How Did Answering Legal Become The Top Answering Service For Attorneys?

When starting their new business in 2013, Brooke and Rob Shatles knew that creating just another generic phone answering service wouldn’t take them very far. There were already plenty of those types of companies in existence, all claiming they could answer a large quantity of customer calls for virtually any type of business. Instead, Brooke and Rob decided they would focus their efforts on helping one particular group of people: lawyers.

Answering Legal Co-Founders Brooke and Rob Shatles

Very few businesses carry a more pressing need for proper phone answering than law firms, and for years, there were no answering services actually equipped to accommodate their phone answering needs. That is until Answering Legal came along.

Below, we’ll discuss some of the biggest problems with other answering services, detail what makes Answering Legal different, and discuss what lies ahead for the nation’s top answering service for attorneys.

The Fault In Our Competitors

We won’t sit here and tell you that all other answering services besides Answering Legal are ineffective, because that’s simply not true. Other answering services just aren’t an ideal fit for law firms. Here are a few reasons why.

Lack Of Proper Training

Most answering services take the “jack of all trades, master of none” approach when training their receptionists. They teach new receptionist hires the basics of answering phone calls for a large variety of businesses, but never really go in-depth on training for any particular type of business. This approach may work fine when answering calls for a flower shop, but not for a law office.

Simply put, legal phone calls demand a much higher level of attention than the average business call. People usually call a law office during a time of disaster or sorrow, and require a very specialized kind of support. They aren’t calling to ask about when their bouquet will be available for pick-up, but about who can help them handle their DUI or divorce. Needless to say, not just anyone should be answering the phones for your law office.

Too Impersonal

Providing a live answer to a customer’s phone call won’t matter too much, if the receptionist answering on behalf of your office knows nothing about your business. When utilizing answering service receptionists that are fielding calls for a plumbing company one moment, and your law office the next, how can you expect them to bring any kind of personal touch to your calls.

Offering things like personalized customer greetings and customized legal intake forms can go a long way into making an off-site receptionist come across as a seamless extension of your business. Most answering services out there sadly won’t take the time to do this.

Cost

Many of the larger names in the phone answering industry will have no issue raising your monthly minute rates at the drop of a hat. Even if the quality of the way your calls are handled ends up declining, some of our big name competitors won’t hesitate to charge you more. It’s a bad way to do business, but with the amount of customers these answering services have, they can usually get away with this reckless and irresponsible behavior.

For growing law offices, a lack of stability in monthly rates can be highly problematic. Solo and small firm attorneys have enough to worry about each month, and don’t need the stress of engaging with a phone answering service they can’t trust.

If You Build It, Lawyers Will Come

Brooke and Rob knew that in order to pull lawyers away from some of the bigger names in the industry, they had to offer specialized phone answering services that couldn’t be found anywhere else. They decided that Answering Legal had to include a truly exceptional receptionist team, personalized features specifically geared towards capturing new legal clients, and pricing plans that would work for firms of all different sizes.

Their plan has since come to fruition, as today Answering Legal has grown to over 3,000 satisfied attorney customers! Here’s a little more on some of the features that has made us the top answering service for attorneys.

Extensive Receptionist Training

Before they begin answering calls on behalf of law offices, every Answering Legal receptionist goes through months of extensive phone answering and legal intake training. This training is of course law firm specific, and ensures that all of our receptionists are fully prepared to handle anything that might come up during a phone call with a legal client. Our receptionists won’t just provide a live voice for every one of your callers, but will actually help your firm with capturing more new leads.

Customizing Your Service

Once an attorney signs up with Answering Legal, we immediately dive into to learning more about their business. By learning about your call answering preferences, we’re able to have our receptionist team sound like an actual member of your office. Customizable options include greetings, legal intake questions, call routing preferences, and so much more!

Reliable Pricing Plans

At Answering Legal we have pricing plans for firms of all different sizes, and during our free ten-day trial period, we’ll be able to establish the perfect minutes package for your law office. We’ll never change your monthly rates, unless your firm sees a significant increase in it’s monthly minute totals (which in most cases means your firm is growing), and we’ll always alert you before any changes are made. You should find our service to be more affordable than some of our big-time competitors, and our management and support teams to be much more trustworthy.

So What’s Next For Answering Legal?

As our company continues to grow, so will our ability to provide for our attorney customers. Answering Legal is engaging in more and more exciting partnerships, which means great perks for all who use our service. A recent example of this is our LawPay partnership, which guarantees that any law firm that uses Answering Legal alongside LawPay will receive a 5% lifetime discount.

We also provide our customers with a number of free learning resources. The Answering Legal blog covers a wide range of lawyer related topics, and is packed with valuable insight that can help you better manage your firm. We also have our “Let’s Talk Legal Marketing” community, which includes Facebook and LinkedIn discussion groups that are free to join and chock-full of valuable information for growing you firm.

As we continue to provide more additional value for the lawyers we serve, you can expect our phone answering services to stay top notch, and our ability to meet attorney’s phone answering needs unmatched.

Try Answering Legal for free now, and see for yourself what makes us the top answering service for attorneys.

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Check out seven ways using an attorney answering service can transform your firm.