lawyer are going to think of. Things differently than your secretary. And so if you're going to integrate AI into the business, make it clear what you're going to use it for and when and that type of stuff and those things and designate which tools is obviously AI isn't one thing. It's very broad. So we use a tool called Agent GPT a lot for research. Like we'll go in and research, especially when we're working with the firm, I'll go research what's a certain district court like in filing asylum applications. If we're working with know obviously we have a number of clients here in California. So obviously the courts there are going to be different than the courts in Texas. And so we want to hear just learn a little bit more about it and kind of the process for things. But then also one thing you can use AI for is helping to train staff quickly because you can look up very quickly, okay, what's the process for adjustment of status? These AIS can go out research it. You can go in and then swap out a few things and then you can just use that to be like, hey, this is the general process for adjustment status for a new team member coming on who let's say you hired a paralegal that worked at a bankruptcy law firm for five years. So they're coming into it. They're obviously going to have a bit more of a base as far as skills goes, but they may not have the knowledge to do that. So that's a good way to do it is to use it for training people and general research. And then also you can research things that maybe you're not as familiar with as certain things. Like maybe you haven't filed a Nitu visa, filed a Ni two visa before, that kind of things. You can do just some general research with it and then you can go out and have information to verify potentially. So that way you're not just going out receptively looking for information. You can be like, okay, well, I looked up this process. Is there any type of validation that this is real? Is kind of the thing. So using it for training staff is really good. Then the other thing is this kind of goes back to setting parameters on how to use artificial intelligence is don't look at it as a replacement, look at it as like a supplementation. Because obviously lawyers are their finished product thinkers. I mean, failure is not an option. The final product has to be perfect, whereas a lot of other areas of the business and the world are a little bit more flexible. And so that's something you could really kind of take a look at is to kind of is this, use it to supplement the work. There are a lot of parts of the business that may not be legal work either. Like maybe you need to post an ad for a legal assistant that can do these four things, plug it into Chat GPT or something and it'll spit back something so you can use it for the lighter parts of the business that aren't as intensive, that are taking up a lot of your time. And then one of our clients actually used Chat GPT for creating. So what they would do is they would just type a brief description of hey, write a summary email for this client's consult and it would type it up. And then they didn't put any of the client information in there. It was just like l one visa for this type of business, from this country, from this and these are their potential options for filing and the cost and there you go. In three sentences they could draft kind of a representation paragraph, just not necessarily like an agreement, but just about like hey, this is just the process, we're getting started and everything do that. And essentially they used it more like a writing assistant as opposed to something to actually do it there. So use it for what it's good for, which is a lot of the time supplementing your existing work. But then that's what I would look at it as. Look at it as a tool to supplement your work and not necessarily replace it. And then you're a lawyer, you're a finished product, thinker this is how it is a good thing if you're a lawyer. But also there are so many different potential options for using tools because not everything has to get completely to the finish line to help with you. But maybe you're filing a visa with a specific consulate and you just want to research the consulate or the country or those things. And then one thing that a lot of for those of you filing humanitarian cases that need to make country reports for asylum cases, the AI is a really good place to find a lot of the articles and everything that you can use for that. Then you can just validate it so you can use it to just get you a little bit further into the finish line. Then the tool I really like is Agent GPT. That one's more research based, as in you can type in a specific prompt but it will actually go and find third party references for you. It types it out more like a research basis instead of just a block of text.

James Pittman: One of the areas that I think it can be helpful is with some of the client communications and the advertising copy the outbound communications from the law firm in its tone. I mean, sometimes because of the legal training and the sort of legal tone they don't quite get, at least some, not everybody of course, but some people don't quite get that not everything has to have the bar lawyer tone, court tone communications can be somewhat friendlier than that, the way they would be in other industries. And that can really help in terms of sounding a note which is friendly and attractive to your client base. I mean, obviously law is serious business, it can't be too breezy, but I think the AI tools can help you create outbound communications which strike the right.

