Tag: iqualify lending

iQualify Lending is the best retainer financing on the market (by a landslide). So why are attorneys such big fans? 4 years ago

Facebook helps attorneys find the best legal retainer financing with Fortify

Over the course of the last year, we began noticing more and more attorneys telling us they heard about legal retainer financing from iQualify Lending on Facebook. No, Zuckerberg isn’t referring attorneys to fortify (although that would be cool) but when we ask people how they hear about us, they say “Facebook”. It turns out, attorneys are using the discount products that only charge 5% and then going to Facebook Groups to complain about how bad they are. In these groups, more and more attorneys are encouraging each other to use Fortify, and as a result, they are coming to us in droves. 

You Pay More in the Long Run for Cheaper Products

These newly appreciative clients are signing up for Fortify after realizing they’ve been duped by the promise of a cheaper fix. Far too many attorneys out there are behaving like the Terry Pratchett adage from Men at Arms

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. …

…But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

The Original Legal Retainer Financing is Still the Best

It’s pretty easy these days to find a company that will give you a financing link for $99/month plus a small funding fee. iQualify wrote the playbook for legal lending and now all these guys are everywhere, attempting to undercut. The catch is they do not work as we do. Their $99/month fee is technically cheaper than ours, but they will cost you more in the long-term. They have very low funding rates and rely heavily on the attorney to do the work and manage the process.

Compare those companies to the retainer fee financing plan available with Fortify. We have an exclusive, completely different funding source and lending line. We use sensible underwriting. We have no credit score requirements. If your client is willing to work with us, we will exhaust every option available to get them the money they need to hire you. This means an over 93% approval rate. There’s nothing else out there like it. Plus, when you add that cost of ownership 5% fee the other guys are charging, you can expect to wind up paying an additional  $6,900 – $1,200 monthly (compared to our $3,588).  

Fortify is the only retainer financing solution that works for every law firm, in every state, regardless of its client demographics. Our direct-to-attorney-funding makes us different from the other legal lenders on the market. iQualify is able to expand our resources and fund these legal loans based on the strength of our Fortify technology. With Fortify, we’re effectively offering every client who walks through your door an affordable way to hire you.

So, which pair of boots will you buy? Do you really want to pay more in the long run for an inferior product? Or would you rather be making $300k from the same client base? Now, that is certainly something to brag about on Facebook. 

Want a Better Law Practice in 2021? Make Things Simple 4 years ago

Legal retainer financing will make life easier for you and your clients post-pandemic.

2020 was a year none of us saw coming. The COVID-19 pandemic affected every business and industry on the planet. Your law practice is no exception. After several stalls, shutdowns, fits, and starts, the economy is still on pause as the Coronavirus continues to rage through the U.S.

Life has continued on, and people still need attorneys, but this shutdown has likely meant a lack of clients and work for your law practice. But with most economists believing 2021 is the year we turn things around (thanks to the vaccine and a new administration), now is the time to prepare and strategize. “This too shall pass”, and when it does you’re going to come out on top this time. When things return to normal, or when you figure out what the new normal is, it’s time to make things simple. 

Again, people still need attorneys. Human nature dictates they have still been making mistakes and starting legal disputes under quarantine. For example, millions of quarantined couples have experienced significant stress and pressure on their relationships. Expect divorce cases to skyrocket in 2021. Is there a simple way to capture that business? Yes. 

Make it simple and make it easy for them to say ‘yes’. 

If anything, we hope this time of isolation and reflection helped you take stock of just how cluttered and complicated you’ve been making things. With the economy turning back on, people will be searching for lawyers en mass. With the flood of people who will be searching, he with the easiest solution will win! Fortify, powered by iQualify Lending, makes things easy by offering your clients payment options that they can easily understand. 

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 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. Why? They make things easy!

Clients will be under a lot of stress and confusion when the COVID-19 pandemic is over and they’re going to appreciate an easy solution to their payments. Legal fee financing takes the guesswork and headache of retainer payments off your clients’ minds and lets you start making more money, almost immediately.

