What is fractional legal staffing?
Fractional administrative support gives a law firm a dedicated administrator for a set number of hours each month, instead of a full-time hire. The administrator handles marketing execution, back-office admin, or a blend of both — and you scale the mix to whatever your firm needs that month. You pay only for the hours you use, with no payroll, benefits, or turnover to manage.
On-site, not offshore. Every Amata administrator is a full-time Amata employee working from our Chicago offices — a local team member who knows Illinois courts and your practice, not an overseas contractor or rotating freelancer. When the job needs boots on the ground, they make court runs and Clerk’s office trips in person.
Two Tracks. One Admin.
You Set the Blend.
- Social media posting — drafting, scheduling, and publishing LinkedIn and Google Business Profile content
- GBP weekly updates — posts, photos, Q&A monitoring, and review responses
- Google Local Services Ads — daily lead monitoring, response coordination, and weekly optimization
- Blog updates — formatting, image selection, scheduling, and publishing posts on your firm’s site
- Newsletter distribution — building emails in your tool of choice, list hygiene, scheduling, and follow-up
- Review & testimonial follow-up — getting happy clients to leave reviews on the platforms that matter
- Vendor coordination — managing SEO, web, and ad agencies on your behalf
- Data collection & reporting — pulling monthly metrics from GBP, your website, LSAs, and CRM into a clean monthly report
- Calendar management — scheduling, confirmations, conference room bookings, and cross-party coordination
- Email triage & response drafting — first-pass inbox sorting and drafting replies for your review
- Document preparation — formatting, naming conventions, version tracking, and signature routing
- Court calendaring & docket monitoring — pulling Illinois case dockets, retrieving filings, and calendaring court dates and deadlines in Outlook
- Case files & e-filing — organizing electronic files, maintaining case-status spreadsheets, and handling document filing and e-filing
- Practice management upkeep — keeping Clio, MyCase, or your matter system clean and current
- Billing prep & AP coordination — time entry support, invoice prep for your review, expense reports, and vendor invoice routing
- Client touchpoint coordination — intake follow-through, meeting prep, and scheduled outreach
- Vendor & supply management — software subscriptions, supplies, and routine vendor follow-up
Most Admin-20 clients run a custom blend. A typical mix might be 12 hours on marketing execution and 8 on general admin — or it might flip month to month based on what’s happening in the firm. You set the priorities; your Amata team member adjusts.
Chicago attorneys
A full back office for your firm — without the full-time cost.
A fully-loaded paralegal and admin team in Illinois costs more than $150,000 per year in combined salary, benefits, and overhead. Amata's on-demand support gives solo attorneys and small firms the same trained, vetted staff at a fraction of that cost — billed in 1/6th-hour increments with no payroll, no benefits, and zero turnover risk.
According to the Clio 2025 Legal Trends Report, the average attorney bills only 3.0 hours in an 8-hour day — largely because admin work fills the rest. We fix that.
- Trained assistants who learn your intake scripts, billing codes, and file workflows
- Available for in-office, hybrid, and fully virtual law practices
- On-demand paralegals — bill their time directly to clients as profit
- Pay only for time used, billed in precise 1/6th-hour increments
- Scale up or down with just one calendar month's written notice — no long-term contracts
The Number Isn’t Arbitrary. It’s Where the Math Lands.
Most law firms don’t have 173 hours of admin work each month. They have about 20 hours of real, focused admin work — done by someone trained to handle it efficiently. Everything else is waste you pay for.
Of a business owner’s week is spent on administrative tasks — 16+ hours every week, on work they weren’t trained for, sandwiched between everything else on their plate.
Of entrepreneurs do some admin work during their week — almost none of them should be. That time belongs to growth, clients, and the work only you can do.
Unfilled hours every month with a full-time admin hire — a full-time admin needs 173 hours; a small growing firm has ~20 hours of real admin work. That gap is where boredom, disengagement, and turnover are born.
Of annual salary — the cost of replacing one admin hire. On a $59,000 admin, that’s $29,500–$118,000 per departure.
A Censuswide survey of 251 entrepreneurs found the average business owner spends 36% of a 45.5-hour workweek on administrative tasks — roughly 16.4 hours every week, or 65+ hours a month, on work they’re not trained for. A skilled admin handles those same tasks in 20 focused hours a month, because they batch it, they’re trained for it, and they don’t context-switch every few minutes. Now consider what happens when you hire a full-time admin instead. They need to fill 173 hours a month. You have 20 hours of real work. The other 153 hours are a problem that neither of you signed up for. A bored admin looks for another job. Admin-20 is structured around what actually exists.
A Backup Is Always Assigned.
Amata assigns both a primary and backup Admin-20 staff member to every account. If your primary admin is out for PTO, illness, or unexpected turnover, your backup steps in — already familiar with your account. You are never left without support.
Three ways to put your admin
on autopilot.
Mix and match services based on your caseload. No minimums, no long-term contracts.
Administrative Assistants
for Law Firms
Dedicated legal administrative assistants learn your intake, billing, and file workflows — on-site or virtually, without payroll or turnover.
- New client intake & call notes
- Calendar management & scheduling
- Document formatting, scanning & e-fax
- Exhibit printing, binding & copying
- Mail handling & notifications
- Billing support & light A/R
- Court courtesy copies & clerk runs
- Document notarization
On-Demand Paralegal Services
for Chicago Attorneys
Chicago-based paralegals handle trial prep, discovery, e-filing, and court runs — billable directly to your clients as a profit center.
