The Secret To Never Having To Answer The Phone During Your Holiday Break

Have you ever come back from a vacation feeling more tired and stressed than you did when you left? Unfortunately, this feeling is all too common amongst attorneys, as it can be difficult for those running growing firms to ever truly escape their work life. Even after clocking out for the holiday season, there will always be the temptation to answer the phone. Legal trouble sadly never takes a holiday off, and any incoming call could represent new financial opportunity for your firm.

Now one thing we won’t do in this blog post is suggest you should be neglecting new leads over the holidays. We know that in today’s ultra competitive legal world, most attorneys simply can’t afford to sit around drinking eggnog while new clients pass them by. What we will suggest, however, is a smarter way to go about handling your calls during your time off, that should ultimately help you enjoy a more peaceful end to the calendar year.

Let Someone Else Be On Call For Your Firm This Holiday Season

If the only thing you want to hear ring this December is sleigh bells, it’s time to invest in a phone answering service. Just imagine having a group of highly trained receptionists take over your phone answering responsibilities for a week or two, while you enjoy quality time with family and friends. With the help of a phone answering service, you might even get to sleep for more than five hours at a time or even take that tropical vacation you’ve been pushing off for the last decade.

We of course recognize that having your important legal calls handled by someone you’ve never even met before is far from a small ask. Even when a virtual receptionist is speaking with your customers, it’s always your reputation on the line. This is why you should be very selective about which phone answering service you trust to answer your calls, and only go with a company that has a proven track record of working on behalf of attorneys.

Meet Answering Legal

Since 2013, thousands of firms have trusted Answering Legal to help with call handling during the holiday season. Unlike many of our competitors, our virtual receptionist team remains active 24/7/365. This means there is literally never a time when our service won’t be available to answer your office’s incoming calls.

Lawyers love using Answering Legal during the holidays because:

• We are a specialized service that only works on behalf of lawyers. Our receptionists only answer calls on behalf of attorneys, and as a result, get really good at handling law related phone calls.
• We give lawyers full control over how their incoming calls get forwarded and transferred. For example, if you want all of your office’s calls forwarded to our service for an entire week, we can easily accommodate.
• When a potential client calls into your firm for the first time, you can trust our receptionists to greet them in a warm fashion, and collect their personal and case information by taking them through a full legal intake process. You’ll even get the chance to personalize the intake questions we ask your new leads.
• Anytime one of our receptionists receives a message or new intake information from one of your callers, we’ll send that message to you in both text and email form. This allows lawyers to keep track of new client opportunities, while not having to get involved in lengthy phone calls during their time off. If an urgent situation presents itself, you’ll always know, and can jump into action.
• Our receptionists will make sure your callers feel cared and attended to, by collecting their information, answering common FAQs about your firm, and giving prospects and current clients a chance to book an appointment to speak with you.

If you need even more reasons to try out Answering Legal, we suggest reading this post.

Why Can’t I Just Call New Leads Back After The Holidays Are Over?

This is a fair question, which a lot of the attorneys reading this are probably asking. The problem is that with each passing year, consumers seem to be growing more and more impatient, and are becoming less and less likely to leave a voicemail. This is especially true of legal consumers, who have time-sensitive and sometimes life-altering issues that need to be addressed. If a person calls in to your office over the holiday break, and they get immediately directed to an automated machine, they’ll likely just grow frustrated and start calling your competitors. We’re guessing at least one of your workaholic competitors will be ready to receive their business over the holiday break, if your firm isn’t.

Having a live receptionist from Answering Legal field your calls over the holiday break will leave a much different impression on callers. Our staff actually takes the time to listen to your callers and guide them through a carefully crafted legal intake process. This will result in your new leads feeling like they are actually getting started with using your firm, rather than just having their problems ignored. You can even request to have our receptionists put callers on hold and reach out to you when certain caller conditions are met, to give you the option to have the call transferred over to your line. For example, if you always want the opportunity to speak with first-time callers to your firm with DUI related cases, our service will be able to make that happen.

What Happens When The Holiday Season Is Over?

While Answering Legal is particularly valuable in the month of December, it remains an extremely useful tool for law firms during the other 11 months of the year as well. Even when you and your staff return to work, you’ll likely still struggle to answer all of your incoming calls, and give all of your new leads the time they deserve. Running a law office and being an attorney is time-consuming enough already, so why not let our legal receptionist team assist you all throughout the new year. Answering Legal’s lead capturing and after hours call handling abilities are truly unmatched, and you’ll likely be amazed by how many new clients your firm is able to bring in while using our service. Did we mention that we’re bilingual too?

By signing up for a free 7-day trial of Answering Legal, you’ll be giving yourself the gift of a stress-free holiday season, while simultaneously setting up your firm for success in 2021. To get started with our service, fill out this form or give us a call at (631)686-9700.