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Reception Services: Make Sure To Keep Your Phone Number

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While you may be looking to adopt a new feature like receptionist service to your operations in favor of growth, doing so while having to change your number can actually be counterproductive. There’s lots of reasons why keeping your company phone number the same is important to your business’ long-term operation and growth, the most important of which we  outline in this article.

Changing Your Number Can Reverse The Work You’ve Done To Establish It

Make Sure To Keep Your Phone Number

In many ways, your business’ phone number serves as a part of its overall identity. It’s an essential piece of information that serves as the gateway between your office and clients, and as such, making sure that it’s well established to the public is important. This is why many businesses will go to great lengths to ensure that their phone number is well advertised, whether through print media, online directories, or even word of mouth. If you change your phone number, you risk losing the connection that you’ve already established with your existing client base. Not only will they have a harder time getting in touch with you, but they may also be hesitant to do business with a company that seems to be in flux.

Changing Your Number Can Be Unnecessarily Difficult

If you have a business phone number that’s been around for a while, chances are that it’s already connected to your company name in some capacity. This alludes to the administrative headache that comes with having to change it. In addition to alerting your current client base of the change, you’ll also need to make sure that your new number is updated on all of your marketing materials, website, and any other online listings. This can be a time consuming and expensive process, particularly for small businesses who may not have the resources to spare.

Changing Your Number Can Disrupt Your Operations

During a time when many businesses are struggling, it’s important to make sure that you’re doing everything in your power to maintain the stability of your company. This includes ensuring that all aspects of your operation are running as smoothly as possible, and that any potential disruptions are kept to a minimum. Making a change to your phone number can disrupt the flow of your business and introduce unnecessary complications, which is why it’s best to avoid it if at all possible.

In short, there are a number of reasons why it’s important to keep your company phone number the same. If you’re looking to make changes to your operations, it’s best to do so in a way that doesn’t disrupt your business’ phone number.

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How to Find a Virtual Legal Assistant

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We Are A Full-Service Support Solution For Professionals

One of the biggest issues facing lawyers today is the accrual of billable hours. During the early days of 2020, lawyers were forced to work remotely and reconfigure their entire practice. This led to a decline in billable hours across the board, with legal practitioners struggling to make ends meet. One study suggests that most law firms were only able to net an average of 2.5 billable hours each day.

To make a profit as a lawyer, you must net as much billable time as possible. Particularly for solo or private practice lawyers, this task may be insurmountable with the tools at hand. The best way to overcome this problem is through delegating tasks to support staff. But in a world that has largely moved towards home offices, finding paralegals and secretaries isn’t as easy as it once was.

The cost of hiring staff has also risen. In a labor market where even the biggest corporations are struggling to procure talent, it takes more money and time to interview and train employees. According to the U.C. Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, recruiting costs for a new employee can range from $2,000 to $7000, and the cost of a bad hiring decision can cost a minimum of 30% of that employee’s salary.

For lawyers working remotely that don’t have the resources to recruit new hires, a second option exists: hiring virtual legal assistants through an alternative legal services provider (ALSP). How do I find a virtual legal assistant, and what can these services provide my law firm? Read on, as we explore how ALSPs are revolutionizing the legal practice.

What is a Virtual Legal Assistant?

A virtual legal assistant offers a vital solution to the problems faced by lawyers today. Rather than working alongside you in an office, you can delegate various tasks to a decentralized team of virtual legal assistants that work with the same efficiency as in-house staff. 

Many virtual legal assistants fall into two categories: virtual paralegals, and virtual secretaries.

  • A virtual paralegal can perform the brunt of your non-billable work. Aside from routine law firm tasks, virtual paralegals can handle billing clients, document management, client communication, and more.
  • Virtual legal secretaries can handle your inbound calls and process leads that are suitable for your business. 

Hiring a virtual legal assistant through an alternative legal services provider means you can avoid the costly process of interviewing, vetting, and training your own team. They aren’t under your payroll, meaning you don’t have to pay for their benefits. Virtual legal assistants can be utilized as-needed, meaning they can hit the ground running to help provide greater time efficiencies in your practice as well as scale with your workload.

How to Find a Virtual Legal Assistant

Finding a virtual legal assistant on your own can be just as taxing as hiring an employee in-person. You’ll have to vet their work ethic, communication, project management skills, and work history. Once you’ve selected a candidate, you’ll have to spend time better spent on billable hours training them in on your process.

