Ways To Use An Answering Service For Your Law Firm
There are so many benefits to using an answering service for your law firm. Some might say there are too many to name, but we think we’ve done a pretty good job at not only naming them all, but explaining the reasons in depth and even detailing how they will benefit you specifically. Each section of this book is based on the size of your firm, so you’ll know exactly how this can benefit you.
First, pick the law firm size that best describes your practice.
1-3 Employees
Solo Practitioner
Here, you will learn the different ways that the 3 types of call forwarding with an answering service that will help your practice, so that you can make the best choice!
You will also learn about all of our legal intake processes, call routing and transferring, bilingual services, calendaring, and many other services!
Straight Call Forwarding
Straight call forwarding means that you forward your calls to us on the first ring, so that Answering Legal sees the call on the first ring. Solo Practitioner law firms that use Answering Legal rarely use straight call forwarding, as conditional call forwarding is the preferred method, however, there are some great benefits and ways to use straight call forwarding! Here are some ways that attorneys utilize straight call forwarding and Answering Legal.
Constant Call Forwarding
This means that your call forwarding is not turned on and off, and Answering Legal answers 100% of the calls. If the call is not a nuisance call, we screen the calls and announce them before we transfer them into you. This works especially well for our attorneys with no employees, since their clients always get to speak to a live person, and the attorney speaks to the caller whenever he/she is available. There are a few ways that this benefits the attorney, but there are a few drawbacks.
Pros
- The perceived image of the firm is always professional.
- Callers always get to speak to a live representative of the firm.
- The calls are always screened before getting transferred.
- If the attorney is unavailable, the caller leaves a message with a live person.
Cons
- Your call volume will be higher, resulting in a larger monthly bill.
- You don’t have the opportunity to take any of the calls yourself.
Manual Call Forwarding
This means that you forward your calls to Answering Legal on the first ring, but you turn on and turn off call forwarding as needed. Usually, attorneys will turn on the call forwarding when they leave for the night/weekend, and they turn off the call forwarding when they arrive back the next work day. Here are a few ways this can benefit your practice.
Pros
- You always have someone during the nights/weekends answering your phones.
- You and your in-house staff can manage the phones during the day, keeping your minute usage low and monthly bill low.
- You keep a personal touch by answering the phones yourself.
Cons
- When you’re extremely busy, you might miss phone calls or have to put people on hold.
- If you forget to forward your calls for the weekend you might miss out on multiple new clients.
If you like to have complete control over everything inside of your office, then straight call forwarding is for you. You can turn call forwarding on and off as you please, and, depending on your provider, you can usually do this directly from your office phone! Straight call forwarding is for the attorney who never forgets anything. We have a lot of attorneys who handle their phones in these two ways, and they are very successful in doing so! If you are interested in utilizing straight call forwarding, here are some ways you can turn straight call forwarding on and off right from your phone!
Continue to Call Forwarding Tutorials
Time of Day Call Forwarding
Time of day call forwarding takes the “everybody makes mistakes” element out of your call forwarding process. What we mean by this is, instead of having to remember to forward your calls at the end of the work day every day, you can set times of the day where your phone will ring inside of your office, and times of the day where your calls automatically forward to Answering Legal. Here are some pros and cons of using Time of Day Call Forwarding:
Pros
- You’ll never have to worry about forgetting to turn on call forwarding.
- Your office’s weekend phone calls will be 100% covered.
- You keep a personal touch by answering calls yourself during the work day.
- You and your staff answer calls during the day keeping your minute usage lower.
Cons
- If you leave early for the day or decide to take a day off, you’ll have to make sure to forward your calls straight to Answering Legal, and sometimes this will turn off your time of day call forwarding.
- When you’re extremely busy, you might miss phone calls or have to put people on hold.
If you like to know that no matter what, a computer will handle turning on and turning off your call forwarding at predetermined times, then time of day call forwarding is for you. Don’t leave your call forwarding up to human error, let your phone’s call forwarding become completely automated so that you never have to worry about forgetting to turn on call forwarding when you leave the office or forget to turn off call forwarding when you get back! Time of day call forwarding is for the attorney who likes to have things done automatically, so that he/she can think about the more important things, like his/her clients!
