Julia Hensel: You have worked in nearly every seat inside a law firm. How did that journey begin?
Brooke Birkey: My history with law firms is long and storied.
I started working professionally when I was 18 or 19. Most of my friends were in school full time and having the typical college experience, while I was working as an office manager at a small real estate law firm that also had a title company and a mortgage company.
I learned a tremendous amount and became familiar with the adult working world very quickly.
From there, I went back to school, but wherever I happened to be, I was essentially always working for law firms. I have been a legal secretary, a marketing director, a sales director in a small firm, and pretty much everything except the attorney.
Although there were definitely moments when I felt a little like an attorney because I was drafting memos and doing similar work.
I developed a deep love for the law and for law firm culture in general.
Julia: How did that experience eventually lead you to start Level Up Law Firm Business Coaching?
Brooke: It happened shortly after COVID, when everything was changing.
I had spent about six years working at a personal injury firm, and then I decided to move back to Florida. I was recruited by a great company to do intake coaching.
As I worked with firms, I began noticing that the problem rarely stopped at intake.
Intake may be the most visible pain point because it is where firms can clearly see leads being lost. But fixing intake alone does not necessarily create a smooth client journey.
Sometimes you simply fix one problem and push it into the next stage: client management, communication, or alignment between departments.
That realization is really what shaped Level Up Law Firm Business Coaching. I wanted to look at the entire client journey and identify the emotional intelligence solution wherever the pain point happened to be.
It is a much more holistic approach.
If your toe is broken, your toe is probably going to get all of your attention because it hurts the most. But that does not mean there are not other things happening in the body at the same time.
Law firms can operate the same way. The most painful problem gets all the attention while quieter problems continue underneath it.
Julia: Firms often separate marketing, intake, and case management into different departments. How should they be thinking about the client journey instead?
Brooke: Everything is much more interconnected than it appears.
That is where emotional intelligence becomes important, because these are not always problems you can solve simply by changing the frequency of meetings or creating another process.
There is more nuance involved.
Take marketing. Marketing has become very focused on what is trendy or what gets people’s attention. But what catches someone’s attention is not necessarily the same thing as what motivates that person to make a decision.
Most firms have done some version of an ideal-client exercise. I encourage them to take it a step further.
Do not only ask why someone needs a lawyer based on demographics or circumstances. Ask what is driving that person’s decision-making.
How might men and women approach the situation differently? How might people at different ages or stages of life respond differently?
In personal injury, for example, almost anyone can be injured in a car accident. You therefore need to understand many different people and the psychological factors influencing them.
Then marketing and sales have to work together.
I do not really see marketing and sales as two completely separate things. I see them as points along the same spectrum.
The sales team should understand the firm’s marketing messages, branding, events, website content, and resources because all of those things can continue supporting the client as that person moves through the journey.
Julia: Firms love to say, “We care about our clients.” What does it take actually to make that believable?
Brooke: There has to be a through line.
Most law firms say some version of, “We really care about the client.”
But if that marketing message does not carry all the way through the resolution of the case, you create an enormous disconnect.
You cannot tell people that caring is what makes you different and then give them an experience that feels impersonal after they sign.
And that is where emotional intelligence really comes in.
It is not simply a matter of hiring kind people. Obviously, you want kind people on your team. But emotional intelligence involves skills and techniques that can be learned and practiced.
Kindness is important. It is not the entire system.
Julia: You also have a secret-shopping program that lets you experience a firm’s intake process from the prospective client’s perspective. What is one of the most common problems you discover?
Brooke: One of the biggest problems is incredibly simple: most law firms are not using a script.
They might have a standard greeting when someone answers the phone, which is a good start. But after that, the conversation can become very uncertain.
Someone calls about a case, and the intake specialist is trying to figure out what question comes next, who needs to speak with the caller, whether that person is available, and what to do from there.
You can hear the uncertainty.
And if I am the prospective client, I am thinking, “Why would I trust you with my case?”
A script can eliminate a lot of that.
But I do not mean a script where every single word is written down, and the intake specialist sounds like a robot.
We use what I call a conceptual script.
The team member understands the concepts that need to be covered and the structure of the call, but they still have room to speak naturally.
