Answering Legal Customer Case Study: Palumbo & Associates

Back in October of 2015, attorney Michael Palumbo received a phone call from a man named Robert Shatles. Since then, Palumbo has never felt obligated to pick up another call, and now only gets on the phone when he actually wants to.

It would probably help if we gave you some more info. Okay, so for those that don’t know, Robert Shatles is the President and Co-Founder of Answering Legal, the nation’s longest running legal answering service. Over four years ago, Shatles reached out to the office of Palumbo & Associates, and offered Palumbo the chance to try out his phone answering service. Palumbo agreed, and the rest is history. His firm has been a loyal Answering Legal customer ever since.

“I needed to be able to answer phone calls around the clock, so I was looking to outsource that service,” Palumbo said. “Answering Legal now handles the majority of the phone calls for our firm. During the day, we take some calls, but any that we are unavailable to answer will roll over to them. At night, they take care of everything for us.”

In this case study blog post, we’ll discuss some of the things that impressed Palumbo about our service and why he has continued on as an Answering Legal customer for so many years.

Why Palumbo & Associates Chose Answering Legal

As a traffic violation defense attorney, Palumbo knows quite well what it’s like to serve consumers going through unexpected legal crisis. He also is well aware of how important it is to be the first firm to provide new prospects with a live person to speak with.

“The importance of having your phone competently answered cannot be understated in the legal profession, because in a lot of ways, legal services are emergency services,” Palumbo said. “People will call in a full panic mode and you need to be able to capture those leads because they are qualified, and if they get an answering machine, you will lose that business.”

The numbers back up Palumbo’s thoughts. According to a recent report, 42% of legal consumers say that if they like the first lawyer they speak with, they won’t need to speak with any others.

When Palumbo signed up with Answering Legal, he was clearly looking for more than the average receptionist service provides. He wanted a service that would actually help him get new business. Very quickly into the process, Palumbo realized that with our highly trained receptionist team, his new prospects were in the best possible hands.

“Their team is very versatile, so they are able to live-transfer calls to us when necessary, as well as recording messages through call, text, or email,” Palumbo said. “I just explained the profile of what I wanted in the messages that they take, and they make sure to get all of that information to me.”

Our live call transferring services make it incredibly easy for Palumbo to go about his life as normal, and still get the opportunity to talk with first-time callers to his firm in real time. When lawyers are away from the office, they can request that all of their calls get forwarded to our receptionist team. They can also ask that whenever a new prospect calls into their firm, our service reaches out to them and gives them the chance to have the call transferred over to their line.

The message taking abilities of our receptionist team also make it simple for attorneys like Palumbo to track incoming calls during times in which they are too busy to get to the phone themselves.

“All of the messages that come in from their team are always accurate and timely,” Palumbo said. “Their team is really good at understanding the questions and problems that callers are having and then addressing those in a clear and concise way.”

The questions our receptionists ask your callers can be personalized to your liking, ensuring that we collect best possible information from your new leads. Also, anytime one of our receptionists takes a message from a caller to your firm or performs the new client intake process on one of your new leads, they will send all of the information they collect to you via text and/or email message. This way you avoid being bothered by trivial calls during your personal time, and still always know when urgent client situations arise.

Why Palumbo & Associates Has Stayed With Answering Legal

A lot can change over the course of a four-plus years relationship. Often a business and a consumer will experience a “honeymoon phase” in the beginning of their relationship, only to see the level of service the business provides start to deteriorate as time goes on. According to Palumbo, that has been far from the case for his relationship with Answering Legal.

“Their team is very well organized, so if there’s ever an issue or a question you are able to just send off a ticket to their support email and get a response back right away,” Palumbo said. “Any issue we’ve ever had has been dealt with in a timely manner. The system that they use is incredibly efficient and effective, and there is always seamless feedback regardless of whether you get the same person you started the request with or not.”

Palumbo’s firm is one of many that has been using Answering Legal for multiple years. Today, thousands of legal practices trust our receptionist team to address their important callers and help them capture new clients, and we’re always looking for new growing law offices to assist. It of course all starts by signing up for a 7-day free trial of our service. During this trial period, you’ll get to see firsthand how our service interacts with your firm and its callers, and do so without having to make any commitments.

“Don’t hesitate to work with them,” Palumbo said. “They do a great job in their work.”

If you’re ready to take Palumbo’s advice, fill out our free trial form or call us at (631)686-9700.

Want to see more Answering Legal case studies? See what the Smith & Eulo Law Firm and Zirkin & Schmerling Law think of our service.