Conditional Call Forwarding
Conditional Call Forwarding is the most preferred method of call forwarding. What conditional call forwarding does is allow the calls to ring first on your phone, and after a few rings, the call will automatically forward over to Answering Legal. This means that if you are on the phone and can’t answer, miss the call, have no service, or for whatever reason, can’t answer the phone, your call will forward over to Answering Legal.
Here are some pros and cons of using conditional call forwarding:
Pros
- Your call forwarding is always on, you don’t have to worry about turning the forwarding on and off.
- Your calls are always 100% ensured to be answered by a live representative of your firm.
- When you are extremely busy during the day, you don’t have to put callers on hold, their calls will be answered by us at Answering Legal.
- You always have the opportunity to answer the calls first, keeping your minute usage low.
- You still have complete control over forwarding your number.
Cons
- On weekends when you aren’t answering your phones, your callers will experience at least 3 rings before having their calls answered.
Conditional call forwarding is the most preferred method of call forwarding because it is the only method that allows you to still answer your phone while being 100% covered by Answering Legal as overflow. This method is for the attorney who is hands on enough to want to answer his/her own phone, but practical enough to understand that answering your own phone 100% of the time is simply not possible. If you are interested in setting up conditional call forwarding, here is a list of the most popular networks’ conditional call forwarding instructions.
Continue to Call Forwarding Tutorials
Bilingual Services
Answering Legal is fully equipped to handle Spanish speaking callers, 24 hours a day, by employing a staff of highly trained, fluent Spanish speaking virtual receptionists who can handle your calls in Spanish seamlessly. There are a lot of reasons to want a Spanish speaking answering service, and here are some of the best benefits of having a bilingual answering service.
Increased Market Share
If you are looking to expand your firm by capturing a new audience without having to hire new employees, then having a Spanish answering service will be the best way to do this. If you were previously not using a bilingual answering service to handle your calls, then Spanish speaking potential clients were calling in, having difficulty communicating, and calling elsewhere for help. This is especially true if you were not previously using an answering service at all.
Separate Spanish Advertising Line
Solo Practitioner firms sometimes want to expand their reach by advertising directly to the Spanish speaking community. For example, if you start running an advertising campaign in Spanish using TV, Radio, billboard, and other types of advertisements, you can use Answering Legal this way:
You can forward a dedicated telephone number that you only advertise to Spanish speaking clients directly to Answering Legal. What this does is not only capture every single call generated by your advertising dollars by having a live bilingual virtual receptionist answer the calls, this also saves you the money and energy of hiring and training additional Spanish speaking staff to field the calls your advertising campaign will generate. You will automatically have Answering Legal seamlessly handle these calls for you, help you make more money, and help you to assist a part of the community that was not receiving your help before.
Main Types of Legal Intake
There are generally 4 types of laws practiced by the attorneys that use Answering Legal.
They usually consist of:
- Criminal Defense
- Bankruptcy
- Family Law
- Personal Injury
Since these matters are usually emergencies, it is imperative to capture the new caller with a legal intake as soon as possible, so that he/she does not hang up and contact another law firm for help right away. This is especially true if you spend money advertising, because you should not let your advertising dollars go to waste.
That being said, here are the typical legal intake questions asked for each of these above matters.
Criminal Defense
Here is a hypothetical but typical conversation of a potential criminal defense client caller and a legal intake receptionist at Answering Legal. The Caller will be know as “CD” and the receptionist will be known as “AL”.
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I was arrested for a DUI.
AL: Okay, Mr. Doe. May I ask the date of the arrest?
CD: Yes, it was March 26.
AL: And do you know your next court date?
CD: Yes it is April 16.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and may I ask which County this happened in?
CD: Yes, it happened in Broome County.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Bankruptcy
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I think I need to file for bankruptcy.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, and are you currently working?
CD: Yes, I am.
AL: Thank you, and have your wages been garnished or are they about to be garnished?
CD: No, they have not been and will not be garnished.
AL: Okay, Mr. Doe, and is your home in foreclosure?
CD: No, it is not.
AL: And last question, Mr. Doe, approximately how much debt do you have?
CD: About 50,000 dollars.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Family Law
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I want to file for divorce.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe. May I ask if there are children involved?
CD: Yes, we have 3 children.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and do you own a home with your spouse?
CD: Yes, we own a home.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Personal Injury
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I slipped and fell in my bank.
AL: Okay, Mr. Doe, and when did this accident occur?
