Phone Answering, Document Management, & More: How Lawyers Can Save Time and Bill More
As a lawyer, you shouldn't have to worry about time-wasters like data entry and calendar management. You have more important things to worry about, like increasing your billable hours and growing your legal practice.
Here are four tasks you should delegate so that you can focus on what you do best: serving your legal clients.
1. Administrative and operational tasks
Once your law practice reaches a certain level, it becomes impossible to do all of the work on your own. When you want to increase your billable hours, administrative tasks aren’t the best use of your time.
The solution? Hire a virtual assistant to help keep everyone on track. Here’s a small sampling of what these professionals can do for your firm:
- Handle phone traffic for appointment scheduling, client questions, and more
- Client intake
- Provide appointment reminders
- Conduct client follow up
- Data entry, including updating and maintaining client files
- Order office supplies
- Calendar management
- Marketing to new clients
- Development of your existing client base
- Other duties as needed, like accounting and payroll
With Intelligent Office’s virtual assistants, you can even help select who is hired and trained. This ensures more specialized legal tasks are accomplished correctly, every time. We practice absolute discretion and confidentiality, so you know the privacy of your firm and it’s clients is protected.
2. Document management
According to data analyzed by MetaJure, lawyers waste an average of six hours per week on document management issues. These issues include searching for the right documents and recreating documents that can’t be located.
That’s a lot of time spent on something that doesn’t help you reach your business goals!
Luckily, the right virtual assistant can help with document management, too.
3. Phone answering
Answering the phone interrupts your workflow, making it difficult to stay focused and productive. You also know that every call should be answered — what if a potential client is on the line? It’s a common conundrum, but there are affordable ways to tackle this problem.
To avoid this time-waster, hire someone to handle the phones. You could opt for a dedicated receptionist, but this solution doesn’t always make sense for solo lawyers and smaller firms.
Another option is to use a phone answering service. Every provider offers a different type and level of service, so it pays to do your homework. In our experience, lawyers should seek out the following four features when selecting a phone answering service:
- Trustworthy receptionists with specialized legal training.
- Dedicated receptionists that know your law firm and how you do business.
- A dedication to confidentiality.
- Local account management (we have local business services experts who will manage your account and oversee the calls your law firm receives.)
4. Client communication
When a client hires a lawyer, it’s because they need specialized legal help. It’s a stressful time for them, and they (understandably) want frequent updates and information.
Unfortunately, those updates aren’t always available, especially if a case hasn’t changed since the last court date or filing. This can lead to a stream of worried calls and emails.
This time-waster goes beyond standard phone answering because what these clients need is an empathetic ear to assure them that everything is proceeding smoothly. A virtual assistant can speak on your behalf and provide that reassurance, so you can focus on what it takes to win the case.
