Case Closed: Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant at Your Law Firm

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Virtual assistants can help lawyers with many of the daily tasks that keep them from focusing on client work. Not every law practice has the unlimited resources necessary to pay for dozens of legal secretaries, paralegals, and assistants. In fact, most firms and offices may not be able to afford one or two! So, what are you to do? Be at two places at once — both the courtroom and at the office? Not likely. Instead, with a virtual assistant someone else takes care of the tasks that eat up the precious time any attorney needs.

Thanks to the ever changing advances in technology and the internet, attorneys no longer need to search high and low for stellar legal assistance. Virtual Assistants are helping small, medium, and large business owners to make their professional and personal lives much easier. Thankfully, the help of Virtual Assistants has extended into the legal realm as well.

The Difficulties of Small Firms and Solo Practitioners

“Time is money.”

No truer statement applies especially to the legal field. Saving and managing money effectively and efficiently is imperative for the success of small law offices, and so it is understandable for small office attorneys to do most, if not ALL, of the work. This includes setting up and confirming appointments, answering and screening phone calls, bookkeeping, designing or updating your website, accounting, and maintaining an effective social media presence.

You did not attain your J.D. and pass the bar exam to go back and do the jobs you had as an intern. Hire a virtual assistant. Click To Tweet

Bear this in mind – every second you personally take to complete each meticulous task is a precious second you miss to speak with a prospective or current client, drive to the courthouse, or even just catch your breath. It does not have to be this way. There IS a middle ground.

The Solution: Virtual Assistants

While there are many small and large benefits to hiring one or multiple VAs, they can be narrowed down to three primary benefits that you miss out on when not employing them.

Virtual Assistants save time, money, and stress

When many business owners are spending over four hours per day checking and responding to emails, they are losing nearly 1,000 hours per year! Insert the art of delegation.  With the help of a VA , you can minimize, if not eliminate, the time you use to worry about emails from work. Imagine an additional 1,000 billable hours per year you can use to draft and finalize motions and proposed orders, meet with new and existing clients, or even to simply go home early without a worry about the office!

Additionally, virtual assistants are independent contractors, so you do not have to worry about paid vacations, benefits, retirement, or office equipment and supplies for your VA! Crunch these numbers: If you have a billable rate of $200/hr and you spend five hours per week doing incredibly low value, meticulous work, that is $1000 per week that you are in essence losing! Hiring a virtual assistant allows you to perform those tasks at a fraction of the cost while you can focus on higher valued work.

Virtual Assistants can complete a wide range of tasks

Here is a glimpse of tasks that VAs can tackle for your law practice:

  • legal research
  • legal document drafting
  • bookkeeping
  • answering phones
  • social media and online marketing
  • email and website management
  • calendar and meeting management
  • deposition scheduling
  • hand-to-online note transcription
  • booking travel visits

Remember: you do not need someone in-house to do these tasks. You can hire a VA to do these tasks and pay them only for the time worked.

You get to lawyer!

You did not attain your J.D. and pass the bar exam to go back and do the jobs you had as an intern. By no means is that to suggest that those tasks are unimportant, but they are simply not the tasks you have studied and trained to do. So, it doesn’t make sense to continue letting 80% of your job consist of the tasks you can afford to hire someone else to do!

What to do now?

Do your research on virtual assistants. Not all are equal. If and when you do hire a VA, it is important to keep in mind these five important tips in approaching your new team member:

  1. Build rapport with your VA(s) by setting aside time each week to video chat or call them.
  2. Be mindful to delegate and not simply “dump” tasks. Set mutually achievable deadlines and provide clear instructions on what you need completed; you can do this by creating a manual for your VA to refer to.
  3. Be sure to discover your VAs strengths and capitalize on them!
  4. Create a consistent routine so as to maintain clear, effective communication between you and your VA.
  5. Create communication rules on how and when to communicate with each other, so to not send mixed or too many signals.

Here’s the bottom line – you don’t have to do it all anymore. By bringing on a virtual assistant, you can get back to taking care of the clients who have entrusted their business to you and working with potential clients. Attorneys who learn to delegate the tasks that monopolize their time are able to develop and grow their practice exponentially. With the help of a virtual assistant, you can increase your productivity, billable time, and your sanity!

One thought on “Case Closed: Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant at Your Law Firm

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