CD: This happened on March 25th.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. May I ask the injuries you sustained?
CD: Yes, I broke my hip and my wrist.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Call Routing and Transferring
You might be thinking, “But what happens when you try to get me on the phone with the potentially new client?” The answer is, we simply call you up and announce the call to you. We will identify ourselves as Answering Legal, let you know who is calling and what they are calling about, and ask if you would like to take the call! If you are unavailable to speak with the potential new client, we will get back on the phone with the caller, finish performing the legal intake, and send you your messages instantaneously via SMS text message, email, or both! We will also schedule an appointment if you have predetermined that you would like us to handle scheduling appointments for you.
Appointment Scheduling
Appointment scheduling is extremely easy with Answering Legal. Not only do we fully integrate with your favorite scheduling software, all you have to do is provide an access to a separate admin for Answering Legal to log into and create appointments for you. What we do is have you enter open time slots into your schedule, and we can offer the available time slots to your callers so that you have appointments for consultations set without ever having to answer the phone.
4-7 Employees
Small Law Firm
Here, you will learn the different ways that the 3 types of call forwarding will help your practice, so that you can make the best choice!
You will also learn about all of our legal intake processes, call routing and transferring, bilingual services, calendaring, and many other services!
Straight Call Forwarding
Straight call forwarding means that you forward your calls to us on the first ring, so that Answering Legal sees the call on the first ring. Small law firms that use Answering Legal rarely use straight call forwarding, as conditional call forwarding is the preferred method, however, there are some great benefits and ways to use straight call forwarding! Here are some ways that small sized law firms utilize straight call forwarding and Answering Legal.
Constant Call Forwarding
This means that your call forwarding is not turned on and off, and Answering Legal answers 100% of the calls. If the call is not a nuisance call, we screen the calls and announce them before we transfer them into you.
Since you have multiple employees that are always available to answer the phone, this might be useful to you for getting rid of unwanted telemarketing and nuisance calls. You can simply have the calls announced to your staff by the receptionist at Answering Legal, and your staff will never have to speak to a telemarketer. There are a few ways that this benefits the firm, but there are a few drawbacks.
Pros
- The perceived image of the firm is always professional.
- Callers always get to speak to a live representative of the firm.
- The calls are always screened before getting transferred.
- If everyone is unavailable, your caller is still speaking with a live person.
- You are guaranteed to never miss a phone call.
Cons
- Your call volume will be higher, resulting in a larger monthly bill.
- Your staff don’t have the opportunity to take all of the calls.
- You already have staff in place, so this might process might be overkill.
Manual Call Forwarding
This means that you forward your calls to Answering Legal on the first ring, but you turn on and turn off call forwarding as needed. Usually, attorneys will turn on the call forwarding when they leave for the night/weekend, and they turn off the call forwarding when they arrive back the next work day. Here are a few ways this can benefit your practice.
Pros
- You always have someone during the nights/weekends answering your phones.
- You and your in-house staff can manage the phones during the day, keeping your minute usage low and monthly bill low.
- You keep a personal touch by having your staff answer the phones.
Cons
- When you’re extremely busy, you might miss phone calls or have to put people on hold, as there is no overflow feature using manual call forwarding.
- If you forget to forward your calls for the weekend you might miss out on multiple new clients.
If you like to have complete control over everything inside of your office, then straight call forwarding is for you. You can turn call forwarding on and off as you please, and, depending on your provider, you can usually do this directly from your office phone! Straight call forwarding is for the attorney who never forgets anything. We have a lot of attorneys who handle their phones in these two ways, and they are very successful in doing so! If you are interested in utilizing straight call forwarding, here are some ways you can turn straight call forwarding on and off right from your phone!
Continue to Call Forwarding Tutorials
Time of Day Call Forwarding
Time of day call forwarding takes the “everybody makes mistakes” element out of your call forwarding process. What we mean by this is, instead of having to remember to forward your calls at the end of the work day every day, you can set times of the day where your phone will ring inside of your office, and times of the day where your calls automatically forward to Answering Legal.
Here are some pros and cons of using Time of Day Call Forwarding:
Pros
- You’ll never have to worry about forgetting to turn on call forwarding.
- Your office’s weekend phone calls will be 100% covered.
- You keep a personal touch by having your staff answer calls during the work day.
- Your staff answers calls during the day keeping your minute usage lower.
