There are many reasons to hire a legal intern. From bringing new perspectives to your firm to helping you keep up with modern social media skills, interns can be valuable for attorneys in all areas of law. If you’re considering getting help over the summer months or school year, here are some top tasks that may be best suited for a legal intern.
Reviewing Paperwork
Whether you’re filling an appeal or finishing up a retainer package, it never hurts to have a second set of eyes review your paperwork. Interns from all backgrounds will be able to proofread work that you send them. Best of all, this type of task will take very little training on your end, meaning that an intern can bring profitability to your firm right away.
Before you have an intern edit your paperwork and other written materials, make sure you go over what style of writing (Chicago, AP, MLA, etc.) your firm uses to avoid any editorial confusion and keep the tone of your content consistent.
Updating Leads
If you generate your own leads or work with a third-party lead provider, you most likely have some kind of system in place to update whether you sign up the lead as a client, or if they did not work out as a pursuable case for one reason or another. Because it can feel tedious to stay on top of leads on your own, an intern can be a great option for keeping your leads on track.
One of the biggest reasons why you always want to track your leads is because it’ll help you determine your most profitable marketing channels. For example, if you get 100 leads from TV commercials but none of them end up having perusable cases, it’s likely your marketing budget is best spent elsewhere.
Scheduling Appointments
One of the most simple but critical tasks an intern can do: managing your schedule. If you don’t have a secretary or paralegal, consider having an intern help you manage your upcoming hearings or appointments. This could be great during summer months for personal injury and workers’ compensation attorneys, who typically see an increase in cases over the summer when auto accidents or heat-induced workplace injuries are common.
Vetting Leads
If you’re confident with your intern’s abilities to identify strong potential claimants, you can have a legal intern help you vet leads and determine who may have a perusable claim. Even if you don’t have your intern call leads themselves, you can still have an intern field you the best leads to prioritize speaking with. You can also have an intern answer inbound calls and take down case information for you to follow up with at a later date.
Taking The Plunge?
While there are many benefits of working with a legal intern, the fact of the matter is that there’s still expense on your end. Most interns require salary, especially if you’re asking them to perform the above tasks. Additionally, you’ll still need to train your intern. You may find it frustrating to have a fully trained intern working perfectly for your firm, but then to continually need to find more interns as they return to school.
While we always recommend working with an intern due to the benefits your firm reaps, if you cannot afford to hire a seasonal employee you may find case and lead management software helpful. We offer eLuminate, our proprietary lead and case management software, free of charge to all of our clients.