That provides consistency without eliminating the human element.
Julia: Intake teams have a lot of information they need to collect to determine whether a case is qualified. How can they avoid making callers feel like they are simply being interrogated?
Brooke: We teach something called external focus.
You have to understand what motivated the person to call and get outside your own mindset.
An intake specialist may have heard essentially the same fact pattern 16 times that day.
But for the caller, this may be the first time they have ever had to describe one of the most traumatic experiences of their life to a stranger.
Those are completely different experiences.
I encourage intake teams to treat every conversation individually. Even if the facts are similar to the previous call, the person is different.
That makes each conversation a slightly different technical challenge and keeps the work from becoming rote.
You also have to think beyond what you need to get from the caller.
What does that person need from you?
Maybe they need reassurance. Maybe they need confidence that calling an attorney was the right decision. Maybe they simply need to feel heard.
That matters.
Julia: One of the hardest moments in intake is telling someone the firm cannot take their case. How can firms handle that more thoughtfully?
Brooke: The process actually starts much earlier than the rejection.
We talk about identifying the caller’s chief concern.
You might say, “I understand you were in a car accident, and I am so sorry to hear that. Do you mind telling me what is most on your mind today?”
Sometimes people know immediately.
Other times, they are surprised by the question because nobody has asked them that yet. They have to stop and think about it.
But once you have that conversation, you have begun demonstrating that you care about the person rather than simply evaluating whether the case is profitable.
Throughout the rest of the call, you can reinforce that through empathy and confidence statements.
If the firm ultimately cannot take the case, that person is much more likely to understand the decision if they believe you genuinely cared about what happened to them.
It is reasonable that a law firm cannot accept every case.
What makes people angry is feeling dismissed.
I often use a very simple exercise when training teams: imagine this person were sitting across the table from you at a coffee shop.
How would you respond if they were your friend?
Or your grandmother?
That perspective changes the conversation.
Julia: Once someone signs and officially becomes a client, where do you see firms struggling?
Brooke: One of the first things I look at is interdepartmental alignment.
Intake’s job is to bring in the client. The case management team is responsible for moving the legal work forward.
But what happens in the middle?
Who makes sure the handoff feels seamless? Who welcomes the client and helps them understand where they are?
From an emotional intelligence perspective, that transition is incredibly important.
People usually want to know two things: Where am I now and what happens next?
They do not need all 16 future steps at once.
When firms try to explain the entire process immediately, clients become overwhelmed.
Give them what they need for this moment and the next one.
The handoff between intake and case management should also feel warm. The client should understand that the team knows who they are and that they are not starting all over again with a completely different department.
Julia: Communication seems to be one of the biggest sources of frustration between clients and law firms. How do you recommend firms manage expectations?
Brooke: Create a clear communication policy and tell the client exactly what it is.
For example: If you call us, we will acknowledge your call the same day and return it within 48 hours.
Whatever your actual policy is, communicate it from the beginning.
And then communicate it again.
Client communication works a lot like marketing. Marketers know that people often have to encounter a message multiple times before it really registers.
Clients are the same way.
Tell them your communication policy during the handoff. Tell them again in the first conversation. Reinforce it later.
One of the biggest reasons people become angry in any part of life is unmet expectations.
If the client expects that somebody from the firm will speak with them every day, but you expect that you will speak every two weeks, you are going to have a problem even if the legal work is excellent.
The solution is to make expectations very clear before they have the opportunity to go unmet.
Julia: What about the client who really does want to call every day?
Brooke: Every firm has a squeaky-wheel client.
Instead of constantly reacting to that person, be proactive.
Give them a designated 20-minute block every week and make it feel valuable.
Tell them, “I am looking forward to speaking with you on Wednesday.”
If they call Thursday, you can remind them, “I am looking forward to speaking with you on Wednesday.”
Eventually, the rhythm becomes familiar.
The key is that you are not communicating, “Stop calling me.”
You are communicating, “I want to speak with you. You have dedicated time with me, and during that time you will have my attention.”
It gives the client consistency while protecting the team’s ability to do its work.
Julia: You also believe the client experience should continue beyond the end of the case. What does that look like?