Cons
- If you leave early for the day or decide to take a day off, you’ll have to make sure to forward your calls straight to Answering Legal, and sometimes this will turn off your time of day call forwarding.
- When you’re extremely busy, you might miss phone calls or have to put people on hold, as there is no overflow feature with time of day call forwarding.
If you like to know that no matter what, a computer will handle turning on and turning off your call forwarding at predetermined times, then time of day call forwarding is for you. Don’t leave your call forwarding up to human error, let your phone’s call forwarding become completely automated so that you never have to worry about forgetting to turn on call forwarding when you leave the office or forget to turn off call forwarding when you get back! Time of day call forwarding is for the attorney who likes to have things done automatically, so that he/she can think about the more important things, like his/her clients, and running the entire practice!
Conditional Call Forwarding
Conditional Call Forwarding is the most preferred method of call forwarding. What conditional call forwarding does is allow the calls to ring first on your phone, and after a few rings, the call will automatically forward over to Answering Legal. This means that if you are on the phone and can’t answer, miss the call, have no service, or for whatever reason, no one can answer the phone, your call will forward over to Answering Legal.
Here are some pros and cons of using conditional call forwarding:
Pros
- Your call forwarding is always on, you don’t have to worry about turning the forwarding on and off.
- Your calls are always 100% ensured to be answered by a live representative of your firm.
- When you are extremely busy during the day, your staff won’t have to put callers on hold, their calls will be answered by us at Answering Legal.
- Your staff always have the opportunity to answer the calls first, keeping your minute usage low.
- You still have complete control over forwarding your number.
Cons
- On weekends when you aren’t answering your phones, your callers will experience at least 3 rings before having their calls answered.
Conditional call forwarding is the most preferred method of call forwarding because it is the only method that allows you to still answer your phone while being 100% covered by Answering Legal as overflow. This method is for the small sized firm whose staff can handle the phone calls ahd intakes during the day, but understand that answering the phones 100% of the time is simply not possible - especially in a busy law office where overflow call handling would be beneficial, and nights and weekends when no one is in the office. If you are interested in setting up conditional call forwarding, here is a list of the most popular networks’ conditional call forwarding instructions.
Continue to Call Forwarding Tutorials
Bilingual Services
Answering Legal is fully equipped to handle Spanish speaking callers, 24 hours a day, by employing a staff of highly trained, fluent Spanish speaking virtual receptionists who can handle your calls in Spanish seamlessly. There are a lot of reasons to want a Spanish speaking answering service, and here are some of the best benefits of having a bilingual answering service.
Increased Market Share
If you are looking to expand your firm by capturing a new audience without having to hire new employees, then having a Spanish answering service will be the best way to do this. If you were previously not using a bilingual answering service to handle your calls, then Spanish speaking potential clients were calling in, having difficulty communicating, and calling elsewhere for help. This is especially true if you were not previously using an answering service at all. This can also be useful for the small sized law firms who have a lot of calls coming in at once, since you won’t have to worry that the incoming call that you’ll be sending to Answering Legal when your staff are too busy won’t be able to be handled in Spanish. Answering Legal will handle your Spanish callers and keep you worry free.
Separate Spanish advertising line
Small sized sometimes want to expand their reach by advertising directly to the Spanish speaking community. For example, if you start running an advertising campaign in Spanish using TV, Radio, billboard, and other types of advertisements, you can use Answering Legal this way: You can forward a dedicated telephone number that you only advertise to Spanish speaking clients directly to Answering Legal. What this does is not only capture every single call generated by your advertising dollars by having a live bilingual virtual receptionist answer the calls, this also saves you the money and energy of hiring and training additional Spanish speaking staff to field the calls your advertising campaign will generate. You will automatically have Answering Legal seamlessly handle these calls for you, help you make more money, and help you to assist a part of the community that was not receiving your help before.
Main Types of Legal Intake
There are generally 4 types of laws practiced by the attorneys that use Answering Legal.
They usually consist of:
- Criminal Defense
- Bankruptcy
- Family Law
- Personal Injury
Since these matters are usually emergencies, it is imperative to capture the new caller with a legal intake as soon as possible, so that he/she does not hang up and contact another law firm for help right away. This is especially true if you spend money advertising, because you should not let your advertising dollars go to waste. That being said, here are the typical legal intake questions asked for each of these above matters.