Alternative legal service providers like Amata Law Office Suites do all of the hard work on your behalf, so you can start seeing immediate results. Amata’s virtual legal assistant services are designed around the most pressing needs lawyers face. We charge our services by the minute, rather than by the hour, meaning you can rest assured that you are getting precisely the value you are paying for. For small practices, this can be an immense boon – you only have to pay when they are working.

Are you ready to start delegating and net more billable hours? Contact us today for more information about our services.

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Should Your Law Firm Strategy Include Alternative Legal Service Providers?

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Alternative Legal Service Providers

A law firm strategy can help orient your business around your bottom line – and can even tell you when hiring alternative legal service providers is a viable strategy.

Lawyers operate in a stressful environment – the work they do is of the utmost importance to their clients. This work is measured by billable hours. As every lawyer knows, there is hardly enough time in the day to accomplish everything they need to do.

Orienting their goals with a law firm strategy can help ensure the success of solo and private legal practices. It can also open doors towards where time is wasted, and where money is best spent. As billable hours are the primary generator of revenue, alternative legal service providers like contract paralegals and virtual receptionists can help you put money back in your pocket.

When you’re developing your law firm strategy, should you include alternative legal service providers? We investigate the value of evaluating your strategy, and finding the places where you money is best spent.

What is a Law Firm Strategy?

While lawyers serve a vital function in our society, the models of solo and private practices demand that operators first consider themselves as a business. Revenue streams are the ultimate driver of success for a business – for lawyers, this means netting billable hours.

Solo and private legal practices, however, cannot rely on billable hours alone to drive revenue. If a lawyer spends their entire day focusing on a case, other things such as incoming leads that need to be qualified or ongoing education fall to the wayside.

A law firm strategy can help align your goals as a lawyer with your needs as a business.

In short, a law firm strategy includes various aspects that will help define your business and determine what parts you must grow to avoid a feast-or-famine cycle of operations.

  • As a business, legal practitioners need a clearly defined mission and values, a target demographic, and a record of past successes.
  • Set fair pricing models that are attractive to customers while meeting your bottom line.
  • Study trends that show to clients you are continuously educating yourself about changes in the law, and how this is incorporated into your business.
  • Develop key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge the health of your legal practice.
  • Perform a competitor analysis to adjust model on a quarterly basis.

By developing a law firm strategy, you are ensuring that your business is not only attractive to clients, but you will also gain a greater perspective on the successes of your business. What do you need to change in order to keep up with the pace of your competition?

Should My Law Firm Strategy Include Alternative Legal Service Providers?

A large legal practice consists of multiple levels of employees – this includes ancillary services such as paralegals and secretaries that are able to keep the flow of business aligned with the current workload.

Solo and private legal practices may not have the same resources at hand to meet their daily tasks. For this reason, alternative legal service providers have become an attractive option for law firms on a tight budget.

Unlike in-house staff, ALSPs operate on an as-needed basis. Rather than paying a salary with benefits, this staff comes fully trained with customized messaging and specialization for your business. They can be billed hourly, by the minute, or even by the second.

Virtual Legal Receptionist

A virtual legal receptionist functions much in the way a receptionist operates in-house. They take incoming calls, help qualify prospective leads, and present you with the best options so that your time isn’t wasted.

By utilizing messaging specifically for your business, callers won’t know that you’ve hired a contract legal receptionist. Time spent qualifying leads can instead be spent on more pressing tasks that can be billed, putting more hours in your day.

Contract Paralegal

A contract paralegal is, much like any other paralegal, a specialist trained in on tasks that matter for your business. Unlike an in-house paralegal, you can hire them on as-needed.

When there aren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with clients, a contract paralegal can help keep your operations running smoothly. They are generally paid on an hourly basis.

When Building Your Law Firm Strategy, Consider Alternative Legal Service Providers

Alternative legal service providers can supplement your business model to keep operations running smoothly, particularly for solo and private legal firms that don’t have the budget to hire out a full team. Once you’ve determined that you need ALSPs, however, the challenge of finding a partner becomes paramount.

Amata Law Office Suites is more than just an office space – we provide ALSP services like contract paralegals and virtual legal receptionists in-house for the lawyers that call our buildings home. Small legal practices need all of the tools for success they can muster, and we can provide. Contact us for more information about our services.

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Billable Hours: Less Distractions, More Time on Clients with ALSPs

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Without the resources of larger law firms, solo and private legal practices struggle to put in billable hours – can ALSPs help?

According to a recent study published by Clio, only 29% of a lawyer’s workday is spent on billable time. In a typical 8-hour workday, that means less than two and a half hours are focused on client work.

