Law Firm Integrates RingCentral with SmartAdvocate for Instant Client Recognition

The Challenge

McDonald Worley, a prominent law firm, relied on SmartAdvocate as their case management system to track clients, cases, documents, and communications. Their phone system, however, was completely disconnected from SmartAdvocate. When a call came in, attorneys and staff had no way of knowing who was calling until they answered. They would then spend time asking for the caller’s name, searching SmartAdvocate manually, pulling up the correct case file, and getting context on where things stood before the conversation could even begin.

For a firm handling a high volume of active cases, this disconnect between the phone system and case management created a cascade of inefficiencies. Staff were spending hours every day on manual lookups. Calls took longer than they needed to because employees were scrambling to find the right record while the client waited. And when a brand new potential client called in, there was no streamlined way to capture their information and launch a new case intake directly from the call.

The client experience suffered as a result. Callers had to repeat information. Staff sounded unprepared. And the firm’s leadership knew that in a competitive legal market, the first impression on a phone call could determine whether a potential client chose their firm or called someone else.

Key challenges included:

• No caller identification tied to case records, leaving staff blind when answering calls
• Manual SmartAdvocate lookups on every call, consuming hours of productive time daily
• New client intake was disconnected from the phone system, requiring manual data entry after the call
• Client experience suffered because staff could not personalize the interaction from the first moment
• Legacy phone system with no integration capabilities for modern case management platforms

Our Approach

We designed a migration to RingCentral with a custom integration to SmartAdvocate that would put client context in front of every employee the instant a call came in.

Phase 1: Workflow Mapping and Requirements (Weeks 1-2)

We worked with McDonald Worley’s team to map their call handling workflows end to end. We documented how calls were currently routed, how staff searched for client records, what information they needed to handle a call effectively, and how new client intake was captured.

We identified the two core scenarios the integration needed to handle:

1. Existing client calls in: The system should instantly recognize the caller, match them to their SmartAdvocate record, and pop that record on the employee’s screen before or as they answer the call.
2. New potential client calls in: The system should recognize that no matching record exists and automatically open SmartAdvocate’s new case wizard, pre-populated with the caller’s phone number, so the employee can begin intake immediately.

Phase 2: RingCentral Migration and Integration Build (Weeks 2-6)

We migrated McDonald Worley to RingCentral, porting all existing numbers and configuring call routing to match their workflows. The migration was designed to be seamless so that clients calling the firm experienced no disruption.

The SmartAdvocate integration was built to trigger on every inbound call. When a call arrives, the system queries SmartAdvocate using the caller’s phone number. If a match is found, the client’s case record automatically pops on the employee’s screen, showing the client name, active cases, recent notes, and case status. The employee sees all of this before they even pick up the phone.

If no match is found, the screen pop launches SmartAdvocate’s new case wizard with the caller’s number pre-filled, allowing the employee to begin a new client intake with a single click rather than manually navigating through the system after the call.

Phase 3: Training and Optimization (Weeks 6-8)

We trained the firm’s staff on the new system with a focus on the screen pop workflow. We worked with the team leads to refine the information displayed in the pop-up so it showed exactly what employees needed for each call type. We also configured call disposition logging so that a summary of each call was automatically written back to the SmartAdvocate case record, eliminating the need for manual call notes.

Results

McDonald Worley’s phone system went from being disconnected from their core business operations to being the front door of their client experience:

• Instant client recognition on every inbound call through automated SmartAdvocate screen pops
• Hours of manual lookup time eliminated daily as staff no longer search for records while clients wait on the line
• New case wizard launches automatically for unrecognized callers, streamlining intake from the first ring
• Every call is personalized because the employee knows who is calling, what case they are referencing, and the current status before answering
• Call dispositions logged automatically to SmartAdvocate, replacing manual note-taking after every call
• Client experience transformed with callers greeted by name and immediately directed to the right context

Client Feedback

“The difference was immediate. Our team went from fumbling through lookups while clients waited on hold to answering every call already knowing who it is and exactly where their case stands. The SmartAdvocate integration is the single best technology investment we have made. Kyle and his team understood what we needed and delivered it.”

• Don Worley, Managing Partner and Principal, McDonald Worley

“From an operations standpoint, this integration gave us back hours every day that were being wasted on manual processes. Our staff is faster, our clients are happier, and we have full visibility into every call that comes in and out of the firm. It changed how we operate.”

• Jon Boeve, CEO, McDonald Worley