Category: Legal Retainer Financing For Attorneys

Taking care of your family and community this Thanksgiving 4 years ago

Start using Fortify and get back time and money you might not have realized you were losing.

You’ve heard the adage about “teaching a man to fish”, or the one about helping plant the corn, or the fruit-bearing tree — well, you can insert your favorite food/work metaphor here since it is the holiday season. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, what better time to challenge you, our attorney friend, to really think about the fruit your tree is bearing. Is there enough to sustain your practice? Does it bear enough to feed your family? Your community? 

 

Taking care of yourself first is not a selfish way to live. It is only through being the planter, someone who recognizes the important stages and cycles of preparation, growth, and harvest, that you can reap enough bounty to take care of your loved ones and community. The same is true with your business today, and especially law. Your relationship with clients, especially the explanation of payment, needs to be taken in steps in order to operate successfully. iQualify’s payment management software, Fortify, takes the most important steps for you. Start using Fortify and get back time and money you might not have realized you were losing. Within 30 days, you’ll be saying “yes” to more clients and start seeing the benefits of your well-laid plans with iQualify. 

What are you talking about and how does it relate to my law practice?

Just as there are no instant-harvests, there are no get-rich-quick schemes. Did you know it takes an average child until 12 to have an intermediate mastery of the English language? Just like having the alphabet down in middle school doesn’t make you Shakespeare, simply being a lawyer doesn’t make you rich. Everything has to grow and be nurtured, including your law practice and your relationships with your clients. Fortify does exactly that. Our client payment management system builds a structure of financial stability into your practice. It doesn’t happen overnight, but rather the changes iQualify brings to your business frees up time and is the key to unlocking the next stage in your law practice. 

 

Doing things in stages helps deliver clarity. Think about Thanksgiving: you have to set the table, cook the food, get the house ready, plate the food…all in stages. You don’t just throw the turkey down on the table before it’s ready. Achieving financial stability for your law practice with iQualify is also a process in stages: 

 

  • Stage 1: you sign up and get the Fortify software
  • Stage 2: getting clients signed up, stress melts away
  • Stage 3: financial stability feeds the office, your family, and community

 

How do we invest in the community and ourselves after that? Planning to support a future we didn’t know we were going to have is difficult. But once you’ve taken the steps to simplify and streamline the collection and payment side of your practice, you’ll find so many more opportunities opening up. You could give your newfound free time to Big Brothers or Sisters, or volunteer at a food bank or homeless shelter. You can make larger donations to your favorite nonprofit or a charity close to your heart. Find some way you’d love to help your community, and, once financially solvent yourself, give back! It’s the perfect way to celebrate the spirit of the holidays.

 

Give iQualify a real close look this holiday and sign up so you can start reaping/harvesting/feeding your law practice sufficiently in 2021. Insert your own food/work metaphor here. 

 

Happy Holidays from iQualify! 

Attorneys are responding to Fortify...here's what they think 4 years ago

Legal retainer financing is a resounding success for attorneys in the know.

iQualify Lending has piqued interest among attorneys with our Fortify software and legal retainer financing. Recently we sent out an email survey campaign designed to find out about interest in attorney financing. The responses are in and the answer is…attorneys are very interested in legal retainer financing products but aren’t exactly sure what Fortify is.

Out of 500 emails, over 400 responded they would be interested in legal retainer financing products. So, what exactly is our legal lending software and what does it do?

Fortify allows attorneys to offer a client every option to hire them, upfront then manages those payment plans – collecting up to 93 cents on the dollar for the cases. 

Attorneys don’t want to put clients on payment plans, but clients need options that fit their budget. They’re looking for an affordable way to hire an affordable expert to win their case. This problem is so universal that 66% of clients leave their first meeting without a clear understanding of how to pay the attorney for their case moving forward. As a result, the first attorneys often become the baseline for the client to shop around and find a better price. But if the client specifically says “I can’t afford that, can you work something out?”, then the attorney only has one option – offer a  payment plan. The client is looking for the lowest payment and/or to spread payments out over a set amount of time. As a result, your firm becomes the bank – and that’s bad news for attorneys managing their own retainer plans. 