Where does the rest of that time go? The brunt of a lawyer’s workday (nearly half) is spent on administrative tasks such as sending bills, continuing education, and office administration. The rest of the time is spent finding new clients.

These tasks are all crucial to the function of a legal practice. Yet it also isn’t the most efficient means of time spent. Lawyers depend on billable hours to keep their business running smoothly. How can this time be earned back?

Solo and legal practices need to consider every possible avenue to help ensure that their business is both functional and profitable. For practices of this size, hiring isn’t always an option – alternative legal services providers, or ALSPs, offer an attractive alternative.

Breaking Down Your Workday

To understand how ALSPs can benefit your workday, consider what tasks unrelated to billable hours are taking up the most of your time. While smaller practices have a degree of freedom unavailable to larger practices, it also requires you to think on your feet and wear many hats. Unfortunately, this also leads to interruptions and distractions.

A study at George Mason University concluded that distractions not only hinder our ability to complete tasks, but also affects the quality of the work that we do. Disconnecting from interruptions is no easy feat. While working on work for a client, a lawyer might find themselves having to take calls, answer emails, or other related tasks.

The obvious solution to this might seem to be hiring new employees that these tasks can be delegated towards. Yet this comes with two costs: time and money. Solo practices might not be able to afford hiring a full-time employee, even if they are in desperate need of a receptionist to process new clients or paralegals to take up that slack. More, time is needed to train them in on the work.

For this reason, many have turned to ALSPs to perform these tasks on a case-by-case basis. Paralegal service providers and live legal receptionists can help alleviate the workload of lawyers so they can focus on client needs first.

Fractional Delegation of Tasks

The needs of prospective and current clients are rarely uniform – more often, client needs come in feast or famine cycles. For the instances where prospective clients need to fill out documentation or paralegal services are required, in-house staff can provide a tremendous boon. In other cases, they might be idling or performing tasks that are outside of their expertise.

ALSP service providers come with all of the training that they need, without the burden of maintaining them on staff full-time, and can be billed as-needed rather than as salaried employees with benefits.

Paralegal Service Providers

Contract paralegals operate much in the same way that any paralegal operates, although their specialties might be more specific or specialized for various fields of law. They are typically billed on an hourly basis.

Before utilizing concierge paralegal services, consider how they will fit into your practice. Is a paralegal service provider optimized to your practice, or do they fit more specific niche roles? A conversation with a service provider should give you all of the information you need to make a sound decision.

Live Legal Receptionist Providers

Receptionists are the gateway between attorney-client legal relationships – as the first contact, it is vital that they are both efficient and professional. Virtual receptionist services can provide this even outside of typical business hours, as well as bilingual receptionists for lawyers whose clientele might vary.

While virtual receptionists for lawyers are often billed by the minute, our legal receptionist services are more precise: we charge by the second. With customized messaging for your practice, our receptionists function as a direct extension of your business.

More Billable Hours with ALSPS Equates to Greater Profit Margins

ALSPs offer a slew of benefits to solo and private legal practices – professionalism, scalability, cost-savings, and more. As a private legal practice, you need a trusted partner that can provide these services as your business evolves.

More than just an office space, Amata Law Office Suites provides these as part of our services targeted at our community. We operate on your time, helping you put time back in your pocket and accrue more billable hours. Contact us today to learn more about our legal support staff.

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What is an Alternative Legal Service Provider?

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If you’ve spent any time looking to expand or improve your legal offerings, you may have come across the term “alternative legal service provider.” For many practices, these services, commonly referred to as ALSPs, have become the new norm. They increase firm IP – for example, by adding expertise from contract paralegals to the matter – and do so at an affordable cost.

Especially for partners going solo or opening their own private practices, ALSPs provide a path forward. Hiring staff in-house isn’t always an option for the firm, especially not with the expertise their clients expect. ALSPs allow the firms to provide more competitive pricing without sacrificing quality and efficiency.

What is an ALSP, and how can it benefit your legal practice? In short: ALSPs take over the burden of tasks attorneys need not perform or provide additional expertise to assist a firm in a given matter or for long-term engagements through use of contract attorney and contract paralegals. This saves the attorney time, money, and boosts their firm’s IP, all at once.

Defining the Alternative Legal Service Provider

An ALSP is defined as any service that could normally be provided in-house by a law firm that is instead performed by an outside entity. It is not a law firm; it operates as an outsourced model that law firms can leverage to perform tasks that are too costly or time-consuming to perform in-house.