Brooke: It actually needs to begin much earlier.
Whatever relationship you want with someone after the case ends, begin creating it when the case launches.
If you want former clients to receive your newsletter, were you sending them that newsletter while they were an active client?
If you want to send birthday cards, did that start while you were handling their case?
You want those things to feel like a natural continuation of the relationship, not like the firm disappeared for a year and suddenly returned asking for a referral.
Of course, you cannot personally call every former client regularly. But you can build consistent systems and occasionally cycle through former clients for more personal outreach.
The best outcome is when someone thinks, “I’ve got a lawyer.”
People love being able to say, “I’ve got a guy.”
Even if you do personal injury and their friend needs a divorce attorney, you want them to call you because they trust that you will take care of that person by connecting them with someone you trust.
That kind of relationship is very special.
Julia: AI is becoming part of nearly every conversation about law firm operations. How should firms balance artificial intelligence with emotional intelligence?
Brooke: My baseline is simple: whatever you are investing in AI, invest in EQ.
Those endeavors should happen in parallel rather than being treated as mutually exclusive.
Whenever you are offloading something to artificial intelligence, you should also be thinking about what human skill could be weakened in the process and how you continue developing it.
The goal is not to allow the experience to become two-dimensional.
That becomes particularly important when firms talk about using AI to answer phone calls.
Humans are wired to connect with other humans. Human connection is how we build relationships and trust.
So when you take the first phone call from a potential client and hand it entirely to a robot, you are removing one of your earliest opportunities to establish that human connection.
Trust is a through line throughout the entire client experience.
And a lack of trust can become expensive later.
If a client does not trust the case manager, that person may spend far more time trying to micromanage the case. They may call more frequently. They may question the attorney’s recommendations.
So even if automation appears to create a financial benefit on the front end, you have to evaluate what opportunity costs it may be creating in the middle of the case.
A client signing the contract is not the only measure of whether the experience worked.
You also have to ask: What problems might we be buying for ourselves later?
Julia: You mentioned systems like EOS earlier. How important are processes and accountability when a firm is trying to improve emotional intelligence?
Brooke: They are incredibly important.
EOS is a great system, and there are other systems that work well too. Firms often modify them to fit their own environments.
But if you do not have strong systems and processes, emotional intelligence coaching can essentially leak out the side of the canoe.
You need reinforcement.
You need metrics.
You need accountability.
Otherwise, people may participate in great training, learn valuable skills, and then return to an environment that is so chaotic that none of those skills become habits.
The approach also has to be different depending on the size of the firm.
A small firm that is just getting started needs something different from a larger organization with EOS, several layers of management, and more complicated processes.
One thing I have noticed recently is that complexity itself can become a problem.
Staffing has been difficult for firms. Longevity, loyalty, and finding the right people can create an unstable foundation.
At the same time, AI is developing so rapidly that firms are still figuring out what its long-term impact will be.
When the foundation contains that much uncertainty, adding even more complexity does not always help.
I have actually been encouraging some firms to simplify.
The conversation for the last decade has often been about scaling up. Sometimes it is worth scaling down the complexity instead.
Build systems that are simple enough that if an employee leaves tomorrow, someone else can understand and pick them up.
That may change how the owner thinks about delegation, but simplicity can make a business much more resilient.
Julia: After spending so much time helping other business owners, and becoming one yourself, what has been the most rewarding part of ownership?
Brooke: Hands down, it is seeing something you helped create benefit other people.
There is something incredibly rewarding about producing something that adds value to the lives of the people who attach themselves to the business.
You know that you are doing something worthwhile and meaningful.
You do not always have that same direct connection when you are working for someone else.
Julia: And what has been the hardest part?
Brooke: Having to remain flexible all the time.
Flexibility is not naturally my greatest strength, but when you own the business, you are the last stop for everything.
The economy changes. Trends change. New technology appears. A staffing situation implodes. Something you thought was working suddenly stops working.
Whatever happens, you have to respond.
When you are an employee, you usually have your role. When you own the business, eventually everything can become your role.
You have to stay nimble.
That is one of the hardest parts of ownership, but it is also part of what makes the work meaningful.
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