Criminal Defense
Here is a hypothetical but typical conversation of a potential criminal defense client caller and a legal intake receptionist at Answering Legal. The Caller will be know as “CD” and the receptionist will be known as “AL”.
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I was arrested for a DUI.
AL: Okay, Mr. Doe. May I ask the date of the arrest?
CD: Yes, it was March 26.
AL: And do you know your next court date?
CD: Yes it is April 16.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and may I ask which County this happened in?
CD: Yes, it happened in Broome County.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Bankruptcy
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I think I need to file for bankruptcy.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, and are you currently working?
CD: Yes, I am.
AL: Thank you, and have your wages been garnished or are they about to be garnished?
CD: No, they have not been and will not be garnished.
AL: Okay, Mr. Doe, and is your home in foreclosure?
CD: No, it is not.
AL: And last question, Mr. Doe, approximately how much debt do you have?
CD: About 50,000 dollars.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Family Law
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I want to file for divorce.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe. May I ask if there are children involved?
CD: Yes, we have 3 children.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and do you own a home with your spouse?
CD: Yes, we own a home.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Personal Injury
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I slipped and fell in my bank.
AL: Okay, Mr. Doe, and when did this accident occur?
CD: This happened on March 25th.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. May I ask the injuries you sustained?
CD: Yes, I broke my hip and my wrist.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Call Routing and Transferring
You might be thinking, “But what happens when you try to get me on the phone with the potentially new client?” The answer is, we simply call you up and announce the call to you. We will identify ourselves as Answering Legal, let you know who is calling and what they are calling about, and ask if you would like to take the call! If you are unavailable to speak with the potential new client, we will get back on the phone with the caller, finish performing the legal intake, and send you your messages instantaneously via SMS text message, email, or both! We will also schedule an appointment if you have predetermined that you would like us to handle scheduling appointments for you.
Appointment Scheduling
Appointment scheduling is extremely easy with Answering Legal. Not only do we fully integrate with your favorite scheduling software, all you have to do is provide an access to a separate admin for Answering Legal to log into and create appointments for you. What we do is have you enter open time slots into your schedule, and we can offer the available time slots to your callers so that you have appointments for consultations set without ever having to answer the phone.
8+ Employees
Medium Law Firm
Here, you will learn the different ways that the 3 types of call forwarding will help your practice, so that you can make the best choice!
You will also learn about all of our legal intake processes, call routing and transferring, bilingual services, calendaring, and many other services!
Straight Call Forwarding
Straight call forwarding means that you forward your calls to us on the first ring, so that Answering Legal sees the call on the first ring. Large law firms that use Answering Legal often use straight call forwarding, as manual call forwarding is the preferred method for this sized law firm. There are some great benefits and ways to use straight call forwarding! Here are some ways that medium sized law firms utilize straight call forwarding and Answering Legal.
Constant Call Forwarding
This means that your call forwarding is not turned on and off, and Answering Legal answers 100% of the calls. If the call is not a nuisance call, we screen the calls and announce them before we transfer them into you. Since you have multiple employees that are always available to answer the phone, this might be useful to you for getting rid of unwanted telemarketing and nuisance calls. You can simply have the calls announced to your staff by the receptionist at Answering Legal, and your staff will never have to speak to a telemarketer.
There are a few ways that this benefits the firm, but there are a few drawbacks.
Pros
- The perceived image of the firm is always professional.
- Callers always get to speak to a live representative of the firm.
- The calls are always screened before getting transferred.
- If everyone is unavailable, your caller is still speaking with a live person.
- You are guaranteed to never miss a phone call.
Cons
- Your call volume will be higher, resulting in a larger monthly bill.
- Your staff don’t have the opportunity to take all of the calls.
- You already have staff in place, so this might process might be overkill.
Manual Call Forwarding
This means that you forward your calls to Answering Legal on the first ring, but you turn on and turn off call forwarding as needed. Usually, large sized firms will turn on the call forwarding when they leave for the night/weekend, and they turn off the call forwarding when they arrive back the next work day.
Here are a few ways this can benefit your practice.
Pros
- You always have someone during the nights/weekends answering your phones.
- You and your in-house staff can manage the phones during the day, keeping your minute usage low and monthly bill low.
- You keep a personal touch by having your staff answer the phones.