ALSPs offer a specialized service at-scale to meet with the demand of legal practices. With specialized tools, processes, and even technology at their disposal, an alternative legal services provider offers high quality service at affordable prices. As a result, ALSPs can outperform on the same tasks that are normally undertaken in-house.

The Thomson Reuters 2019 Alternative Legal Service Providers report found the top five services firms use ALSPs for are:

  • E-discovery
  • Legal research
  • Litigation and investigation support
  • Document review/coding
  • Non-legal/factual research

As the legal profession pivots from practicing in traditional law office space to operating from shared spaces, hybrid offices, and even the fully virtual law office, ALSPs provide expertise and efficiency for attorneys and law firms.

An Alternative Legal Service Provider Benefits Any Size of Legal Practice

A 2017 study by Georgetown Law School reported that over half of all law firms are using alternative legal service providers in some capacity.

While larger practices have been leveraging these services for a while to increase firm efficiency and lower overhead cost on work produced, partner law practices, solo attorneys, and boutique law firms can all leverage ALSPs to compete.

Private practice law firms are most likely to use the following types of ALSPs (as defined by Thomson Reuters):

  • Independent Legal Process Outsourcers (LPOs) – perform project or matter based work on behalf of the law firm
  • Managed services providers – usually handle on-going work for the law firm; like a contracted in-house legal team
  • Contract and staffing services – provide temporary staffing to the firm, from legal admins to skilled workers like attorneys and paralegals

For partner and solo practices that operate on limited resources or do not have the budget to hire full-time staff, an ALSP can also alleviate time spent on recruitment, training, and management of employees. Additionally, providers offer fully qualified employees that can immediately benefit your legal practice.

Alternative Legal Services Provided by Amata Law Office Suites

Solo and partner practice law firms rely on flexibility and adaptability to achieve success. At Amata Law Office Suites, we understand that time isn’t the only thing on your mind – quality of work and budgetary concerns come into play. We are committed to providing you with the services you need to accomplish the goals of your clients and focus on the practice of law, at a rate that assists your firm with running profitably and with expertise that contributes to your firm IP.

Our Legal Support Team Services

Expert Paralegal Support

For client matters, legal projects, and billable work, the Amata paralegals are some of the best in Chicago and led by Tisha Delgado, Chicago Paralegal Association President and litigation and e-discovery expert. Our paralegals average 27 years of experience each and have developed expertise in specific areas of law. As a team they provide support such as locating defendants and witnesses; preparing third-party subpoenas; Westlaw and LexisNexis legal research; document review; e-discovery and data collection assistance and more.

Additionally, they are knowledgeable on the inner workings of the courts, allowing them bring an efficiency to tasks like document processing that proves burdensome to many attorneys.

Better yet, their time is entirely billable by the firm back to the client and offered at cost-effective rates.

Legal Admin Support

For time-consuming tasks and attorneys looking to focus their own time on billable work, the Amata legal admin team steps in. They assist over 700 Chicago attorneys with client billing inputs, calendar management, mail processing, Microsoft office assistance and more.

Their assistance allows attorneys and firms to focus on the practice of law and relieve stress by outsourcing this non-billable work to a trusted partner at an affordable rate. Legal admin support is charged by the minute, not the hour, at Amata and fixed-fee items like court runs are also available.

Live Legal Receptionist Services

For solo attorneys, partner legal practices and boutique law firms, client intake processes are crucial for continued business and time-management. The Amata Live Legal Receptionist team brings proved process to firms just starting out or looking to improve call-management and client-intake efficiency.

Greetings, transferring processes, screening, and client-intake are customized specifically for the law firm. The team is also available at extended hours. While the typical workday is from 9-5, prospective clients don’t always operate on the same schedule – the Amata legal receptionist services operate from 7AM-10PM CST.

Amata Law Office Suites also offers office space for like-minded lawyers to collaborate and work. We provide our lawyers with comprehensive solutions to many of the problems they face on a day-to-day basis. Alternative Legal Services are offered as part of our model and allow solo or private law firms the resources they need to achieve success in their law practices.

Contact us today to learn more about how Amata can help you. Email [email protected]

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What to Look For in the Best Virtual Receptionists for Law Firms

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Vietnamese young female receptionist talking on phone

There are three traits the best virtual receptionists for law firms have in common, and we’ve listed them below. Before you go skim those bullets, however, let’s explain why your private practice law firm needs a legal receptionist in the first place. It comes down to two words which clients expect: immediacy and professionalism.

