Five Types of Attorneys That Absolutely Need An After Hours Answering Service

Do you often find yourself envious of friends that get to end their work day at 5 p.m.? If you answered yes, there is a good chance you’re an attorney.

For many attorneys, the need to be accessible to clients unfortunately doesn’t end when the typical work day does. In fact, as we will detail below, there are many types of attorneys who have their best client opportunities occur after hours. For those attorneys, we recommend turning to Answering Legal, a service that will provide receptionists to handle all the calls you can’t get to after hours, and always do so in a professional matter.

Our legal answering service can benefit any kind of attorney. However, for many lawyers, having a dependable after hours answering service is not just a nice thing to have, but an absolute must. Let’s take a closer look at five types of law professionals that should not go one day longer without Answering Legal’s after hours phone answering.

1. Criminal Defense Attorneys

Criminal defense attorneys work harder than most, often devoting long evening and weekend hours to defending those charged with criminal activity. But, even the hardest working law professional needs the occasional night off. Unfortunately those committing crimes rarely show sympathy for the criminal defense attorneys’ hectic schedule. When a person is arrested late at night, you can bet one of the first calls they will be making is to a criminal defense attorney.

These attorneys can try relying on automated machines to handle their late night callers, but with so many of their cases popping up after hours, there is a significant need to have a live person answering calls 24/7. Recent statistics from Forbes magazine show that 80 percent of callers sent to voicemail do not leave messages because they do not expect to ever be heard. And when a caller sees their future at a risk, with serious charges being pressed against them, you can be sure they will move on to calling another criminal defense attorney, before waiting for you to get back to them.

How can Answering Legal assist criminal defense attorneys?

• Our receptionists will make sure all calls to your office are answered immediately, keeping customers dealing with urgent criminal matters from moving on to another attorney.
• The person calling will receive assurance from a live voice that they have contacted an office capable of guiding them through their serious situation. Our legal intake receptionists will answer any questions your customers might have, and take them through a list of questions about the incident that occured.
• You will wake up the next morning with an email and/or text waiting for you, providing the details of the caller’s case.

2. Bankruptcy Attorneys and Tax Lawyers

Those dealing with financial crisis, are another type of legal customer that likely will not be patient in trying to reach an attorney. At first glance a bankruptcy attorney or tax lawyer, may not seem like a job that would require late night phone answering. However, when people’s backs are against the wall financially, they may not be able to rest easy until they speak with someone from an attorney’s office.

When a person’s bills are piling up fast or are facing major questions regarding their financial security, it is not unreasonable to think that they would try and reach out for help after regular work hours. In order to serve as many clients as possible, you want to make sure your firm is available at all times of the day and night to field questions and take on case requests.

How can Answering Legal assist bankruptcy attorneys and tax lawyers?

• You’ll earn the trust of panicked customers, by always being able to provide them with a live voice to speak with during their times of crisis.
• Your customers will feel like they are at least taking a step towards resolving their financial difficulties, by going through the legal intake process with one of our receptionists and setting up an appointment to meet with you.
• The details gathered by our legal intake receptionists about a customer’s issue will always be accurate and organized, allowing you to confidently begin working on a client’s case the next day.

3. Personal Injury Lawyers

So why did we include personal injury lawyers on this list? These types of lawyers may not be known specifically for having late night callers, but they also cannot afford to miss out on a single one of their calls. With personal injury lawyers, there is often a reliance on larger cases to help fuel their practice financially. Any individual can present a case that can make or break a practice’s year, so attorneys would be wise not to risk letting a late night caller slip through the cracks.

Unfortunately it is impossible to know when a significant case will come a law office’s way, so the best thing a personal injury lawyer can do is to make sure their firm always has a trained receptionist ready to field calls. It also doesn’t hurt to have an answering service behind you that you can trust when it comes to dealing with potentially your biggest cases of the year.

How can Answering Legal assist personal injury lawyers?

• Those diamond in the ruff clients will never slip through the cracks of your law firm, as our receptionist team will always be there to pick up their calls.
• Your most important cases of the year will be handled by experienced legal intake receptionists, who have gone through extensive training in fielding important attorneys calls, and exclusively work on behalf of law offices just like yours.
• You will be notified with a message immediately after a call with a client concludes, so you can determine whether or not they need to be made a top priority.

4. Family Attorney

When it comes to family law disagreements, emotions can begin running high at a moment’s notice, which is why family attorneys always need to make themselves available for guidance and support. Unfortunately, when emotions are running high, clients will often completely throw the clock out the window, which can result in family attorneys getting frequent after hours calls.

It is not realistic to expect family attorneys to pick up all of the calls that come their way, but there is still a need for these attorneys to make themselves available after hours for when emergency situations pop-up. If a client dealing with an urgent situation gets an automated machine upon their call to your office, fair or not, they are likely to become aggravated with your services.

How can Answering Legal assist family attorneys?

• During times of emergency when you’re unavailable, you can always count on someone from our legal receptionist team to pick up the phone, and give your clients a live voice to speak with.
• Our legal intake receptionists will always use proper discretion when addressing a client’s sensitive family issues.
• The legal intake receptionist handling your client’s call will be able to distinguish between callers that need to be transferred into your mobile phone immediately, and callers that can wait for you to return their call.

5. General Practice Lawyers

A general practice lawyer needs to be a jack of all trades, as they typically end up handling a wide range of legal issues. Just like the attorneys mentioned above, general practice lawyers will have their share fair of after hours callers to deal with. In many cases, they may have more late night callers than the average specialized attorney, as their ability to handle many different types of cases, will likely attract a wider range of customers to their business.

In order to reach as many of their clients as possible, general practice lawyers need not just an after hours answering service, but an answering service with receptionists able to handle the calls of many different types of customers.

How can Answering Legal assist general practice lawyers?

• Our legal intake receptionists will work with you to ensure that they are prepared to handle the needs of any type of law customer that calls your phone lines.
• Your callers will be greeted by polite and professional legal intake receptionists, that will operate with a demeanor and etiquette that is appropriate for any type of case.
• Our service integrates with your Google Calendar or whatever calendaring software you use, allowing our legal intake receptionists to seamlessly schedule appointments into your busy schedule.

No matter what type of law practice you run, Answering Legal can accommodate your after hours needs. Give us a try, by signing up for a free ten-day trial here