Ready to see how it works? Let’s get started now. iQualify Lending will help you make your law practice easier for clients and making more money your new normal.

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!

How iQualify changed retainer financing forever with Fortify 4 years ago

We came to solve a specific problem and wound up changing the industry.

Imagine being a wheat farmer in 1835, when Hiram Moore patented the first combine harvester, which was capable of reaping, threshing, and winnowing grain. Up to that point, the cost and effort to keep up a wheat field was significant, but manageable for a family. But with a combine, what used to take 80 hours of work each week could be completed in 20, at a fraction of the cost, with better results – all without the health concerns associated with doing the work.

Solving the collections problem changed the wheat industry forever.

The legal industry is going through something similar. To attract and sign more clients, most attorneys offer some kind of payment plan. This leaves it up to them to collect their own harvest – working their cases manually over a long period of time.

In 2016 Jason Brown and Josh Utesch sat down with some attorneys to help them solve this problem for their firms. That solution would ultimately lead to the creation of Fortify, which 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. 


“The verdict is in on iQualify. I’ve used it for 6 months and my current ROI is already over 800%!” — Regina Edwards, a divorce attorney in Gwinnett County, Ga. 

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?

Counsel & Counseling: Attorneys and Mental Health 4 years ago

During this fraught time, there is another epidemic no one is talking about. 

“Being a lawyer is about solving people’s problems: being arrested, getting a divorce, having a business dispute, and so on. We make our clients’ problems into our problems. Add in the worry of being a bill collector and managing an office, and the stress can be crushing. A lawyer with a substance abuse problem or depression may be legally required to report such an illness to their state bar or other lawyer regulatory agencies. This deters lawyers from seeking help and instead they deal with their problems privately, if at all. It’s why I sadly know numerous attorneys who have committed suicide in the past 11 years of my practice.”

—Eric J. Trabin, founder of the Trabin Law Firm, a criminal defense and family law firm in Maitland, Florida. ABAJournal.com 

You learned a lot in law school, but nothing prepared you for the realities of running your law practice as a sustainable business: hiring, firing, bills, training, taxes, advertising, chasing clients, case follow-up, early-morning court, late-evening catch-up sessions, working weekends, and more fast food than anyone should ever be forced to eat. Every day your job is to manage and deal with the most stressful situation in someone’s life. That takes a toll. 

A recent survey by Law.com reported that about 41% of respondents said mental health problems and substance abuse are at a crisis level in the legal industry, while about 34% said they don’t know and 25% said no. More than half of respondents, 56%, said mental health problems and substance abuse are worse in the legal industry than in other industries. Many attorneys are suffering from increased stress and anxiety, and yet no one in our industry feels like they can talk about it. Since iQualify is in the de-stressing business, we see and hear these stories from the front lines all the time. And you know what causes a lot of stress? You guessed it: money.

So much of our stress is tied up in finances. 

As attorneys, we deal with hundreds of small problems every day. Every problem is like adding a tiny stone to your satchel. Not much by itself, but over time – it increases the stress of the load. It means you have to do extra work, with the stress of a heavy load, and it never stops. 50-60-70 hour weeks. All just to barely stay above water and keep the lights on. And at the end of the day, the extra work feels like running on a hamster wheel if you’re also short on money.

Can we be honest for a moment? You can handle the work. You can sign new clients. But chasing clients for money? -that could be the biggest of all your stressors. Your heart races, you avoid it until the last minute, and if you’re lucky you pass the problem off to Carol at the front desk (she’s not great at collecting either, but at least it relieves some pressure). You are their counsel, but you can’t do that if you’re the collection agent

The best thing you can do for a client is a have the freedom to fully represent their best interest in the case. You are called counsel for a reason. And iQualify Lending helps you start putting the counsel back in counselor. With Fortify by iQualify, we’re helping alleviate significant stress and extra work by solving the financial solution for most attorneys. It’s not just retainer financing. It’s a whole new way of life If you are looking for a solution – call us today at 404-369-3112.