Regardless of the type of law that you practice, when a person calls a lawyer, they believe their needs are urgent. Getting a voicemail instead of a person is rarely acceptable. You may think “those are not the clients I want” but even your top-tier prospective client wants to talk to a human on the phone when they call. It’s the high-quality customer service people come to expect from a profession like law. You risk losing great clients by negating this simple request.

Yet for solo law firms and many private law firms, the expense of hiring a secretary or receptionist can be difficult to justify. Then there is the time involved with interviewing, onboarding a new employee, and training them on your firm’s processes and clients. Facing this mound of tasks, and fearing the receptionist will not provide enough value to outweigh the additional overhead costs, many firms choose to opt-out of such a hire.

Live Legal Receptionist Options

Thankfully, another option is available: virtual receptionist services. A virtual receptionist acts as an extension of your law office, without the costs of hiring, training, and retaining an employee.

The downside? With hundreds of virtual receptionist services available on the market, finding the right option for your firm and budget takes some research and they are not ‘one-size-fits-all.’ Below, we consider three traits that the best virtual receptionists for law firms have and what makes them different from other receptionist services.

3 Qualities of the Best Virtual Receptionists for Law Firms

Professionalism (That Matches Your Own)

Yes, we covered this a bit already, but in a day and age where so many services are on offer, we think it’s pertinent to repeat. Receptionists serve as the gateway to attorney-client legal relationships. They are likely to serve as the first impression of your company. When a legal buyer is looking for options, professionalism serves as the number one selling point.

Hold them to the same rigorous standards by which you hold yourself. They must be competent, efficient, and able to get the right answers when onboarding new clients so that your time is not being wasted with bad leads.

Keep in mind live legal receptionists are also an extension of your law firm’s brand. While virtual receptionists may serve a variety of clients throughout the day, their messaging should be personally customized around your firm’s needs and the image you want the firm to convey. This sets the groundwork for what clients can expect moving forward.

Before signing up with a provider:

  • Ensure you can customize everything you’d (from hold-music to the greeting to the “they are not available” language) to match your firm’s brand. Also ask for them to handle this set up at your direction, instead of having you do it yourself in the software backend.
  • Ask if you can test their services to ensure professionalism. If there is a free trial period, that’s even better! The last thing you want is to commit to a provider who mishandles your calls.
  • PRICING TIP: Figure out how they bill for time spent on the phone. Many providers round up to the full minute, instead of charging you only for time used.

Efficiency (That Improves Your Firm)

Taking on more overhead, even if it’s via a cost-effective option, should result in an improvement of your firm. Otherwise, save the money!

The best legal answering services will eliminate bottlenecks in your onboarding pipeline by:

  • talking with new and potential clients,
  • vetting them based on your firm’s standards, and
  • filling out the correct forms (if you like those and/or have a CRM) or
  • sending you a streamlined email with complete information

Many people point to the billable hour as reason enough for a receptionist: every minute spent on the phone with a prospective client equates to less billable hours for existing clients.

At Amata, we like to look beyond the billable hour, however: every interruption takes you away from practicing law. No matter how your firm’s fees are structured, you will find legal answering services are vital to assisting you and your firm’s attorneys with managing time. Better managed time leads to less stress.

Before signing up with a provider:

  • Verify their systems can handle the exact client intake, call screening, and call-routing procedures your firm needs, no matter how complicated.
  • Never worked with a receptionist before? Ask for guidance! A high-quality answering service will be able to assist you and your firm with setting up the right processes even if you’ve never had any in place before.
  • PRICING TIP: Ask if they have fillable form options available or if you have to provide your own. If they are available, check if there is a limited amount included in the base-program and get pricing if you need more.

Availability (Without Excessive Fees)

The hours that a legal practice is open don’t always coincide with the hours when clients and potential clients will be contacting your firm. Like you, your clients and potential clients are at work during business hours and they may not be able to call until closer to dinner time. Virtual receptionist services can help resolve this problem.

Unlike employees you hire in-house, the best virtual live legal receptionists operate outside of the normal 9-5 business hours to account for the needs of legal buyers.

Before signing up with a provider:

  • Ask who is answering the phone. Many people outsource to other countries after the regular 9-5, but if you have certain language demands you’ll want to make sure someone who can meet them is always available to answer calls. In Chicago for instance, Spanish is very common and may not be known by overseas receptionists.
  • PRICING TIP: Go over the billing for extended hours as many answering services consider it a premium service. What’s the additional cost to have extended hours? Is it fixed fee or variable? Additional line items can quickly add up.