Cons
- When you’re extremely busy, you might miss phone calls or have to put people on hold, as there is no overflow feature using manual call forwarding, although this is unlikely with larger law firms.
- If you forget to forward your calls for the weekend you might miss out on multiple new clients.
If you like to have complete control over everything inside of your office, then straight call forwarding is for you. You can turn call forwarding on and off as you please, and, depending on your provider, you can usually do this directly from your office phone! Straight call forwarding is for the large law firms who have their phones completely covered throughout the day, but need the overnight and weekend coverage to catch potential new clients. We have a lot of firms who handle their phones in these two ways, and they are very successful in doing so! If you are interested in utilizing straight call forwarding, here are some ways you can turn straight call forwarding on and off right from your phone!
Continue to Call Forwarding Tutorials
Time of Day Call Forwarding
Time of day call forwarding takes the “everybody makes mistakes” element out of your call forwarding process. What we mean by this is, instead of having to remember to forward your calls at the end of the work day every day, you can set times of the day where your phone will ring inside of your office, and times of the day where your calls automatically forward to Answering Legal.
Here are some pros and cons of using Time of Day Call Forwarding:
Pros
- You’ll never have to worry about forgetting to turn on call forwarding.
- Your office’s weekend phone calls will be 100% covered.
- You keep a personal touch by having your staff answer calls during the work day.
- Your staff answers calls during the day keeping your minute usage lower.
Cons
- If you leave early for the day or decide to take a day off, you’ll have to make sure to forward your calls straight to Answering Legal, and sometimes this will turn off your time of day call forwarding, although this is unlikely with large sized law firms.
- When you’re extremely busy, you might miss phone calls or have to put people on hold, as there is no overflow feature with time of day call forwarding, although if your staff is large enough, you might not ever have this problem.
If you like to know that no matter what, a computer will handle turning on and turning off your call forwarding at predetermined times, then time of day call forwarding is for you. Don’t leave your call forwarding up to human error, let your phone’s call forwarding become completely automated so that you never have to worry about forgetting to turn on call forwarding when you leave the office or forget to turn off call forwarding when you get back!
Time of day call forwarding is for the large sized law firm that likes to have things done automatically, so that everyone else can focus on the more important things, like helping clients, and running the entire practice!
Conditional Call Forwarding
Conditional Call Forwarding is the most preferred method of call forwarding by a majority of Answering Legal users, but not the most preferred by larger firms. What conditional call forwarding does is allow the calls to ring first on your phone, and after a few rings, the call will automatically forward over to Answering Legal. This means that if you are on the phone and can’t answer, miss the call, have no service, or for whatever reason, no one can answer the phone, your call will forward over to Answering Legal.
Here are some pros and cons of using conditional call forwarding:
Pros
- Your call forwarding is always on, you don’t have to worry about turning the forwarding on and off.
- Your calls are always 100% ensured to be answered by a live representative of your firm.
- When you are extremely busy during the day, your staff won’t have to put callers on hold, their calls will be answered by us at Answering Legal.
- Your staff always have the opportunity to answer the calls first, keeping your minute usage low.
- You still have complete control over forwarding your number.
Cons
- On weekends when you aren’t answering your phones, your callers will experience at least 3 rings before having their calls answered.
Conditional call forwarding is the most preferred method of call forwarding because it is the only method that allows you to still answer your phone while being 100% covered by Answering Legal as overflow.
This method is for the medium sized firm whose staff can handle the phone calls ahd intakes during the day, but understand that answering the phones 100% of the time is simply not possible - especially in a busy law office where overflow call handling would be beneficial, and nights and weekends when no one is in the office. If you are interested in setting up conditional call forwarding, here is a list of the most popular networks’ conditional call forwarding instructions.
Continue to Call Forwarding Tutorials
Bilingual Services
Answering Legal is fully equipped to handle Spanish speaking callers, 24 hours a day, by employing a staff of highly trained, fluent Spanish speaking virtual receptionists who can handle your calls in Spanish seamlessly. There are a lot of reasons to want a Spanish speaking answering service, and here are some of the best benefits of having a bilingual answering service.
Increased Market Share
If you are looking to expand your firm by capturing a new audience without having to hire new employees, then having a Spanish answering service will be the best way to do this. If you were previously not using a bilingual answering service to handle your calls, then Spanish speaking potential clients were calling in, having difficulty communicating, and calling elsewhere for help. This is especially true if you were not previously using an answering service at all.
