Get An After Hours Call Center, It Might Just Save Your Life

“Jeez, Answering Legal must be really desperate, using such a click baity headline.”

Well we certainly don’t mean to come across as overdramatic, but we like our customers and blog subscribers a lot, and would like you all to remain happy and healthy for many years to come. That’s why in this post, we’ll be discussing how working consistently long hours — especially the type of high stress hours being a lawyer demands — can be seriously detrimental to your health.

Some Things Everyone Putting In Long Hours At An Office Should Know:

• According to WebMD, working 61 to 70 hours a week increases the risk of coronary heart disease by 42 percent, and working 71 to 80 hours increases it by 63 percent.
• The European Heart Journal reports that people who work long hours have an increased risk of developing an irregular heart rhythm known as atrial fibrillation.
• A study performed by Columbia University on a group of workers over 45, revealed that employees who were sedentary for more than 13 hours a day were twice as likely to die prematurely as those who were inactive for 11.5 hours.

In this blog post, we’ll go deeper into why attorneys feel the need to work more than the typical 40 hours a week, and discuss how an after hours call center can be a real lifesaver (literally) for those running legal practices.

Why Are Lawyers At Risk?

We’re sure many of you read the above presented facts, and didn’t take them too seriously. It’s often hard to imagine anything like we described actually happening to you, especially for our readers in the prime of their life. But, even the most physically fit and mentally strong attorneys are susceptible to major health issues if they continuously work too many hours. Even if you feel fine now, by frequently burning yourself out working, you could be setting yourself up for future health problems.

As an attorney, we know you’re used to taking on more than the average American worker does on a daily basis. You’ve seen firsthand that pushing yourself and diving deep into your work can produce incredible results. This “no rest for the weary” mentality has been driven deep into your soul since law school.

If you’re a lawyer lucky enough to run your own practice or solo firm, it can be hard to leave your office at five, knowing that the more work time you put in the more financial opportunity awaits you. When running your own law office, you’re in almost complete control of your own destiny, which can be an amazing and very dangerous thing. As we’ll address shortly, the healthiest and most successful of lawyers know that it’s not always best to work harder, but instead to work smarter.

But, If I Stop, My Practice Stops

If you’ve made it this far into the blog post, you’re probably at least willing to acknowledge the fact that frequently working after hours and weekends is not the best idea. So what can you do about it? Sure you could just commit to clocking out at 5 p.m. every day, but by doing so you’ll likely be missing out on some serious client opportunities that could help grow your firm exponentially.

The truth is your firm needs some kind of after hours phone answering, because:

• Today’s consumers typically won’t leave you voicemails.
• There are many types of attorneys who have their best client opportunities occur after hours.

Unfortunately, taking on running a law firm and all of its after hours call handling responsibilities yourself isn’t the answer either. Having an entire business dependent on your shoulders alone, is a weight no one should have to bare. And if you were to encounter a health issue, your law practice could face serious trouble while your away. Dina Eisenberg, a former prosecutor who now runs a delegation & automation consulting/training firm, provided an example of this in her recent “Let’s Talk Legal Marketing” feature.

Eisenberg said: “My ex-husband lost a million dollar business after a sneeze required emergency back surgery. He never wanted to have a team out of fear, so his business stopped when he did. His large corporate clients deemed him unreliable and took their business elsewhere. I knew solo lawyers who were in the same precarious position- too afraid to let go and too busy to be happy.”

So to recap, your law office needs it’s phones answered after hours in order to be at it’s best, and you need to stay away from the office after hours in order to be at your best.

So What’s The Solution?

Utilizing an after hours call center can be a great first step towards getting your weekly work hours down to a more reasonable number, while not closing the door on after hours lead capturing opportunities.

Answering Legal, a premier after hours call center choice, can:

• Provide 24/7/365 phone answering for attorneys, guaranteeing that your firm doesn’t miss out on connecting with a single caller.
• Offer trained legal receptionists to perform full legal intake on all new potential clients, and take detailed messages to ensure consumers don’t move on to your competitors while your away.
• Keep you in the loop on who is calling while your away from your desk, with detailed email and/or SMS text messages.

A service like Answering Legal should give you the confidence and peace of mind you need to take back your evenings and weekends, and provide your body the rest it needs. An after hours call center can also help firms of any size take on more clients and grow their business, eventually getting to the point where they can begin adding on more in-house support.

Once you begin using Answering Legal, you should being to see it’s impact right away. Sign-up for a free trial today! We’re pretty confident you’ll never want to go back to not having an after hours call center.