How to re-refer a matter

Sometimes a potential client who was referred to a lawyer needs legal services that, for one reason or another, that lawyer may be unable or unwilling to provide. In those cases, the lawyer can refer the potential client back to you. When that happens, you'll receive an email notification with the Matter ID, Client Name, and Current Attorney associated with the re-referral request.

To view the attorney's request for a re-referral, you simply follow the link in the email, sign into your administrator account, and search for the matter ID (e.g. "784") in the Matters tab's search bar. This will bring up the Matter for which a re-referral was requested:

To view the request, click on the Matter card to expand it and then on the "Refer to another attorney" section. This lets you view the attorney's re-referral request, as well as any notes they provided about the request. Note that, at the end of every re-referral request, our system indicates whether the potential client gave consent for follow up and first contact from the lawyer for any new referral that you decide to make:

To refer the matter to another attorney, simply click the "Refer client to another attorney" button. This creates a modal that is pre-populated with all the client's contact information as well as the details of their original request.

As an administrator, you then need to:

1. Check the client consent boxes as appropriate;

2. Edit the request as appropriate; and

3. Add any notes you want to pass along to the new attorney.

Note that if the client doesn't consent to follow up or first contact by any attorney when they are referred back to you, their only means of learning about any referral that you ultimately make will be through the original attorney assigned to the matter, because they are the only person with authorization to communicate with the potential client. To ensure the administrator is aware of this, our system provides an automated reminder if neither consent is selected and you click "Submit".

Once you submit the new referral, the referral is logged in the matter card, along with the Matter ID and Matter Type of the new matter you created. The card for the new matter will appear at the top of the Matters tab and any confirmation emails that would normally be triggered by a newly created request are triggered. The matter card for the new referral will note that the request was created by an administrator:

A few final notes about this feature:

1. Sometimes an attorney or potential client may decide to contact the administrator directly with their request for a re-referral. In those cases, instead of asking the original attorney to whom you referred the matter to submit a request, you can skip right to the step where you click the "Refer client to another attorney" button on the original matter card.
2. Re-referring a potential client to another attorney does not re-assign the original matter to a new attorney nor does it automatically close the original matter; rather, re-referring a potential client creates an entirely new matter in your system. This is because there may be instances where the original attorney is still providing services to the client (e.g. the attorney is handling a criminal issue for the client but refers them back to the LRS for help with an immigration matter). It is always up to the individual attorneys to report when a matter is "closed".
3. You don't have to honor re-referral requests and refer matters to additional attorneys. You can always elect to take no action on a re-referral request or click the "Refer to another attorney" button and toggle over to the "Refer to outside organization" tab to make a referral to an outside organization.