Why Having An Answering Service for Lawyers Is A Must For Surviving In The New Decade

For law firms, securing a new lead is far from an easy task these days. First you have to build an impressive website. Then you need to cultivate carefully thought out search marketing and content marketing plans to get new prospects to your website. This usually involves several weeks or months of planning, and can often require a sizable financial investment on your part. Then if all goes right, and the right new prospect chooses your law office’s website over the ones of your competitors, you just might get a call into your office.

Of course this isn’t the finish line in the lead capturing process. You still have a lot of work to do once a prospect calls your firm. For all the work your firm does to secure a new lead, the sad reality is that they can lose that new lead in a matter of seconds. If you fail to impress a new prospect on their first call to your firm, literally all of your marketing efforts will instantly become a waste of time. The only way to guarantee that your new leads always get handled correctly is by investing in our answering service for lawyers. We’ll explain why in this post.

Legal Consumers Have High Expectations

For years, we at Answering Legal have been fielding calls on behalf of law offices, and engaging with their callers on a daily basis. We know from experience that a large portion of legal consumers aren’t just calling firms to shop and compare (most of them do this online these days before calling your office), but are looking to be impressed by a firm and get started with them right away. All of this was confirmed in Clio’s 2019 Legal Trends Report.

According to the report, here is what clients look for when contacting a lawyer for the first time:

• 81% want a response to each question they ask
• 80% want to have a clear understanding of how to proceed
• 76% want a clear sense of how much their legal issue could cost
• 74% want to know what the full process will look like for their case

The biggest thing you should take away from the above data is that consumers don’t want to wait long to talk to a lawyer with your firm after calling in for the first time. If your office sends a new prospect to voicemail or puts them on hold for an extended period, you will most likely lose out on their business. Few consumers with pressing legal issues are going to wait around for answers from a firm that can’t be bothered to give them a live person to speak with.

You Need To Provide A Better Client Experience

We know everything we’ve written above may make it seem like capturing new leads in the 2020s is a near impossible task for growing law firms. But with the help of our answering service for lawyers, it’s actually quite easy. The Answering Legal receptionist team works on a 24/7 basis, and will always be available to speak with your new prospect in real time. Literally any calls your office can’t get to, our virtual receptionists will be ready to pick up within the first few rings. Your customers will appreciate the fact that your firm respects their time, and is ready to assist them right away.

Providing your new prospects with not only a live person to speak with, but a positive client experience means everything these days, something which was discussed in the Clio Legal Trends Report.

According to the report, “firms that focus on client experience will have a better chance at making a great first impression—and deter them from looking any further. 42% of consumers surveyed say that if they like the first lawyer they speak with they won’t need to speak with any others.”

The receptionists at our answering service for lawyers can be counted on to always provide a positive experience for your new leads. Before being allowed to answer calls on behalf of real law firms, our receptionists go through months of specialized phone answering training, which covers how to go about addressing the needs of legal consumers and performing new client intakes.

How Answering Legal Impacts Your Bottom Line

You never know when a new lead will reach out to your firm, but when using our answering service for lawyers, you’ll always know that you have a receptionist ready to help capture their business. Attorneys that use Answering Legal can request that all of the calls we answer from new leads get transferred over to their line immediately. This way, lawyers always get the opportunity to talk with new leads in real time, and address things like what comes next, how much their services will cost, and how the process will go.

Even when attorneys can’t get to the phone right away, our receptionists will keep their odds of winning over a new prospect high. Our receptionists will listen to your caller’s problems, take them through a proper legal intake process, and let them know when they can expect to hear back from the firm. Any intake information that is collected during the call will be sent to you via text and/or email message, so you’ll always know when new leads opportunities arise.

Answering Legal customers will quickly start seeing a rise in the number of new leads they are able to capture, which in turn will result in a ton of new paying clients for their firm. We can’t predict what will happen on the business development front for your firm this decade, but what we can do is guarantee your practice is always ready to capitalize on the new client opportunities in front of them.

To ensure that your law office is fully ready to succeed in the 2020s, sign up for a free seven day trial of our service. You get started by filling out this form or calling us at (631)686-9700.