Amelia Onboards Nearly 3,000 New Clients as a Digital Legal Assistant

Ken Nugent, P.C. Attorneys at Law, wanted to find a way to more rapidly handle client service inquiries. The 30-year-old Georgia-based firm employs more than 200 staffers and 47 lawyers across the southeastern US. Prompt and efficient service has always been a staple of the firm.

A large part of their success comes from a strategy to reach members of local communities by partnering with the local professional sports teams through a variety of “give back” campaigns. Ken Nugent enjoys seeing the positive impact these programs provide throughout different communities.

As the digital communications landscape continues to change, and more clients move toward online channels, Ken Nugent, the firm’s founder and namesake, wanted to deliver a seamless digital experience.   The firm piloted Amelia, the market-leading Conversational AI agent, for telephone and web-based client services in January 2020. She filled the role of a digital legal assistant to help offload administrative duties for the firm’s intake specialists, receptionists and legal teams.

Early results were promising, but when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the country in early March, and national stay-at-home orders forced an even larger segment of the firm’s clients to use digital channels for communication, Amelia quickly became the first touchpoint for many of the firm’s clients and prospects.

“Our drive is to always provide our clients with the best experience in what can be a distressing time, and the process has meant that we constantly look at new ways technology can improve how we do business,” said Nugent. “By incorporating Amelia, our staff has more time to give customers the support they need. We have an emotional element of communication to all the people we represent. Amelia is massively alleviating the demands on our case workers by removing mundane and time-consuming tasks. It’s like giving a personal assistant to each of our case managers, so they can spend more time connecting with our clients and building winning cases.”

Amelia Serves as a Legal Assistant

Functioning as a round-the-clock legal assistant, Amelia manages client information end-to-end. For instance, clients are provided with access to a free Client Portal.  The site contains custom-built tools to discuss new details of an accident, and Amelia records details in their electronic medical treatment journal.  Clients are encouraged to log into the portal on a daily basis to provide any updated information and to track progress on their claims.  This information helps case managers track treatment of known injuries and injuries that may not have shown up immediately.  All of this data is important for building a solid case for clients.

Amelia also assists clients with their inquiries via web chat, and supports the firm’s intake specialists by collecting initial information from web visitors before routing them to the appropriate person. By engaging in conversations with clients through the portal, Amelia extracts real-time data that clients’ legal teams can later use to build their cases.  In addition, she also reduces the pressure on busy case managers by automatically replying to questions from clients visiting the portal. Case managers are now able to focus more time on building the best possible client cases, rather than answering basic and repetitive questions.

In a more proactive role, Amelia was tasked with monitoring the information that is inputted into the Client Portal’s accident health records section, so that any significant updates can be escalated to case managers as required. This helps the firm improve the accuracy of patient records and gives precious time back to case managers to manage more complex tasks.

As the first point of contact, for clients over the phone, Amelia can identify an existing client and automatically connect the client to the relevant team member handling the case. She helps clients log into the Client Portal, discusses the client's most recent doctor visits, shares legal team information and reminds clients of upcoming appointments. Every interaction with Amelia is tied back into the law firm’s CRM system so that it can be used to help clients in the future.

“We have been in business for over 30 years and we have never been faced with a challenge quite like the one presented by COVID-19,” Nugent said. “Amelia has helped us get through the pandemic with greater efficiency as our intake team and case managers work from home, and she has provided our teams with a surprising amount of elasticity. With Amelia handling our phones, we are now prepared to upskill half of our receptionists to serve as case managers. That would never have been an option without Amelia coming onboard.”

Amelia Drives Results

Amelia serves the site’s 40,000 monthly web visitors and is the first point-of-contact for 100% of inbound calls from the firm’s 45 different phone lines. She handles approx. 20,000 inbound calls per month for the firm, while handling 65% of those end to end. This results in a savings of roughly 200 hours a month for the firm’s receptionists. In addition, the law firm saves thousands of dollars monthly by layering Amelia into its after-hours phone system in lieu of an after-hours answering service. Within a year of joining the Nugent team, Amelia helped the company sign up more than 1,100 new clients. Now, after two and a half years, Amelia has signed up nearly 3,000 new clients, and is consistently involved with between 12-14% of the firm’s monthly sign-ups.

Since Amelia’s deployment, Ken Nugent’s clients have grown increasingly comfortable speaking with Amelia for assistance. At the operator level, clients like talking with Amelia as she resolves requests 10 seconds faster than her human colleagues. In addition, the average user now spends 6 more minutes on the client portal than they did prior to Amelia’s deployment because they enjoy the experience of talking and engaging with her about their cases.

Following the initial implementation, Amelia is rolled out across the firm’s eight Georgia offices located in Albany, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Duluth, Macon, Savannah and Valdosta. Going forward, the firm plans to use Amelia to generate letters and email messages to concerned parties, further supporting the case management team. The firm also intends for Amelia to make outbound calls to clients, which it estimates will save an average of 60,000-75,000 hours per year for their legal teams.