Why Law Firms Should Invest In External Legal Intake Solutions

There are plenty of reasons why a law firm would look outside its own walls for legal intake support. Maybe you’re running a new marketing campaign, bigger than you’ve ever done before. Or maybe you’re struggling to keep up with referrals from a retiring colleague or mentor.

Either way, outsourcing is a great way to deal with increased call volume. There is a stigma against outsourcing, however, that can lead to lawyers running everything in-house. Often, outsourced services are considered of lesser quality than those that originate from within a business.

We’re here to argue that that stigma shouldn’t exist; that one bad apple needn’t spoil the whole bunch. In fact, for legal intake solutions, it’s hard to find a 24/7 solution that isn’t outsourced. In this blog, we’ll be presenting the case for why law firms should invest in external legal intake solutions.

Expanding Your Availability

At this point, most attorneys need 24/7 phone support, even if they don’t know it. As the world has gotten more global and interconnected, more people in every local area have been working remotely for jobs in different time zones. Technology has made this work easier than ever, and many of your clients will be working or even living on different schedules.

In addition, many 9 to 5 workers don’t have the opportunity to have a potentially long, arduous legal conversation with an attorney on their lunch break. Sure, you could work 10 to 6 yourself—it’d be great for avoiding traffic—but lawyers don’t always stick to their schedules.

According to Clio’s 2022 Legal Trends Report, 56 percent of lawyers work after 5 PM, 42 percent of lawyers work Saturdays, and 32 percent work Sundays.

Much smaller percentages of lawyers, meanwhile, actually stated they wanted to work those days and times. Lawyers already work long, undesirable hours, and law firm owners even moreso. But adjusting your schedule to expand your client base doesn’t work for most lawyers. That much work can lead to stress and burnout.

Hiring an external legal intake solution to cover your phones at these less desirable times will allow you to be available to clients and prospects without keeping you up at night or forcing you to work from your barbecue on the weekends. In addition, attorneys who practice in certain legal disciplines simply must have a 24/7 legal intake solution. Criminal defense, family, and bankruptcy attorneys, for example, might have a greater need for these services than others, as their client base is likely to be up late due to the stress of their legal issue.

24/7 availability is a feature to which external legal intake solutions are uniquely suited. After all, what are your other options? Hire part-timers to cover your phones from 5 to 9? At that point, you might as well start your own call center, for all the overhead you’re incurring!

Reducing Your Overhead

Speaking of overhead costs, external legal intake solutions will save you a lot on that section of your balance sheet. Whether you’re reaching for a 24/7 legal intake service for after-hours coverage or are using one as a full replacement for in-office staff, you’ll end up spending less time and money than your other options for fulfilling the same needs.

Of course, spending less money on your legal intake solution is the main draw of outsourcing. Compared to in-office staff, external solutions will save you plenty. Between training, salary, and benefits, outsourcing your legal intake is a great way to save on costs while keeping quality high.

A 2022 Training Industry Magazine report found that the average cost of training an employee was 1207 dollars.

And the costs for lawyers might be even higher. After all, most attorneys bill by the hour, so time is literally money! Luckily, external legal intake solutions will save you time as well.

Answering the phone in the first place also eats up a lot of your time, and much of it isn’t billable.

Studies have shown that attorneys spend an average of 1.1 hours a day talking to clients on the phone.

On top of taking phone handling off your hands, external legal intake solutions can eliminate your data entry needs, too. The good legal answering services will have integrations with everything from your calendar to your legal CRM. You won’t have to worry about transposing the contents of a legal intake into your CRM, or scheduling client appointments into your calendar. Your virtual receptionists will handle it for you!

Enhancing Your Effectiveness

On the other side of your balance sheet is revenue. Fortunately, external legal intake solutions are great for that side of your business as well; you’ll be getting 24/7 availability with the same effectiveness as in-office staff.

There is a catch, however. Your return on investing in legal intake solutions will only be as effective as your investment into it. Opting for a low-cost or budget answering service may get you some of those benefits, but you won’t be getting nearly as much as you would if you were to spend a little more up front to get better results on the back end.

Good legal intake solutions will have fully customizable intakes and well-trained staff. The best legal answering services will go one step further, with as much customization and flexibility as possible so as to best serve your firm and virtual receptionists who only answer for lawyers.

On the other hand, lower-cost answering services will often have virtual receptionists who don’t specialize in answering for lawyers, bringing their possible training time in answering for your firm way down. In addition, many of these legal intake solutions will hire offshore to keep their costs down.

A Purdue University study found that regardless of their satisfaction with a call center, 65 percent of consumers would alter their behavior or perception toward a company after finding out they used an offshore call center.

Even if you’re just looking for support staff, it’s still worth spending a little more up front. Think of a legal intake solution as a force multiplier. By supporting your excellent in-office staff, they’ll be enhancing the availability and responsiveness of your firm. But would you rather have a multiplier that gives you 1.5 times your effectiveness, or 3 times?

Investing In Answering Legal

When it comes to legal intake solutions, efficiency is key. You should be getting the best return on your investment, and that means finding the service that best fits your firm and your budget.

We understand that here at Answering Legal, which is why we strive to make sure our law firm customers succeed. Our legal intake specialists are the best around. They’re true specialists, because they only answer for lawyers.

That gives us plenty of time to train them to answer for law firms before they ever pick up a phone. And, all of our receptionists are 100-percent U.S.-based and bilingual. If you’d like to learn more about how we train our virtual receptionists, click here.

On top of that, we have a technology-forward service. We own our own software, and have a proprietary mobile app as well as integrations with top legal software. If you’d like to learn more about our integrations, click here!

Don’t wait on making your firm an efficient client-securing machine. 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.