Jason Brown and Josh Utesch began iQualify Lending with a mind for finance, but a heart for legal and the belief in what can happen when those two things meet. “Turns out”, Jason says, “attorneys have never had options like this before. We realized most of them are putting clients on payment plans and, to no one’s surprise, they’re not very good at collecting. It’s hard being counselor and collection agent to the same client. But those same attorneys using our retainer financing tools with Fortify are enjoying up to a 30% raise, for the exact same clients.” 

With a product as unique as Fortify, other legal retainer financiers are hoping you will assume cost is the only difference between them and iQualify. But retainer financing alone won’t solve the problem – not even close. There is no other program out there that will make it easier to get hired, get paid, and get out of the collections business, once and for all. Think about that for a second. We help you convert more potential clients, get you paid, and take you out of the collections business once and for all. What are you waiting for?

Tired of chasing your clients for money? Not anymore. Get hired. Get paid. Get Fortify.


Wrangle Control of Your Practice with Attorney Financing 4 years ago

If you’re going to make one change this year…Wrangle Control of Your Law Practice with legal retainer financing!

Sometimes it’s not about attorneys chasing money from clients. It’s about having the money you need to control the growth of your law practice as a business.  

You probably want to take on as many clients as you can. Let’s face it: this is a business and you need to make money. But how many times have you taken on a client only to then realize they were a bad fit as they showed up late, were hard to communicate with, made you chase their payment down, or were, in general, a hassle? 

Brian Tannebaum from Above the Law believes in “the philosophy that sometimes the best client is the one you turn down.” The idea is “Client Control” and it basically means that controlling clients is controlling your business and you have to set those attorney/client relationships up correctly at the beginning of the relationship, laying the parameters and taking charge. 

How iQualify Lets You Take Charge

iQualify’s unique software puts you in control of how you get paid. Solving the “problem” of when you’ll get money from your clients  gives you control of your practice in several ways: 

Investing in long-term goals – with more money going into your law firm’s bank account at a dependable rate, you’ll be freed up to invest more wisely, pay off debt, and make sound financial decisions.

Bounce back faster from setbacks – bad things happen all the time, and attorneys are certainly not immune to financial or health disasters. If you’re financially sound, you’ll be much more in charge of how you come back from adversity, how long it takes, and how much damage it actually does to your law practice.

Take care of your family and community! – as we’ve mentioned before, one of the most satisfying (no, the most satisfying) parts of making and keeping more money is being able to provide for your family and give back to your community. Happiness doesn’t come from money, but it sure helps, as it provides the agency to give and help others. 

Control is a destination and we can give you the tools to get you there.  

iQualify’s software is only for attorneys who understand the value of being able to say yes to more clients…the right clients.  

Wrestle your law practice and life back away from overbearing clients that are the wrong fit! Let iQualify, powered by Fortify, make this the year you fully take control.

 

Be the Better Gold Miner with Attorney Financing 4 years ago

How effective is iQualify Lending’s legal retainer financing at wrangling control of your legal practice? 

It’s like mining for gold. It’s all about mechanization. 

Say you’re sloshing through a creek with a magnifying glass, looking for gold…that’s kind of what every day feels like as an attorney, right? You’re hoping to find gold in the creek with each new client/strike of the pickaxe. With iQualify Lending, you take all the legal clients in your area, stick them in a sifter and let us find all the gold in your creek by using mechanization.

Technology has changed the way the best lawyers make their money, grow their practice, and manage their business over the last 15 years. This new chapter in mechanization has improved efficiency and profitability for most industries and it’s finally made its way into finance via the software attorneys use. Legal retainer financing, available through iQualify and powered by Fortify, is the best thing to happen to the industry so far. Using iQualify is like being given access to a treasure map with a giant “X” marking the spot where the gold can be found….all you have to do is dig. Think of each shovelful as one application of Fortify, iQualify’s software. 

iQualify Lending helps you start building the structure of financial stability. It’s great if you have an 80% collection rate, but at what cost? Are you still doing all the work? Mechanization/technology frees up time and is the key to unlocking the next stage in your law practice! 

