The Answering Legal Briefing: How To Vacation This Summer Without Shutting Down Your Practice

Welcome to another edition of the Answering Legal Briefing, a monthly blog post in which we update you on the latest news surrounding our company, and give you insider tips on how to make the most out of a legal answering service.

During normal years, April is about the time when we all start to get antsy, and begin making plans for a summer getaway. With the weather getting nicer, and your patience for sitting inside gradually decreasing, it’s nice to have something to look forward to.

During pandemic times, our desire to take a break and get away for a while is significantly higher than normal. Many of us have gone over a year without a true vacation, or at least one that involves leaving our backyards. With more and more people receiving their COVID-19 vaccine, the idea of finally taking that true vacation this summer has become very realistic.

Of course, small firm lawyers and solo practitioners have a lot more than health concerns keeping them from planning their next vacation. They also need to worry about keeping their firm up and running. During these times, even missing just a few clients can end up setting back a growing firm greatly.

Well if you’re an attorney managing a growing firm reading this post, we have some good news for you.

You Can Have Your Vacation And Still Get Clients Too

That’s right, with the help of our 24/7 virtual receptionist team, it is possible for lawyers to take extended time away from the office and not shut down their firms. Attorneys who use Answering Legal have the ability to forward calls to our service at any time, and continue doing so for as long as they need to.

So let’s say you’re an Answering Legal customer, and you’re looking to take off from July 2nd to the 11th. The week before you leave, all you need to do is simply reach out to our team and let us know that you’d like your firm’s calls to be automatically forwarded to our service during the days in which you’re away. During that stretch of time, any calls your firm receives will be immediately fielded by one of our highly trained virtual receptionists.

How Will We Attend To Your Callers While You’re Away?

Even when you can’t immediately be there for your existing clients, associates and new prospects, it’s important to give them a live representative of your firm to speak with. Sending callers to voicemail and leaving them in the dark about when they’ll be hearing back from you, could leave them with the impression that you’re uncaring and unreliable. It ultimately could end up costing you business.

Offering a live response to callers through one of our virtual receptionists is a much better way to go. Our receptionist will greet your caller, politely inform them that you’re away from the office and let them know when you’ll be returning. We can also collect messages and legal intake information from your callers, and if you’d like, give callers the opportunity to schedule a future appointment with you. Even if callers end up being a little frustrated about not being able to speak to you right away, they’ll be more accepting of the situation having spoken to a real person and knowing when they can expect to hear from you directly.

But What If My Clients Demand Immediate Attention?

Lawyers who work in certain fields, particularly ones that involve clients facing criminal charges, can’t exactly wait a week to get back to their new leads. Those attorneys will have to get a bit more creative using our service during their vacation time.

For lawyers that want to be available for their new leads during their time off, we can offer one of three solutions.

1. While you’re away, let a trusted member of your staff handle calls from new leads. Our service can help simplify the process by having any calls your office receives ring on their preferred line. We can also send your staff members text and email messages, recapping any calls our receptionists handle on your firm’s behalf.
2. Make yourself available to speak only with new leads. Continue forwarding your firm’s calls to our service and whenever a potential client contacts your firm, our service can reach out to you for a live transfer opportunity.
3. Let our service answer all of your calls while you’re away, and follow along with the messages we send you on your smartphone or laptop. Our receptionist’s messages will let you know if there are any pressing client matters that are worth interrupting your vacation for.

No matter what your work life situation is, we’re willing to bet that our receptionist team can give you the coverage you need to take some much-needed time off this summer. And after your vacation ends, you’ll still have 24/7 live phone answering support for busy work days, overnights, weekends and holidays.

That’s it for this month’s briefing. For any lawyers who are currently not using Answering Legal, but are interested in giving the service a try for free for 7 days, fill out this form or give our team a call at 631-686-9700 to further discuss options.

Also be sure to check out last month’s briefing: Breaking Down Some Of Our Recent Reviews