How A Virtual Receptionist For Attorneys Will Help You Run A Virtual Practice

COVID-19 has changed the world. There’s simply no other way to put it; the world we live in today, in 2022, is completely different from the one we lived in just two years ago. And, as many of you are very well aware, the legal profession has changed with it. As a business, the legal profession has had to adapt to this new world, forcing attorneys to adapt with it.

Though the law may not have changed much in the last two years, the lives of lawyers have. Between working from home and strange Zoom filters in court, you’ve had to change the way you run your practice drastically and constantly.

You might be asking yourself, “When will things go back to normal?” It’s something we’re all wondering, of course. But with a change in perspective, it might be possible to ask: “What can I gain from this?” One of the advantages of all the changes COVID-19 has wrought on the world is that you no longer have to run a physical practice if you don’t want to. The pandemic has turned virtual practices from concept to opportunity.

It might seem daunting, but later on in this post we’ll tell you about some of the ways Answering Legal can make life easier for those who make the jump to a virtual practice. First, we’ll discuss why you might want to switch to a virtual firm.

Virtual Practices And Why You Might Want To Change

Two years ago, if someone told you COVID-19 was still going to be touching every part of our lives, would you have believed them? In the same vein, if two years ago someone had told you that you didn’t need to have a physical office to run a successful law firm, you might have laughed them off.

Virtual practices are exactly that: successful law firms without a physical office. Many attorneys were forced to go virtual at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and may think of those days with dread. But that was a forced change, to something new that had hardly been tried before. The headaches involved with that first change can be totally avoided with some foresight and planning. With a virtual practice, you’ll painlessly find yourself saving on overhead and enjoying a better work-life balance than before.

Running a law practice, like any other business, is about costs. Marketing and staffing are no-brainers, costs that are absolutely unavoidable when running a practice. A few years ago, overhead costs were in the same category. You had to pay rent on that office and include that cost into your profit calculations.

COVID-19 has changed that, however. Zoom meetings and trials are here to stay, and if you wanted, you could stop paying rent on that office with the conference room and reception area and save money by switching to a virtual practice.

Enjoy A Better Work-Life Balance

In a recent episode of our “Everything Except The Law” podcast, host Nick Werker spoke to Gary Mitchell, founder of OnTrac Coach, about managing a law practice in the face of COVID-19. Gary mentioned a client of his who, after being forced to run his practice virtually in lockdown, found that not only did he prefer it, his staff and his clients did as well.

Rather than spending the better part of an hour on the highway, heading to the office, Gary’s client was enjoying coffee with his wife at home, and then heading to his home office to get to work. And all of that client’s staff felt the same way. After all, it doesn’t matter where the work gets done, as long as it gets done.

But how do you get started running a virtual practice? Well, Answering Legal has you covered. Our virtual receptionists are uniquely suited to helping attorneys make the jump to a virtual practice, and we’ll explain how.

Managing Your Practice From Afar

You might think, “It’s hard enough running my practice when I’m actually there. How can I manage it from home?” Regardless of your experience at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a little preparation and the help of virtual receptionists for attorneys, you’ll be much more prepared to make the change.

A virtual receptionist gets you halfway to a virtual practice. Highly-trained and specialized in answering for lawyers, our virtual receptionists will help you with all the parts of running a law firm that don’t have to do with the law, from answering your phones to scheduling appointments.

Of course, the most basic responsibility of our virtual receptionists for attorneys is to answer your phones. With a virtual practice, you’ll need to answer phone calls just as often as you would have to with a physical practice, and virtual receptionists will handle that for you. You can trust us to answer your phones the same way you would, because you design the script we use.

Keep Your Firm Growing

Our virtual receptionists are experts at lead-capturing, ensuring that your firm won’t stagnate when you get rid of your physical office. When clients call your firm, they’ll hear a friendly, professional receptionist on the other side of the line, ready to hear their legal troubles. If you’re available to take the call right away, they can transfer the call directly to you.

If not, they’ll perform a legal intake to make sure that client feels like they’ve already hired your firm. In addition, if your schedule is open, our virtual receptionists can schedule new client callers for virtual meetings with you, only on days and times that you pre-designate. Once they’ve scheduled a meeting, new leads will be much less likely to call another firm.

Essentially, virtual receptionists help with all the parts of running a virtual practice that aren’t the actual legal work that you do. All of these services can help any practice, but a practice with these measures in place is much more prepared to make the switch to a virtual practice.

The Power of Live Call Transferring

We here at Answering Legal often talk about how our live call transferring features help you run your practice from anywhere. Of course, when we first started touting this feature, “anywhere” meant the courthouse, or maybe a conference.

Now, however, when we say “anywhere,” we mean anywhere. When a call comes in, our virtual receptionists will gather the caller’s contact information and their legal issue, then call you and see if you would like to speak with them immediately. If you do, the virtual receptionist will patch the caller in to you, and the warm transfer is complete. You can speak to the caller with confidence, having already heard the information they told to your virtual receptionist.

This doesn’t sound very different from a receptionist in an office telling you the same information in person. And that’s exactly the point. Your workflow won’t be affected, which means you really can work from anywhere. In that same episode of “Everything Except the Law” mentioned above, Gary Mitchell mentions that he has clients who are licensed in one state and work from other states. Being able to run your practice from anywhere frees you to prioritize what matters most in your personal life while getting just as much done as you would from an office.

Take The Virtual Leap

There are many advantages of a virtual practice, and you can easily make that leap with virtual receptionists for attorneys. Maybe you live in Michigan and dream of being able to serve Michiganders from the sunny beaches of Puerto Vallarta. Perhaps you’ve got an aging family member you’d like to be closer to, or you just want to work from home because it works better for you.

Whatever your reasoning, if you’re considering making the change to a virtual practice, you should make hiring virtual receptionists for attorneys from Answering Legal your first step. We’ll make that change as easy and smooth as it can be, and it’ll be like you never left your office.

Want to take the first step toward saving on overhead costs by switching to a virtual practice? Click here or call 631-686-9700 to take the first step by taking advantage of our free trial. For a limited time, we’re also offering firms that sign up with our service their first 400 minutes free.