If I told you I had a treasure map and endless gold nuggets to find, when would you stop digging? The answer is probably never! 

Every dig through this soil has the opportunity to strike gold. Technology makes it even easier. And, just like in life, nothing feels better than striking gold…or getting paid upfront. If you’re ready to start being a better gold miner, learn more today about attorney financing and legal lending and let’s get started. 

4 Steps to Strengthen Your Law Practice During COVID-19 4 years ago


The pandemic has shown attorneys the shakiness of life as business owners

The COVID-19 pandemic is currently bearing down hard on lawyers and firms. If we’ve learned anything it’s that were not nearly as cash fluid as we should be or thought we were. For many of us, our businesses are walking the knife’s edge of sustainability, and a year-long-sustained hit to our income is hard to manage. 

Think of your practice as a boat. It has a few holes in it, but nothing too major, no big problem. Now, a monsoon has struck, and your boat is filling with water. The holes are only helping things along. One of the first things to go overboard when costs weigh you down is your staff. Once that happens, you are the one left doing all the work again, back where you started as an attorney, and it’s the worst.

So, what have we learned? Patch the holes before the flood! When things return to “normal”, you need to be sure you’re taking these 4 Steps to Strengthen Your Law Practice

  1. Shore up defenses
  2. Strengthen cash reserves
  3. Collect more money from the cases you’re signing
  4. Have a way to allow any client who wants to hire you to say yes!

That fourth one is super-important and that’s where we come in. Fortify, powered by iQualify Lending, offers your clients payment options they can easily say ‘yes’ to. Start using the Fortify software and you’ll have an easy, modern way to get new clients signed up when they come to you, As the attorney, you get paid upfront with both cash and financing options and get paid over a period of time with an in-house payment option. iQualify attorneys get paid their full retainer on most of their cases without ever having to chase their clients for money or call them for payments. 

Here’s a real-world example. One of our clients, a large criminal defense firm in Vegas, hired a new case manager who signed up for our services again on accident. When we called to discuss the mistake, we spoke at length about Fortify, our new retainer-financing platform. They came to realize we can manage their payment plans and, all of a sudden, the whole conversation changed. The owners popped onto the call from various states and said “Wait a minute…you can do this? That’s the biggest problem we have!” We let them know we can do it all for them and take these worries away. 

Our Vegas friends, like so many attorneys, were exhausting staff by tasking them with tracking down money, dealing with a frustratingly high turnover rate, having to train new employees all the time…the things that puncture your boat with those little holes. We let them know iQualify clients aren’t having these issues! If you’ve learned anything during this pandemic, it should be that there are options for you to help simplify and improve your practice going forward. 

There’s more to iQualify that just financing. We’ll handle your legal lending and take the burden off of you and your staff, positioning you all for success when the economy comes back. Ready to see how it works? Let’s get started now!

What Attorneys Have Learned During COVID-19: 4 Steps to Strengthen Your Law Practice 4 years ago


The pandemic has shown us the shakiness of life as business owners

The COVID-19 pandemic is currently bearing down hard on lawyers and firms. If we’ve learned anything it’s that were not nearly as cash fluid as we should be or thought we were. For many of us, our businesses are walking the knife’s edge of sustainability, and a several-months-sustained hit to our income is hard to manage. 

Think of your practice as a boat. It has a few holes in it, but nothing too major, no big problem. Now, a monsoon has struck, and your boat is filling with water. The holes are only helping things along. One of the first things to go overboard when costs weigh you down is your staff. Once that happens, you are the one left doing all the work again, back where you started as an attorney, and it’s the worst.

So, what have we learned? Patch the holes before the flood! When things return to “normal”, you need to be sure you’re taking these 4 Steps to Strengthen Your Law Practice

  1. Shore up defenses
  2. Strengthen cash reserves
  3. Collect more money from the cases you’re signing
  4. Have a way to allow any client who wants to hire you to say yes!

