Lander & Rogers help more clients with defamation legal advice tool

Your reputation means everything.

It can determine your social or professional position, your future, or simply your peace of mind. If you think you’re being defamed, you can pursue legal proceedings, but will your case stand up in a court of law?

Historically, you’d find out by speaking 1:1 with a lawyer. Be it via various phone calls, several emails, or even a good old sit down at their desk.

Times are changing and not everyone has the time or desire to reach out personally. A quick chat with an automated legal advice tool can be all you need to know your best next steps.

Introducing leading Australian law firm Lander & Rogers. With their new defamation legal advice, intake & triage tool, the commercial disputes team are unearthing new ways to help more people in need. 

Reflecting on their latest launch, Partner Scott Traeger and Practice Manager Tobias O’Hehir share what it took to bring their latest digital tool to life.  

Here’s how to do more, with less. 

When managing operations, assessing the urgency of a defamation enquiry can be tricky, especially when you don’t have all the relevant information to hand.

For Scott Traeger, “When we’d get an initial defamation enquiry, I’d previously receive messages from reception saying ‘Please call this client, this client and this client about a potential defamation claim.’”

“I’d be left thinking, ‘Which one do I call first?!’”

The team looked to no-code automation as a way to tackle such intake & triage issues. If a platform like Josef could help with account management, too, it’d be a welcome added bonus. 

“We’re finding that a key value of legal tech is its ability to enhance the relationship between the lawyer and client’, notes Tobias O’Hehir. 

“Clients hate paying legal bills, let’s be honest. It’s even worse when the bills increase due to some long, drawn-out process that could be automated or removed altogether.” 

They knew what they needed and they knew it had to be quick, efficient and accessible.

“Defamation can get quite technical fairly quickly, so we thought we would build a bot that answers simple questions while also providing greater access to justice to those who might not have the funds or willingness to engage with a big law firm like ours”, explains Scott. 

“We ultimately built a client-facing Defamation Chat bot that gets into the legal specifics that arise when determining ‘Do I have a defamation case?’”

After mapping how users would reach and engage with the bot, the team built an accompanying online resource designed to introduce and house the bot itself. 

As Tobias notes, “We updated our online defamation resource so it’s SEO (search engine optimisation) friendly.

“The content is designed so it prepares users with relevant information and once they’ve had a read-through, they can contact us directly if they think they have a case.”

Efficient & helpful triage

Since its launch, the bot’s intake and triage functionality is helping the team reduce wasted time while increasing efficiency.

“The bot generates and triages enquiries all at the same time, essentially guiding users to answer questions so that we retrieve the most relevant pieces of information possible”, Scott notes.

“Now, when we do get on the phone, we can quickly get to the nub of the dispute.”

Accessible & profitable

While pre-existing workflows are now slicker than ever, the firm is seeing a boost in client satisfaction and potential revenue. 

“Clients are already liking the new process, so a positive experience for clients is always a good thing!”, notes Tobias.

“It’s bringing in actual traffic and generating leads too. Perhaps 3 or 4 a week!“

Beforehand, when faced with an initial enquiry, Scott would have to quickly think, “Is this an urgent matter that requires a call in a couple of hours? Will it go anywhere? Can a junior colleague respond to it? Or is it something more nuanced that requires partner involvement?”

“I had little idea prior to returning their call whether they were great cases or if there were issues such as statutory limitation periods that made them unactionable.”

“By using the defamation bot”, Scott says, “these issues are identified both for us and the prospective client before the first phone call even takes place.”

“The project’s an example of making a pre-existing process more efficient, meaning we can direct our investment (and client legal fees) to the exact right spots”, Tobias notes.

More clients, more value

The Defamation Chat is now publicly available and open to anyone seeking legal advice on a potential case. Thanks to automation, the firm can reach more people than ever.

Scott explains, “not everybody wants a sit-down meeting, so having a tech option is a useful, additional means of client engagement that enables us to cater to a broader range of clients.”

“Rather than the initial engagement covering information easily found on Google searches, we can provide our defamation expertise straight upfront.”