By hiring a legal answering service you are giving your clients access to the professionalism they need, at an immediacy they will appreciate (and help your firm stand out among the crowd), without overtaxing your own work day.

The best virtual receptionist for law firms is available when clients need them, and legal practices should only be billed for the time for which calls are taken, as opposed to a full-time receptionist who is either salaried or billed hourly.

What Makes Amata The Best Virtual Receptionist for Law Firms

Amata Law Office Suites is more than just an office space – for over 20 years, we have offered live legal receptionist services to help support and grow solo and private law practices by holding ourselves to the highest standard.

Amata’s Live Legal Receptionists use customized greetings and onboarding messaging to seamlessly fit into your law firm. We bill for the time our services are used and never round up. With extended operating hours from 7AM to 10PM, your law firm can be optimized around billable hours and client needs, at affordable prices.

Contact us today to learn more about our live legal receptionists, on-demand expert legal staff, office space, and more!

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How a Virtual Legal Receptionist Can Benefit Your Private Practice

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Charming young Asian woman working at reception of spa center, talking on phone with client and taking notes

Great legal practices are often defined by their high quality of service. Not only via their attorneys’ legal acumen, but through the strong attorney-to-client legal relationships they build. Timely responses, seamless communication, and the ability to take calls after hours show a client you are putting them first.

This is also where many private practices fail in running their law firm as a business. The attorneys answer all of the firm’s incoming calls. Before you get on the line to give a first-rate legal consultation or assist a client through the legal process, consider having your potential client speak to someone else: a legal receptionist.

A legal receptionist helps facilitate a client-centered approach for private practice law firms and keeps the business of the practice running smoothly, taking over client intake and helping with time consuming tasks.

However, hiring a full-time legal receptionist is a difficult expense to justify for solo and partner practices. Finding the best legal receptionist is a resource-intensive activity that involves hiring and training that many lawyers don’t have the time to do. Overhead for dedicated personnel – paychecks and employee benefits like healthcare – can also be well outside a lawyer’s budget.

Hiring a virtual legal receptionist is a great way to provide receptionist support while keeping overhead low. You can provide attentive service, manage your time, and stay competitive by passing your cost-savings onto your clients.

What is a virtual legal receptionist?

A virtual legal receptionist is more than just an answering service. They are live professionals, who handle calls almost exclusively for law firms. Live legal receptionists answer calls with customized greetings unique to your firm, can help you qualify leads, fill out client onboarding forms, and send all information to the appropriate personnel. Moreover, they operate outside of the traditional 9-5 business hours, allowing your clients and potential clients to be taken care of by your firm, even if you’re at home enjoying dinner or deep in work for another case.

Many solo practitioners, partner law practices, and boutique law firms are hiring virtual receptionists, saving themselves the hassle and cost of hiring a full-time employee. This allows attorneys at the firm to work more billable hours and do what they do best: practice law.

As a solo or private legal practice, you need every asset available to keep your business ahead of the competition.

How can you benefit directly from an attorney virtual receptionist?

More Leads

Every prospect that calls your law firm is a potential client, but many variables go into whether they are a good fit for your firm. Do you specialize in the type of law they are looking for? Does the workload their case require match the resources at your firm? Have they worked with a lawyer before? These questions can be nuanced, and require a specialized type of receptionist to produce the best results.

Virtual legal receptionist services are specifically designed to benefit attorneys. While they may not work in your office, they work with you to craft greetings, information collection forms, call-handling procedures and more, all aspects designed around your law firm’s processes. They’ll provide callers a great impression of your law firm from the first call, and you’ll know whether a contact is a good-fit or if you should ready a referral before you return their call.

In the legal profession, every case you take on is important. Smaller legal practices need not only case volume to keep the doors open, but quality cases. A virtual legal receptionist can help qualify these leads on your behalf.

Professional Image

Timing matters for legal buyers. If a prospective client calls your law firm and reaches an answering machine they are likely to look elsewhere for prompt and immediate service. Even if you’re a hard-working attorney who happened to be in court at the time.

A virtual receptionist at a law firm helps callers immediately and shows prospects that their legal problems matter to you. This makes them less likely to dial another firm.

For a stressed out legal client, punctuality and professionalism trump all and first impressions matter. Make sure your first impression is conveyed through the receptionist services that you use and not your voicemail.

Time Management

As a legal professional, your schedule is likely to be complex and unpredictable. A virtual legal receptionist will help you navigate your time commitments without sacrificing the high-quality and personal service you pride yourself on offering to clients.

