What Makes Answering Legal The Best Answering Service For Law Offices: We Have The Tools To Help Your Small Firm Grow

Trying to grow a small firm, while also dealing with the pressures of running a small business can feel like a near impossible task when you’re doing it alone. We at Answering Legal know that there are many unique challenges small businesses face, that make growth difficult. Five of these challenges were laid out in a recent article by Investopedia writer Andrew Beattie.

Included on his list were:

• Diversifying your client base
• Money management
• Dealing with fatigue and constant pressure to perform
• Depending too much on the company’s founder
• Balancing quality and growth

Beattie applied these five challenges to all small businesses, but we think they ring especially true for small law offices. To further prove that Answering Legal is the best answering service choice for your small firm, let’s go through Beattie’s list of challenges one-by-one, and break down what our company can to do help your practice overcome them and continue to grow.

Diversifying Your Client Base

In Beattie’s article, he warns businesses to avoid becoming too dependent on just a few clients to make up their total income. Doing so can be extremely risky, and put a tremendous amount of daily pressure on you and your colleagues, as just one bad interaction with a client can lead to a disastrous year for your practice. That is why expanding your client list should always be one your firm’s top goals.

Answering Legal is a company that can help your reach that goal, as the 24/7 nature of our answering service will allow your office to connect with callers that they never would have had the chance to engage with previously. You can count on our legal intake receptionists to reel in all of your after hours callers, giving you the chance to capture them as soon as possible. You may be surprised at how many of those late night callers turn out to be pretty big fish. For many types of lawyers, like criminal defense attorneys, the cases with the biggest potential pay days will present themselves after hours. If you want your firm to grow, you cannot afford to miss out on these client opportunities. Answering Legal will ensure you never do.

Related: Click here to find out which types of attorneys can benefit most from an after hours answering service.

Our business is also one of the few legal answering services out there that can guarantee bilingual phone answering at all hours of the day and night. Having our bilingual receptionists always on call to assist in capturing Spanish speaking clients, can go a long way in helping your firm reach new spanish speaking markets it would have never had an opportunity to reach before.

Money Management

In his article, Beattie discusses the difficult financial balance that comes with running a small business. He reminds readers that those running small firms not only need to worry about having enough money to support their business, but to support their personal life as well. Unfortunately for firms still looking to establish themselves in the industry, there may not be that much money to go around for supporting either one.

Here at Answering Legal, our best method for helping small firms deal with their money issues, is to help them get more of it. As we’ve already mentioned Answering Legal is a great resource for helping attorneys add to their total number of paying clients. Our company can also help you make the most of your time with those clients. With our receptionist staff handling your phone lines, you get more time to devote to billable client work. Putting in more billable hours, will allow you to put together the best cases possible for your clients, and maximize your revenue potential.

Related: Did you know the average firm misses out on 6 hours of billable time each day? Click here to learn why.

Answering Legal also offers pricing plans that are perfect for small firms. We’re confident that our service will have your bank account looking healthier than ever before, and in time give you the financial freedom to make significant upgrades to both your business and personal life.

Dealing With Fatigue and Pressure

If you run a small firm, it can often be difficult to predict where the day will take you. But, one thing you probably can be sure of each day, is that you’ll be crazy busy. Yes it’s possible for a small law office to get by with just a limited amount of employees, but only if the people in charge are willing to pitch in and perform additional office tasks like phone answering, message taking, appointment scheduling, and performing legal intakes. Having to do all of this, along with actually practicing law can be enough to take a heavy physical and emotional toll on even the most capable of attorneys.

In order for your firm to be successful, you need to be at your best. We know it’s hard for you to operate at your best when it feels like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. That’s why at Answering Legal we aim to help attorneys carry that weight, or at least a good portion of it. Phone answering, message taking, appointment scheduling, and performing legal intakes are all tasks our receptionists can effectively handle on your firm’s behalf. You can pitch in with performing those tasks when you have the time, but when you need a breather or have your hands already full with something important, we’ve got you covered.

With the stress and aggravation of answering customer calls off your plate each day, you can focus in on those really important law related tasks. We know you’ll still have plenty to do, but spending 40 or so less minutes on the phone each day can go a long way in keeping you sane.

Depending Too Much On One Person

Building up a business from the ground is an impressive accomplishment, and you should feel proud of what you’ve done to get your firm to this point. There would be no business without you, but that doesn’t mean your law office shouldn’t be able to get by for a few hours or even a few days without you around.

Being dependent on just one or two people to keep a firm going each day, will not only put a tremendous amount of stress on those individuals, but greatly limit what your firm can accomplish. You need an answering service that can help you manage your clients not only when you’re inside the office, but when you’re away from the office as well. That way if you need to be away from the office for large portions of the day, for things like court appearances or meetings, you can know your practice is still running at its most efficient and is able to effectively hold the interest of new potential clients.

Answering Legal provides a variety of call forwarding options to choose from, which make it easy for us to manage your callers during times you’re unavailable. When you’re busy, we’ll make sure all of your new callers will get to hear a live voice, have their case information retrieved through the legal intake process, and are told when they can expect to hear back from you. You’ll never miss out on anything too important, because we’ll keep you updated with customer messages through email and text messages. This allows you to stay in full control of your office, during the times in which you’re not even there. So whether you need to leave to go represent a client, or decide to take that much needed vacation, your business will not be prevented from growing while you’re away.

Related: 4 ways a quality message taking service will keep clients from slipping away from your firm. Learn more here.

Balancing Quality and Growth

Increasing your client list is always a good thing. It provides your business with more financial opportunity, which in turn can lead to better things for your firm and everyday life. But, one thing fast growing firms need to be wary of is the quality of their service dropping off. If your client list expands, but your staff to handle those new clients doesn’t, serving your customers could become more challenging. And if you fail to meet your current clients’ service expectations, whatever short term growth you are experiencing will not last long.

Answering Legal can help firms experiencing growth answer all of their new clients’ calls, and maintain a high level of customer service while doing so. No matter how big your client list gets, our legal intake receptionist team will be able to handle it. There will never be a drop off in the quality of your phone answering service, because we’ll only allow highly trained and experienced receptionists to answer the phones on your behalf. We constantly monitor our receptionist team and the quality of the work they do, to ensure our customers only provide the best for their customers.

As you begin taking on more and more clients, your firm will begin developing a larger reputation. Making sure people consistently have positive things to say about your business is the key to achieving sustainable growth for your firm. We’re confident that Answering Legal can help cultivate your small business a reputation that will attract even more customers to your practice.