That fourth one is super-important and that’s where we come in. Fortify, powered by iQualify Lending, offers your clients payment options they can easily say ‘yes’ to. Start using the Fortify software and you’ll have an easy, modern way to get new clients signed up when they come to you, As the attorney, you get paid upfront with both cash and financing options and get paid over a period of time with an in-house payment option. iQualify attorneys get paid their full retainer on most of their cases without ever having to chase their clients for money or call them for payments. 

Here’s a real-world example. One of our clients, a large criminal defense firm in Vegas, hired a new case manager who signed up for our services again on accident. When we called to discuss the mistake, we spoke at length about Fortify, our new retainer-financing platform. They came to realize we can manage their payment plans and, all of a sudden, the whole conversation changed. The owners popped onto the call from various states and said “Wait a minute…you can do this? That’s the biggest problem we have!” We let them know we can do it all for them and take these worries away. 

Our Vegas friends, like so many attorneys, were exhausting staff by tasking them with tracking down money, dealing with a frustratingly high turnover rate, having to train new employees all the time…the things that puncture your boat with those little holes. We let them know iQualify clients aren’t having these issues! If you’ve learned anything during this pandemic, it should be that there are options for you to help simplify and improve your practice going forward. 

There’s more to iQualify that just financing. We’ll handle your legal lending and take the burden off of you and your staff, positioning you all for success when the economy comes back. Ready to see how it works? Let’s get started now!

Why Other Attorneys are Outpacing You 5 years ago

The story of two attorneys, 18 months, the different paths they took, and where it led them.

Matt and James are criminal defense attorneys. They’re both successful and have made names for themselves with their practices. Both of these men were recently referred to iQualify by other attorneys who have been using our client-financing system. They both showed up and we discussed their options. Then they took two very different paths.

First of all, you should know: iQualify Lending’s goal is to help attorneys make more money from the potential clients they attract. To put it simply, iQualify helps finance legal cases – specifically client retainer fees. We have helped many attorneys enjoy the most profit their practice has ever seen. Matt and James both wanted to sign up.

Matt got directly to the point. “What’s this going to cost me?”

We encouraged him to consider the costs of not offering legal-retainer financing. We spent time explaining the costs of offering in-house payments and collecting 60% of your case fee. We explained the cost of his $240,000 debt load and the further cost of losing clients over financing.

When it was all said and done, we showed him that if our client-retainer financing just approves 1 in 5 clients for a loan, he could be debt-free within 24 months. He could afford a paralegal, which he desperately needed. He could free up money for marketing – all from the profits we helped him create.

But in the end, Matt decided not to move forward due to cost.

James was quite the opposite. He was direct but open. His first question was, “How can iQualify Lending’s legal-retainer financing help me, specifically?”

We went through a similar discussion about debt, losing clients to cost, chasing money clients owed him, and dropping more cases than he closed. James immediately saw an opportunity to fix these problems with retainer loans and said “yes”.

Last week, Matt reached back out. We hadn’t heard from him in over 18 months. The first words out of his mouth were, “Ok, how do I get signed up?”

It turns out, Matt ran into James last week at the courthouse. He is having the best year of his life. He has hired more staff. He just hired another attorney. He took a vacation this year to Aruba.  Matt says, “He told me it all started with offering iQualify’s legal lending.”

Matt signed up and by his 3rd month, he had made an additional $38,000.  If he had signed up 18 months ago he could have potentially made $240,000.

If you can relate to this story and would like to grow your law practice,  let us show you how legal fee financing can help turn your existing clients into immediate cash flow with no risk.

Build a structure of financial stability into your law practice. 5 years ago

You’ve heard the adage about “teaching a man to fish”, or the one about helping plant the corn, or the fruit-bearing tree — well, you can insert your favorite food/work metaphor here. We’d like to challenge you, our attorney friend, to really think about the fruit your tree is bearing. Is there enough to sustain your practice? Does it bear enough to feed your family? Your community? 