For lawyers and attorneys who operate on billable hours especially, every minute counts. You should be in charge of your day, not your telephone.

Amata Law Office Suites: The Best Virtual Receptionist for Law Firms

Amata Law Office Suites is more than just a shared legal office space – we offer a full range of services designed directly around your needs, such as mail processing services, on-demand paralegal and notary services, and live legal receptionists.

As the world moves towards digital solutions, our idea of what a traditional office space looks like has changed. Virtual receptionists for legal services offer an optimal, professional, and cost-effective solutions to communicating with existing and future clients.

How can Amata help your practice? Contact us today to learn more about our range of legal services.

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Want to Grow Your Law Practice? This Firm Says Live Receptionists are Key

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From reviewing cases to administrative work, it’s no secret that attorneys juggle multiple daily tasks. In fact, the average lawyer only spent around three hours per day on billable work last year.

A missed phone call might not seem like a big deal. But according to a 2018 report from NewVoiceMedia, now Vonage, businesses lose $75 billion each year due to poor customer service, such as missed phone calls. In addition to that, cloud-based voice platform Aircall reports that 85% of callers won’t follow up if their calls are not returned.

Joshua Haid

In 2018, Joshua Haid and his firm, Women’s Divorce & Family Law Group by Haid and Teich LLP, moved to Amata Law Office Suites, a community of more than 700 attorneys with seven Class-A offices in downtown Chicago. He liked the flexibility of Amata’s business model, as it would allow him to expand or downsize office space to match the needs of his 16-attorney team.

He saw direct value in Amata’s reception services, as having a designated professional fielding calls was a clear way to dedicate more time to his cases. Haid’s firm immediately began utilizing Amata’s live receptionists to handle its call screening and fielding. Amata also offers personalized incoming call and client intake forms.

“It ensures our clients always have a live person answering the phone, so they’re not forwarded to a voicemail during business hours,” Haid said. “Even if an attorney is not available, clients always appreciate speaking with a person.”

Amata’s receptionists answered calls for 270 firms and managed 15,000 calls in October. As of Oct. 5, Haid and his firm also gained access to extended live reception from 7 a.m. – 10 p.m. without incurring a premium price for non-business hours, for which other live reception companies often charge.

The service relieves management stress from partners’ plates. If one of Haid’s team members is at home and feeling sick or taking a lunch break, he no longer has to pull others away from their responsibilities to answer phones or worry about shuffling staff. Live reception instead helps Haid and his team focus on building the practice.

“Having the depth of Amata’s live reception staff makes it one less of a headache,” he said. “It provides us a huge financial advantage. It’s one less thing that I have to worry about.”

Lawyers are only charged for used reception minutes and unlike other phone-answering services, where receptionists are outsourced, Amata’s receptionists are part of the team and have strong customer service backgrounds. Gwen Waters has been with Amata for 15 years. Along with handling clients’ calls, she is sometimes tasked with scheduling conference rooms, sending a fax and even calming clients’ nerves on their first lawyer visit.

“That is what I’ve always liked about Amata,” Waters said. “There is no routine.”

Fellow receptionists Tara Krkljes and Natalie Gonzalez, who joined Amata earlier this year, enjoy building a connection with callers and playing a role in lawyers’ practices.

“The attorneys need important information from these callers … and I do my best to get it to them,” Krkljes said.

Amata Live Receptionists

Krkljes’s favorite part of the job is working with each lawyer to customize caller forms and greetings so the information is straightforward when presented to clients and helpful for the firm’s intake procedure.

“Amata feels like family,” Gonzalez said. “They try their best to make sure their clients and employees are taken care of.”

Call us or visit our website and take an online or in-person tour of one of our seven Class-A spaces to learn how our live reception services can help you successfully grow your law practice.

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Secure Potential Clients Today – Save Money & Time Down the Line

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Secure Potential Clients Today – Save Money & Time Down the Line

This is part two in our series “Being Remote: Lessons to Take Back to the Office.” You can read part one here.

Business phone technology is an overlooked area of any attorney’s business. Most assume that by having a phone number, they are set. Like all areas of business, however, there is a better way, and attorneys who have this “better way” setup are not only functioning in a way that maintains the appearance their physical office is open right now, but they have also avoided the disruption to their business, client intake, and handling of potential customers that many others scrambled to fix during the first few weeks of shelter-in-place.

