How A Virtual Receptionist For Lawyers Makes Remote Work Easy

This month, for our summer blog theme, we’ve been tackling the topic of remote work for lawyers. We covered the pros and cons of working remotely in our first blog, plus tech tools you might need as a virtual lawyer last week.

In that blog, we mentioned that a virtual receptionist for lawyers was an essential part of a successful virtual law firm, especially a smaller firm, and teased that we’d be going in-depth on the topic in our next blog.

Now, that post is here! This week, we’ll be diving into exactly how a virtual receptionist for lawyers makes remote work easy. From lead capturing to flexibility, a legal answering service is key to succeeding as a lawyer working remotely.

You’ll Have Better Lead Capturing Than Ever

First and foremost, hiring a virtual receptionist for lawyers is making an investment in your firm’s lead capturing capability. Making the switch from physical office to virtual doesn’t have to affect your marketing strategy. As new school as your firm might be, some old school tactics are still worth keeping around. After all, most clients are still going to call you to make first contact.

71 percent of clients prefer their first contact with a lawyer to be over the phone, and yet only 1 in 3 phone calls to law firms are picked up live.

That’s why a 24/7 phone handling solution is so important. You want clients who reach out to you at any time to be able to speak to a real person. Just turning that 1 in 3 stat above into 3 out of 3 will triple your leads captured on its own.

Beyond just answering every call, however, a virtual receptionist for lawyers will raise your base lead capture rate by performing a legal intake for each new client caller. Specialized legal answering services will be able to provide legal intake on par with what you would provide yourself, because you’ll be able to completely customize the legal intake process. Clients will feel like they’ve already begun the process of hiring your firm, never knowing that they were speaking to an outsourced virtual receptionist.

Finally, any answering service worth its salt will not only provide virtual receptionists for lawyers, but a robust message taking and transferring system as well. Detailed messages delivered to your phone immediately upon the conclusion of a call will allow you to keep track of your clients’ communications. Transfers, on the other hand, will allow you to speak to any new clients to secure their business yourself.

You’ll Save Time

The flexibility of going virtual means you can work from anywhere. Sometimes “anywhere” is just a home office, but sometimes it’s your favorite coffee shop. Wherever that is, asyou make the shift, there can be new distractions outside the office that can cost you some time.

According to a study conducted by the University of California at Irvine, it takes 23 minutes to refocus on a task after interruption.

This is all part of an adjustment period of course, as you learn to focus through the distractions of your new workspace. Delegating your phone answering to a virtual receptionist for lawyers will help you pick up that time elsewhere as you adjust to a new normal. How much time, you ask?

Studies have shown that attorneys spend an average of 1.1 hours a day talking to clients on the phone, and that the average American receives 3 to 4 spam calls a day.

If you add these three stats together, attorneys lose at least two hours a day (if not more!) to phone calls that could be spent on other tasks. While talking to existing clients on the phone can sometimes be billable, when it isn’t it’s often a very easily avoided drain on your limited time each day. Want to know why attorneys feel overworked, or why they work nights and weekends? It’s because they’re not billing enough of their normal 40-hour work week, and have to work extra to meet their quotas.

Once you’ve adjusted to working from home, that time will still be saved, which means you can be even more efficient than ever. You can dedicate the time a virtual receptionist for lawyers will save you to working more if your goal is more revenue. Or, you can use that time to take a break, whether that’s in the middle of your day, at the end of it with your family, or in big chunks as a much-needed vacation.

You’ll Be Able To Run Your Firm From Anywhere

What benefits does remote work bring to your firm? For a detailed write-up, check out the first post in this series. In short, though, it’s lower overhead, flexibility, and efficiency. The reason a virtual receptionist for lawyers is such a good fit for remote work is because delegating your answering brings you the same benefits.

Flexibility is what remote work is all about. You want to be able to work on your own schedule, in your own space. By freeing you from having to constantly answer your phone, a virtual receptionist for lawyers gives you the flexibility to run your firm from anywhere. You won’t miss your office, and you won’t miss your landline. Instead, you’ll be able to work anywhere, anytime, using your smartphone to catch up on new leads and existing client concerns on your own schedule.

Remote work can make your firm more efficient by cutting down on automatable work. Switching to remote work requires making teamwork more intentional and emphasizes the need for automation. A legal answering service’s integrations with your law firm software will bring everything together so your firm can be completely virtual. From first contact to end of matter, your phone lines being integrated with your CRM or legal intake management software will cut down on data entry and save your firm even more time.

Finally, a virtual receptionist for lawyers is just less expensive than the alternatives while providing equivalent benefits. With robust customization options, a premium legal answering service will allow you to spend less money than in-house phone answering help while performing just as well as if you were answering the phones yourself.

Make The Switch To Answering Legal

Next week, we’ll be looking forward to the future of remote work for attorneys in the final part of our summer blog theme. Stay tuned to the Answering Legal blog and, if you haven’t already, check out the other posts in the series here and here.

And while you’re here, check out Answering Legal as your key to the best virtual receptionists for lawyers. We’re the specialized, premium legal answering service we’ve been hinting toward throughout this blog post. Our receptionists are 100 percent U.S.-based, bilingual, and only answer for lawyers. That means we can afford to train them for months. If you want to know more about our virtual receptionists, click here.

And our tech is nothing to scoff at. We have a proprietary mobile app that lets you monitor all client communications right from the palm of your hand. And we integrate with all the top law firm software, which you can learn about here.

Run your firm from anywhere, for free. Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up for our service their first 400 minutes free.