- Trial prep & exhibit binders
- Discovery drafting & review
- E-filing — state, federal & admin
- Deposition support
- Medical records & summaries
- Bates labeling & privilege logs
- Skip traces & asset searches
- Table of Authorities prep
Live Legal Receptionist &
Law Firm Answering Service
Legal receptionists answer calls in your firm's name, complete intake, and send call summaries. 48% of law firms miss client calls — Amata makes sure yours doesn't.
- Live answering Mon–Fri, 7am–6pm
- Calls answered with your firm's greeting
- New client intake & matter screening
- Amata app — work number anywhere
- Call captions & transcriptions
- Bilingual receptionists available
- 100 & 300 min add-on programs
- eFax 250 in/out — $10.50/mo
focused hours a week
starting program
general back-office admin
attorneys exclusively
What 20 hours actually delivers.
A sample month for a firm running a 60/40 marketing-to-admin blend. Your schedule depends on your priorities — but this is the cadence and volume that gets handled when skilled hands are applied consistently.
published
posts
distributed
requested
published
triaged
report
your plate
From intake script
to go-live in days.
Every step approved by you before we touch a single client interaction.
Discovery Call & Needs Checklist
We confirm scope, tools, and coverage hours — built around your practice type.
Call Scripts & Routing Rules
Your voice, your triage. We build intake scripts you approve before we go live.
Calendar & Contact Sync
We connect with your scheduling tools so your assistant hits the ground running.
Task Priorities & Approvals
Clear task rules, approval chains, and billing codes set before any work begins.
Test Calls & First-Week Check-In
We run live tests and hold a week-one review. Measurable wins in the first two weeks.
The team you need.
Without building one.
On-site, paralegal, and administrative support dedicated to your account — acting as your dedicated employees, at a fraction of their full salary. Scale hours each month based on your caseload. Hours billed in 1/6th-hour increments. Pricing effective July 1, 2026.
- Dedicated staff act as your employees — without the full-time cost
- Detailed accounting of all work completed each month
- Make your support staff revenue-generating, not an overhead expense
- Available on-site at any Chicago Loop location or fully virtual
- Bill paralegal time directly to clients as a profitable line item
- Scale up or down with one calendar month's written notice — no long-term contracts
Every task we handle —
so you don't have to.
Law Firm Administrative Support
Trained admin assistants learn your intake, billing, and file workflows — on-site at any Amata Chicago location or virtually, without payroll or turnover.
- New client intake & call notes
- Calendar & consult scheduling
- Document formatting & proofing
- Scanning, copying & e-fax
- File opening & matter setup
- Billing support & light A/R
- Mail handling & forwarding
- Exhibit printing & binding
- Court courtesy copies
- Travel & meeting prep
- Document notarization
- Social media scheduling
The real questions
attorneys ask first.
The questions we hear most from solo attorneys and small firms — including what attorneys are asking AI search right now.
Ask Us DirectlyFractional administrative support gives a law firm a dedicated administrator for a set number of hours each month, instead of a full-time hire. The administrator handles marketing execution, back-office admin, or a blend of both, and you scale the mix to your firm's needs — paying only for the hours you use, with no payroll or benefits to manage.
Two tracks of work. Marketing execution — social posts, Google Business Profile updates, Local Services Ads monitoring, blog and newsletter publishing, review follow-up, vendor coordination, and reporting. General admin — calendar management, email triage, document prep, court calendaring and docket monitoring, e-filing, practice-management upkeep, billing prep, and client coordination. You set the blend each month.
For most solo and small firms, yes — when the work is focused and consistent. A typical Admin-20 month produces 4+ LinkedIn posts, four GBP posts, a blog post, one or two newsletters, 20+ review requests, 20+ LSA leads triaged, a monthly metrics report, and a back office that stays handled. It's fractional, not capped — you pre-pay for the value of 20 hours of skilled work.
On-site. Every Amata administrator is a full-time Amata employee working from our Chicago offices — not an overseas contractor or a rotating freelancer. They know Illinois courts and your practice, and can handle in-person work when you need it, including court runs and Clerk’s office or Vital Records trips.
Yes — at no extra cost. If your firm runs a marketing program through Amata’s Marketing Lab, the strategy, campaign management, and monthly reporting are included free; your Admin-20 simply executes the day-to-day. The pairing (Admin-20 & Marketing Lab Plus) runs $1,595/month total when you add paid-media management, with the ad budget billed separately to Google.
The Admin-20 program is $980 a month for 20 hours. Administrative support is also available at $70 an hour, billed in 1/6th-hour increments, with a 32% discount when you pre-purchase Amata Coins or enroll in a program. On a monthly program, your administrator works under your firm’s email address — to your clients and the court, they’re simply part of your team. Month-to-month, no markups or onboarding fees.
Admin-20 ($980, 20 hours) is the most popular starting program — marketing execution and general admin for solo and small firms. EA-30 ($1,650, 30 hours) is more experienced: it does everything Admin-20 does, plus travel arrangements, meeting scheduling, email and phone follow-up, and complex coordination. For substantive legal work, Paralegal-40 is a separate program.
Need a different kind of support?
Amata Office Centers is not a law firm and does not provide legal services to the general public. All paralegal and legal support services are performed under the supervision of a licensed attorney in good standing. All hourly services billed in 1/6th-hour increments. Pricing effective July 1, 2026.
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