This can also be useful for the large sized law firms who have a lot of calls coming in at once, since you won’t have to worry that the incoming call that you’ll be sending to Answering Legal when your staff are too busy won’t be able to be handled in Spanish. Answering Legal will handle your Spanish callers and keep you worry free.
Separate Spanish Advertising Line
Large sized sometimes want to expand their reach by advertising directly to the Spanish speaking community. For example, if you start running an advertising campaign in Spanish using TV, Radio, billboard, and other types of advertisements, you can use Answering Legal this way:
You can forward a dedicated telephone number that you only advertise to Spanish speaking clients directly to Answering Legal. What this does is not only capture every single call generated by your advertising dollars by having a live bilingual virtual receptionist answer the calls, this also saves you the money and energy of hiring and training additional Spanish speaking staff to field the calls your advertising campaign will generate. You will automatically have Answering Legal seamlessly handle these calls for you, help you make more money, and help you to assist a part of the community that was not receiving your help before.
Main Types of Legal Intake
There are generally 4 types of laws practiced by the attorneys that use Answering Legal.
They usually consist of:
- Criminal Defense
- Bankruptcy
- Family Law
- Personal Injury
Since these matters are usually emergencies, it is imperative to capture the new caller with a legal intake as soon as possible, so that he/she does not hang up and contact another law firm for help right away. This is especially true if you spend money advertising, because you should not let your advertising dollars go to waste.
That being said, here are the typical legal intake questions asked for each of these above matters.
Criminal Defense
Here is a hypothetical but typical conversation of a potential criminal defense client caller and a legal intake receptionist at Answering Legal. The Caller will be know as “CD” and the receptionist will be known as “AL”.
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I was arrested for a DUI.
AL: Okay, Mr. Doe. May I ask the date of the arrest?
CD: Yes, it was March 26.
AL: And do you know your next court date?
CD: Yes it is April 16.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and may I ask which County this happened in?
CD: Yes, it happened in Broome County.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Bankruptcy
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I think I need to file for bankruptcy.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, and are you currently working?
CD: Yes, I am.
AL: Thank you, and have your wages been garnished or are they about to be garnished?
CD: No, they have not been and will not be garnished.
AL: Okay, Mr. Doe, and is your home in foreclosure?
CD: No, it is not.
AL: And last question, Mr. Doe, approximately how much debt do you have?
CD: About 50,000 dollars.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Family Law
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I want to file for divorce.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe. May I ask if there are children involved?
CD: Yes, we have 3 children.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and do you own a home with your spouse?
CD: Yes, we own a home.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Personal Injury
AL: Law Office of Tom Lawyer, how may I help you?
CD: Hi, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lawyer, please.
AL: I’d be happy to put you through to Mr. Lawyer. May I please ask your name?
CD: Yes, my name is John Doe.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe, and is there a good phone number that Mr. Lawyer can reach you at?
CD: Yes, my number is 631-867-5309.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. And may I ask what you are calling Mr. Lawyer about today?
CD: I slipped and fell in my bank.
AL: Okay, Mr. Doe, and when did this accident occur?
CD: This happened on March 25th.
AL: Thank you, Mr. Doe. May I ask the injuries you sustained?
CD: Yes, I broke my hip and my wrist.
AL: Alright, Mr. Doe, please hold on one moment while I get Mr. Lawyer on the line for you.
CD: Thank you.
Call Routing and Transferring
You might be thinking, “But what happens when you try to get me on the phone with the potentially new client?” The answer is, we simply call you up and announce the call to you. We will identify ourselves as Answering Legal, let you know who is calling and what they are calling about, and ask if you would like to take the call! If you are unavailable to speak with the potential new client, we will get back on the phone with the caller, finish performing the legal intake, and send you your messages instantaneously via SMS text message, email, or both! We will also schedule an appointment if you have predetermined that you would like us to handle scheduling appointments for you.
Appointment Scheduling
Appointment scheduling is extremely easy with Answering Legal. Not only do we fully integrate with your favorite scheduling software, all you have to do is provide an access to a separate admin for Answering Legal to log into and create appointments for you. What we do is have you enter open time slots into your schedule, and we can offer the available time slots to your callers so that you have appointments for consultations set without ever having to answer the phone.