Ian Almasi: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Then also AI isn't just these other third party tools. I mean there are tools that will help you write emails, tools that will help you have these things. And then AI is becoming integrated into a lot of these tools that we're a bit more static. There are email template tools that will actually help you write an email with it and everything. And I think one of the things too is people are wondering how to use AI without having to use a bunch of extra tools and that's having to download things or set up a bunch of new accounts and all that stuff. So you can look within your current ecosphere but look at your current tech stack and then check to see which companies are integrating this stuff. I mean, there are some case management platforms that are integrating with Chat GPT. There's Grammarly recently introduced, which is like a writing assistant. They introduced an AI thing to help you write emails. So there you go. I'm sure anybody watching that writes emails on a daily basis. So that's something there and then that's something you don't even have to leave your Gmail or Outlook interface to even use. It's just a chrome extension that attaches to things. So part of it's also just looking inside your current ecosphere, like what tools are already integrating with AI, where's all this stuff coming in because obviously not everyone stays on top of what a software does. People get into these routines.

James Pittman: It is a trend and a development which is you're going to see more and more of the AIpowered techniques and tools coming into the existing tools. So it's not going to be just going to a third party and setting up a new account with a new tool. It's going to be AI powered functionality in some of maybe your existing tools or tools that you use for a broader application. Absolutely.

James Pittman: Well Ian, we're getting to the end of the hour. This is a great conversation and it has been really enlightening for us to understand your methodology, what you do at Immigration Finder, it sounds like a fantastic value proposition for immigration lawyers to optimize their processes. I can see it paying enormous dividends in terms of being able to free up a lot of attorney time and just operate more efficiently and reduce a lot of the pain points. So it sounds like you're doing amazing things at Immigration Finder and it's great that somebody with your skill set, with sort of this process oriented and workflow skill set is focusing on immigration law. That's just amazing and it's been great hearing about it. Do you want to tell our audience anything else? Before we close the session.

Ian Almasi: Yeah, I guess the thing is if you're wanting to automate or systematize or just the general question is like, how do I do this better? Start with something specific that you do daily and don't be afraid to try new things at all. But also one of the big things is start by just asking your staff what's difficult. That's a good place to start. And then overall, you can start small and very specific, but nothing's ever going to be perfect. But you even just writing out how to onboard a new client on one page in five minutes on a Google document, that's a great thing to do. But the big thing to focus on is you want to remove as many of the variables inside the business that you can control. You can't always control that. USCIS is going to send you an RFE. Your client's going to get a DUI that the embassy is just not going to respond to anything you send them. What you can control are things inside the business. So that's a good thing to focus on. If you want to reduce the amount of stress you have or how tense your team is or there's a whole myriad of things you might want to work on. Start by just with the things you can control. But the thing is, when you trip over a rock and hit your head on a rock, the rock you tripped over is the problem. And so always try to, when you have a problem, look a step back to think, okay, well, we have these customer service issues. All right, well, did we onboard them very well? It's like no, we sent them the checklist six weeks after they started. We collected their payment and then didn't talk to them for a week. That type of stuff might actually be the issue as opposed to, oh, the client's mad, we're not getting back to them the same day. That might be the complaint, but the actual initial thing might. Oh, well, it took six weeks for us to even contact this client after they paid us, so that's kind of then. But no, it's been great being on here, James. We're really grateful you had me. Yeah. For anyone looking to use Dockerwise, it's a great system. We set it up a lot. It's come a lot over the last few years. Then it's also useful for just filing the forms and doing that. Then it is also useful as a full case management platform, too. We've been seeing great results with it inside firms.

James Pittman: Absolutely. We are more than thrilled that you are frequently setting it up for your clients. So, Ian, again, great having you and please audience join us next time for our next episode of Immigration Uncovered.

Ian Almasi: Thanks again.

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