Live Answering Service 101: Why You Should Still Hire Answering Legal, Even If You Already Have Staff

For years, law offices have turned to Answering Legal to assist with capturing more new leads and providing a higher level of customer service. Our receptionist team does a great job of delivering on both fronts, but one of the biggest unexpected benefits they provide attorneys is flexibility. Using a 24/7 service like ours means that even when lawyers don’t have time to answer the phone or simply don’t feel like getting on a call, their callers always get to speak with a live person and never feel neglected.

While the value of our service to attorneys without staff is quite evident, we can certainly understand why lawyers that already employ in-house receptionist staff may be somewhat hesitant to pay for additional phone help. If your current staff does a more than adequate job of answering calls, why spend money on outside assistance?

In this live answering service 101 blog post, we’ll discuss exactly why attorneys that already have receptionist staff still need to be using Answering Legal, and go into detail on what makes our service a great investment for law firms of all sizes and budgets.

Your Staff Won’t Always Be Able To Get To The Phone

In today’s ultra-competitive legal world, most lawyers can’t afford to let a single one of their new lead opportunities go to waste. Unfortunately for attorneys, capturing new leads is hard work, and usually only achieved by providing first-time callers to your firm with a live person to speak with. If you allow a prospect to reach your voicemail, they will be much more likely to continue shopping around for help, than leave a message and wait for a call back. Legal consumers generally carry a high level of urgency, and often it’s the first lawyer a consumer speaks with that ends up getting hired.

With all of the above information in mind, your law office really shouldn’t be letting a single one of its calls go unanswered for more than three or four rings. Of course this is a feat even the most dedicated of law office staffs will have trouble pulling off. Your workers will inevitably get pulled into meetings, get stuck on other calls, take lunches, take bathroom breaks and take sick days. There’s not much you can do about any of that, but by signing up with Answering Legal, you can make sure the calls your office can’t get to are still answered by a highly trained legal receptionist.

The overflow call handling services we provide are truly exceptional, as our team will pick up any incoming calls your staff can’t get to after a predetermined number of rings. From there our receptionists can work to transfer someone from your staff in on the call, or take a message from the caller and send that message to you via text and/or email message. Our staff is even able to perform full legal intakes on all of your new leads, taking a significant amount of pressure off you and your employees during busy work days.

You Need Someone Answering Calls During After Hours and Weekends

While your current in-office staff may do a great job of answering the phone, it is important to remember that they are only able to work so many hours a week. For example, if your staff gives you 40 hours a week of phone coverage, that still leaves 128 hours unaccounted for. New lead opportunities can pop up at anytime during those other 128 hours, which is why you really can’t afford to slack on answering your office’s calls during after hours and weekends.

While most lawyers don’t mind answering the occasional call from an important client during the evening or weekends, no attorney wants to be fielding calls non-stop from new prospects during their time away from the office. As we’ve already detailed in this post, Answering Legal’s receptionist team works 24/7, has been extensively trained on performing client intakes, and can keep you in the loop on any calls you may be missing while away from your desk. Let our team help you take back your evenings and weekends, while bringing your client conversion rates to all-time highs.

We’ll Customize A Pricing Plan For Your Firm

We’d imagine most of our readers would have no problem acknowledging the many benefits that can come from the support of a 24/7 live phone answering team. But, as is the case with most things in life, money is always a factor. We recognize that growing legal practices have far from an endless budget, which is why Answering Legal works hard to provide pricing plans that work for firms of all budgets.

Developing the perfect pricing plan for your practice starts with us letting you try out our service for free for 7 days. While you get the chance to know our receptionist team and see how valuable they can be to your business, we’ll be accessing your call volume so we can offer an ideal personalized monthly plan for your firm once the trial period concludes. For lawyers that already have staff handling a large portion of their incoming calls, we can provide smaller monthly minute plans that come at a highly affordable cost.

To speak with a member of the Answering Legal team about beginning your 7-day free trial, fill out this form or give us a call at (631)686-9700. You can also get a custom quote by clicking here.