Guide
Is your firm’s intake bilingual, or only translated?
Most South Florida firms would say bilingual. Most of them have a Spanish-speaking receptionist, a translated web page, and an English autoresponder that goes out to every inquiry regardless. This checklist walks the seven places a prospective client meets your intake, in order, and asks what happens in each one when the person writes in Spanish.
Do it with a phone and a test name. It takes about an hour. Where a Florida Bar rule applies to what the intake says, the rule number is next to the check. We are not attorneys, and nothing here is legal advice; where a check turns up a Bar question, the answer comes from your own Bar counsel.
The form
A translate button is not a Spanish form. It renders a machine translation the firm has never read, and it drops the moment the person submits.
- Open your intake form on a phone and switch it to Spanish. Read the field labels out loud. If any of them would make a Spanish-speaking paralegal wince, the form is translated, not bilingual.
- Submit the Spanish version with a test name. Is the submission tagged with the language anywhere your staff can see it, or does it arrive looking exactly like an English one?
- Does the Spanish form ask for the opposing or adverse party? If the English one does and the Spanish one does not, Spanish-speaking clients are skipping your conflict check.
- Does it ask who is writing and who the matter is about? In immigration, criminal defense, and personal injury, the person typing is often a relative.
The first reply
This is where most firms fail without knowing it. The form is bilingual, the autoresponder is English, and the person never reads it.
- Submit the Spanish form and wait. What arrives, in which language, and how many minutes later?
- Read the reply against Rule 4-7.13. It should confirm the firm can help and offer a time. If it predicts an outcome, quotes what a case is worth, or calls the firm the best at anything, it is a problem in either language.
- Is it a reply to someone who contacted you, and only that? An automated message that goes to people who never reached out is a solicitation question under Rule 4-7.18, not an intake question.
- Does the same reply go out at 9:41 PM, or does a Spanish inquiry at night wait until the one bilingual staffer arrives in the morning?
The phone
Call your own after-hours number and press nothing. Then call again and choose Spanish, if there is a choice.
- Is the language choice offered on the first turn, or is the caller three menu levels into English before Spanish appears?
- If a voice agent or answering service picks up, does it say it is not an attorney and does not give legal advice? Does it say the call is recorded? Florida requires all-party consent to record.
- Ask it a case question in Spanish. The right answer is a polite refusal and an offer to book or to have an attorney call back. Anything else is an unauthorized-practice risk in your name.
- Say the words "he is in custody" or "the hearing is tomorrow." Does anything happen, or does the call go into the same queue as everything else?
The confirmation and the reminder
The consultation is booked. Every message between now and the meeting has to stay in the language the person chose.
- Book a consultation from the Spanish form. Is the confirmation in Spanish? The reminder? The reschedule link, and the page it opens?
- Do the reminders hold quiet hours? A scheduled text at 6 AM is not a bilingual problem, but it is a problem, and it is the kind that gets a firm a complaint.
- Reply STOP to a reminder. Then reply ALTO to another. Does either one actually stop every sequence, or only the one you replied to?
The consultation itself
This part is yours, not the software's. It is on the list because the intake promises it.
- If the intake was in Spanish, is the attorney or the interpreter in the room bilingual, and did the person know that before they arrived?
- Is the fee explained in the language of the intake? A contingency agreement or an hourly retainer explained in English to a Spanish-speaking client is a problem that starts long before the Bar looks at it.
- Is the engagement agreement itself available in Spanish, and is the controlling-language clause explained?
The follow-up
They consulted and did not sign. What happens next, and in which language?
- Is the retainer re-sent in the language of the intake, or is the follow-up whatever the paralegal types that afternoon?
- Are the follow-up messages templates an attorney approved, or are they improvised? Under Rule 4-7.11, the firm is responsible for the words either way.
- Do they stop when the person signs, replies, or opts out? A reminder that arrives after the retainer is signed is embarrassing; one that arrives after an opt-out is worse.
The report
If you cannot answer the question in this heading, nothing above is being measured.
- How many Spanish inquiries did the firm receive last month, and how many of them signed a retainer? Now the same for English.
- How long did a Spanish inquiry wait for its first reply, at the median and at the worst? Was that different from English?
- If those numbers took more than a few minutes to find, the intake is not bilingual at the level that matters, which is the level a managing partner can see.
What the checklist usually finds
The form is usually fine. The first reply, the phone, and the report are where the checklist breaks, and they break in the same way: the Spanish exists at the front door and disappears the moment the person walks through it. The reply is English, the voicemail is English, and nobody can say how many Spanish inquiries signed.
None of that is a marketing problem. It is an intake problem, and it is fixable in a few weeks, either with the tools you have or with a system built for it. If you would rather have us run this checklist on your intake and send you what we find, the bilingual readiness scan does exactly that, and it is free.
FAQ
Questions about the checklist
About an hour with a phone and a test name. The form, the first reply, and the phone take a few minutes each. The report step takes longest, because for most firms the answer to "how many Spanish inquiries signed last month" has to be assembled by hand.
Rule 4-7.13 governs what the reply may say: no predictions of results, no unsubstantiated comparisons, nothing misleading. Rule 4-7.18 governs who it may go to: people who contacted the firm first. Rule 4-7.11 makes the firm responsible for the words regardless of who wrote or sent them. We are not attorneys; the reading of those rules for your firm is your Bar counsel's.
The phone step is the one most firms fail, usually because after-hours calls go to a voicemail that is English-only, or to an answering service that improvises answers to case questions. Both are fixable: a bilingual greeting with a real language choice, and a script that books and escalates rather than advises.
Yes. The bilingual readiness scan at /tools/bilingual-readiness-scan/ checks your form, first reply, phone, and confirmation in Spanish and sends you the findings. It is free and does not require an account or a call.
Would rather we ran it?
The readiness scan checks your form, your first reply, your phone, and your confirmation in Spanish, and sends you the findings. No account, no call required.