The “better way” business phone setup for attorneys is simple. You have:

  1. A professional appearance

    A live receptionist who answers your main line, knows you, know your business, and understands client intake

  2. Control over your schedule

    Either via screened calls, so you can choose who you want to speak to, or via the ability to redirect calls automatically to your partner when you’re in meetings, working without disruption, or on-the-go

  3. The ability to answer and make business calls from anywhere

    A crucial, and often missing aspect to the “traditional” law firm’s phone setup

You may be thinking, “I have one and two right now with my personal receptionist” or “my phone technology checks off items two and three.” And to be fair, that is a great start! But only attorneys who had all three of these services were able to keep focus on running their firms this past month, instead of scrambling to fix things.

These are the same attorneys who go on long vacations or travel overseas and don’t worry about interruption to their business. Attorneys who stay at home semi-regularly, with their client or opposing counsel never knowing they just dropped their kids off at school. These attorneys simply have it better, because they have more flexibility and control over their life and law firm. All from a simple business phone setup.

The business phone is your lifeline for adding potential clients to your pipeline.

In the digital age, the average person is more desperate for human connection. When a client is calling an attorney, that feeling is amplified. They want to hear a real person on the other end of the phone, and they want to feel both heard and supported by them. A professional law firm receptionist is invaluable for making these connections. They are also an expensive commodity for the modern firm.

As an attorney, however, you have a lot to do. You’re juggling work and life, and being on call for each client just isn’t possible. Unlike a doctor however, you can’t make rounds, and your clients aren’t in a room waiting patiently. Having a receptionist fielding your calls will satisfy your client’s needs for being attended too, while also allowing you to be in control of your schedule.

Additionally, the proper phone software can allow you to make changes to your call handling on the fly. If you need to adjust and redirect your calls to a partner you can do so on the backend. Or if you’d like a more personal touch you can send a quick email to your live receptionist and let them know how you’d prefer your calls handled.

This one simple measure ensures you continue adding clients into your pipeline without sacrificing anything.

The ability to take calls anywhere

This is the secret ingredient many attorneys phones are missing. Having control of your schedule, and having a live receptionist are nice, but they are both only at the top of their game if you can also make and take calls from anywhere. The technology exists for attorneys to go out and grab their coffee and lunch and breath of fresh air, and also still take the call from that opposing counsel or judge they have been waiting for. Amata’s own 3CX technology allows making and taking calls from your business phone line. And you’re not sacrificing you physical office device to do so. The number will ring to all devices, and you simply choose where to pick up from, cellphone of office phone.

When you’re in complete control of the calls you take and don’t take, you can also be in control of where you’re sitting walking and being, with no one else knowing anything different. Making an important call from the Chicago Riverwalk has never been easier than it is now.

By having a professional receptionist you have not only great client intake and by having control of your schedule you increase your billable hours (because being interrupted decreases your billable income more than you may realize). And you keep your firming running at the level you’re used to even during these strange times.

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Pros and Cons of Call Answering Services – A New Alternative

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virtual office receptionist

Back in the days of traditional law firms, people had receptionists at their front desks who knew the business and fielded attorney calls. In this modern land of telecommuting, and shared and co-working office space, the modern day equivalent to a receptionist became a Call Answering Service.

Benefits of Call Answering Services

Flexible Call Scripts

Customized greetings for your firm, with dialogue that shifts depending on who is calling.

Detailed Notes and Messages

When you’re not available, your potential and current clients still feel taken care of after leaving a message behind, and you won’t miss any important information mentioned during the call.

Fast Answer Times

Your incoming call will ring at multiple phones in a call center all at once, meaning your line is picked up immediately.

Cons of Call Answering Services

Faceless Call Answering

Every time a client calls back, a different voice answers, and it feels like their first time calling all over again.

Not Intuitive

That call from an opposing lawyer who is on vacation? It got pushed to voicemail because you were on the other line. Call Answering Services can only act on what notes you leave, so for situations you don’t anticipate, you will be the one who misses out.

A New Alternative to Impersonal Call Answering Services

We weren’t satisfied with the impersonal nature of Call Answering Services, so we came up with our own solution. Amata’s Reception Services is the best of both worlds. The receptionist you and your clients hear on the other end will remain the same. That’s because all of your phone calls will ring to your chosen Virtual Office receptionist. The few occasions your regular receptionist is busy, 6 others are ready to promptly answer your phone.

Your Amata receptionist is more than just a voice, they know who you are, they know your business, and they will learn your clientele. Providing you with the best service possible, and changing the game from impersonal to personable.

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