Taking care of yourself first is not a selfish way to live. It is only through being the planter, someone who recognizes the important stages and cycles of preparation, growth, and harvest, that you can reap enough bounty to take care of your loved ones and community. The same is true with your business today, and especially law. Your relationship with clients, especially the explanation of payment, needs to be taken in steps in order to operate successfully. iQualify’s payment management software takes the most important steps for you. Start using it and get back time and money you might not have realized you were losing. Within 30 days, you’ll be saying “yes” to more clients and start seeing the benefits of your well-laid plans with iQualify. 

What are you talking about and how does it relate to my law practice?

Just as there are no instant-harvests, there are no get-rich-quick schemes. Did you know it takes an average child until 12 to have an intermediate mastery of the English language? Just like having the alphabet down in middle school doesn’t make you Shakespeare, simply being a lawyer doesn’t make you rich. Everything has to grow and be nurtured, including your law practice and your relationships with your clients. iQualify, powered by Fortify, does exactly that. Our client payment management system builds a structure of financial stability into your practice. It doesn’t happen overnight, but rather the changes iQualify brings to your business frees up time and is the key to unlocking the next stage in your law practice. 

 

Doing things in stages helps deliver clarity. Think about a dinner party: you have to set the table, cook the food, get the house ready, plate the food…all in stages. You don’t just throw the scallops down on the table before they’re ready. Achieving financial stability for your law practice with iQualify is also a process in stages: 

    • Stage 1: you sign up and get the Fortify software
    • Stage 2: getting clients signed up, stress melts away
  • Stage 3: financial stability feeds the office, your family, and community

How do we invest in the community and ourselves after that? Planning to support a future we didn’t know we were going to have is difficult. But once you’ve taken the steps to simplify and streamline the collection and payment side of your practice, you’ll find so many more opportunities opening up. You could give your newfound free time to Big Brothers or Sisters, or volunteer at a food bank or homeless shelter. You can make larger donations to your favorite nonprofit or a charity close to your heart. Find some way you’d love to help your community, and, once financially solvent yourself, give back! 

Give iQualify a look now and sign up so you can start reaping/harvesting/feeding your law practice sufficiently in 2020. Insert your own food/work metaphor here. 

How to Wrangle Control of Your Practice 5 years ago

If you’re going to make one change this year…Wrangle Control of Your Law Practice!

Sometimes it’s not about chasing money from clients. It’s about having the money you need to control the growth of your business.  

You probably want to take on as many clients as you can. Let’s face it: this is a business and you need to make money. But how many times have you taken on a client only to then realize they were a bad fit as they showed up late, were hard to communicate with, made you chase their payment down, or were, in general, a hassle? 

Brian Tannebaum from Above the Law believes in “the philosophy that sometimes the best client is the one you turn down.” The idea is “Client Control” and it basically means that controlling clients is controlling your business and you have to set those attorney/client relationships up correctly at the beginning of the relationship, laying the parameters and taking charge. 

How iQualify Lets You Take Charge

iQualify’s unique software puts you in control of how you get paid. Solving the “problem” of when you’ll get money from your clients  gives you control of your practice in several ways: 

Investing in long-term goals – with more money going into your law firm’s bank account at a dependable rate, you’ll be freed up to invest more wisely, pay off debt, and make sound financial decisions.

Bounce back faster from setbacks – bad things happen all the time, and attorneys are certainly not immune to financial or health disasters. If you’re financially sound, you’ll be much more in charge of how you come back from adversity, how long it takes, and how much damage it actually does to your law practice.

Take care of your family and community! – as we’ve mentioned before, one of the most satisfying (no, the most satisfying) parts of making and keeping more money is being able to provide for your family and give back to your community. Happiness doesn’t come from money, but it sure helps, as it provides the agency to give and help others. 

Control is a destination and we can give you the tools to get you there.  

iQualify’s software is only for attorneys who understand the value of being able to say yes to more clients…the right clients.  

Wrestle your law practice and life back away from overbearing clients that are the wrong fit! Let iQualify, powered by Fortify, make this the year you fully take control.