Feeling like you’re depressed or overwhelmed by stress? There are several ways to get help, yes, even for attorneys. Start with talking to someone and take away the stigma associated with mental health struggles. If you’re looking to speak with a mental health professional, this link can help. 

The Disappointing Life of Collection Carol. 4 years ago

Be the Compass, Not the Collection Agent

Let’s talk about Carol. As an attorney, you hired Carol to be your office assistant, the face and voice of your practice. Carol is the first person who interacts with the public in your name. She’s sweet and friendly, but also strong and businesslike. She can do almost anything. What Carol is not – is a pit bull. Carol is not exactly what you might call an enforcer or your collections agent. When you give Carol the task to chase money from people she makes the calls, but she secretly hates this part of the job. 

Recently, iQualify Lending ran the numbers on a lawyer who’s been using the Fortify software. We collected over 110 contracts and averaged 95 cents on the dollar. When their Collection Carol was doing the job, she was getting paid 74 cents on the dollar. Imagine Carol as the CEO of a bank, whose job it is to create and collect on loans from clients. If you can’t see her as that person, then why do you have her doing that job?! If you went to a financial institution and said, “I have a plan to collect 74 cents on the dollar for all the money we lend…” you would be laughed out of the bank. But that is how we run our law practices: a fire sale every day. 

If you wouldn’t trust Carol to run the bank, why would you trust her to collect your money?

This is a problem that plagues many law practices and keeps them from being as successful as they should. You cannot be both collection agent and council to the same client. These jobs are at odds with each other. As council, you need to be a client’s compass…their guide through the confusing and intimidating legal world. You need to give your clients what they’re looking for in a lawyer: 

  1. easy to hire
  2. good communication
  3. clear direction
  4. outcome delivered as promised

Remove yourself from the collection process. Give your clients what they want: an affordable way to pay an expert to win their case. 

Nobody wants to be Shakedown Jimmy, either. 

“The client that can’t or won’t pay you money at the beginning of the case, is the same client that won’t pay you at the end of the case.” — Jay Foonberg

Everyone hates confrontation. If the client says “I don’t have the money” you’re stumped because chances are, you weren’t trained in negotiating payments. The worst-case scenario for many lawyers winds up playing out on the big day in court. You tell your client they still owe you money, they say they don’t have it. You tell them to at least bring you something or you’re not showing up to court tomorrow (Now, there is no way to actually hold anyone accountable without repercussions, because if I’m an attorney and I file a claim against someone who owes me money and they countersue, I have to tell my insurance company and my liability insurance goes up). You show up to courthouse steps and they’ve brought you $500, hardly the $2000 balance they owe, but at least it’s something. Now your client is nervous because they owe you money and YOU are the one who is supposed to be fighting for them. It’s a terrible spot for both lawyer and client. It’s a horrible way to do business. 

Attorneys just accept this and write it off as “it is what it is”. It doesn’t have to be. 

iQualify Lending is more than just financing…it’s a lifestyle change for how you get paid. 

You should never be touching another piece of plastic or taking a check for any reason other than a down payment or holding retainer. Fortify, by iQuailfy allows you to get back to being the compass and not the collector. Fortify allows you to present payment plans in a way that makes it simple for clients to say yes – to hiring you. And because we offer true retainer financing plans and manage all of your in-house payment plans – you can get paid in full more often without any of the headaches of chasing clients for money.

Using Fortify by iQualify is the easiest way to get hired, get paid, and get out of the collection business once and for all. With iQualify you are out of the collection business, you’re not part of the financial transaction, and you can be there just for them, building trust, guiding them, through scary and uncharted waters. And Carol? She can hang up her collections hat once and for all. And with all the extra money we are collecting for you, maybe you can finally afford to give Carol that much-needed raise!