You might wonder why you should engage with a virtual legal assistant if your law practice still needs to use one. But, if you’ve ever felt overburdened by the work required to manage a legal firm, giving the job to legal virtual assistants can help you free up a lot of time. Finding strategies to increase billable work and boost your law firm’s profitability is more crucial than ever because, according to the 2020 Legal Trends Report, law firms only spend 2.5 hours per day on billable work.
Additionally, legal virtual assistants can help your law company improve operations, expand fast, and offer a client-focused service. They can handle client calls, plan crucial meetings, and coordinate deadlines to finish mundane administrative chores and enhance customer service.
Virtual assistants are a great alternative if you’re debating whether to hire another internal employee for your law firm. This blog post will discuss how to choose and work with a virtual legal assistant for your law practice and the services offered.
A virtual legal assistant: what is it?
Consider a virtual legal assistant as an extension of yourself who handles administrative duties so you may concentrate on representing clients and earning money. A remote legal assistant can take on many mundane activities. These include organising appointments, conducting legal research and writing, maintaining contracts, and managing client communications (phone calls, live chats, emails, etc.).
selecting a virtual legal assistant
To select the ideal virtual assistant for your law company, you should apply a rigorous hiring procedure, whether you use virtual legal assistant companies or hire individuals. The essential methods for choosing the ideal remote legal assistant for your firm’s requirements are listed below.
Sift through prospective virtual legal assistants.
As you look into your options for hiring virtual assistants to handle legal administrative work, you’ll as like as not become overwhelmed by the number of possibilities. To reduce your chances, useful investigate any potential employees and businesses. List all the characteristics you want in a virtual assistant. Verify their prior experience, and request recommendations. Some crucial qualities to take into account:
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ethic at work
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Relationship and Personality
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adaptability and pliability
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Availability
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Communication and writing abilities
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abilities in project management
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talents in legal research
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technology knowledge
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Experience in your field of practise
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exceptional skills in areas like accountancy and marketing
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a readiness to learn
Think about how they will fit your working style.
If you are accustomed to overseeing administrative duties at your law practice, you might help assign work to another person. After all, you’ll need to devote time to acclimating your virtual legal assistant to the procedures of your law office. It’s crucial to hire a virtual assistant who complements your working style. This increases your company’s chances of success while ensuring a smoother transition.
Choose the virtual legal assistant services you must.
Determine what help you need by considering all the non-billable tasks you are already performing. Do you need your virtual legal assistant to perform duties beyond those that are typical for law practice, such as handling client communications, managing documents, and charging clients? Do you need your virtual assistant to assist with marketing and accountancy tasks?
Set objectives
Create clear expectations upfront with your virtual assistant to prevent misunderstandings and disappointments. This could entail establishing a formal agreement or contract so that both sides know what is expected of the working relationship. It would be best if you thought about including the following items in your agreement:
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Regular and transparent communication. A virtual law company focuses on having regular, OK contact. This will ensure that projects stay on schedule and keep you up to date on project and task updates.
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How will you communicate? Make it clear if you’d instead share via email. Your virtual assistant shouldn’t take it for granted that video conferencing always works. Since various communication options are available, decide on the platforms you will use.
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The routines and processes at your legal practice. Only some law companies operate in the same way. Spend time onboarding your virtual assistant to ensure it integrates clear with your current processes and workflows. They will at least comprehend how things operate if they do it this way.
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Your managerial approach. Are you anticipating a lot of solo work from your virtual legal assistant? What assignments will you provide them? Are you using a project management system? What frequency are you anticipating updates and reporting on their work? Will you deliver them feedback, and if so, how often.
Work with virtual legal assistants: Some helpful hints
Learn more about your online legal assistant
The key to a productive working relationship is getting to know your legal assistant. You’ll comprehend them more in person and ace them if you do this. You’ll also be able to gain their trust and enlist their support for your legal practice’s growth. Playing virtual team-building games during video conferences, such as online escape rooms or even short icebreakers, is a lot of fun.
Be ready to oversee a project.
Even though working with virtual legal assistants should free up your time, you should be ready to spend sometime managing projects and communicating with them. Another choice is to assign project management duties to others. Even if you decide to bill for project management, you should give your virtual assistant time to get acquainted with your legal practice’s procedures, workflows, and technological setup.
Clarify your expectations.
Make sure to have regular, clear communication with your virtual assistant. Discuss your communication strategy and the platforms you will use. Inform them of the reports you expect to receive and how often. Make it clear which tasks are most important to your virtual assistant. Do you, for instance, need a weekly report on the activities of your virtual legal assistant? Can you see their task list thanks to a project management tool?
Give precise directions
Going to a colleague’s desk to raise a question is only somewhat workable in a virtual law practice setting. But your virtual assistant should still try to guess how you want them to complete each task. The more specific your instructions are, whether to email clients by your law firm’s messaging policy or collect payment from clients, the more likely they will carry it out well.
Be reliable.
An organised law firm and this go hand in hand. Your virtual assistant will need more access to daily activities at your legal company because they are not internal employees. Your virtual legal assistant will operate better if you follow set timetables, timelines, and deadlines. Tell your virtual assistant, for instance, if you only ever conduct legal client consultations in the morning. If you’ve assigned your virtual assistant a due date for a legal research project, make every effort to meet it.
Utilise software for communication and teamwork
Your law company may better organise projects and collaborate by using legal software. The ability to build standard work lists and no doubt set task deadlines based on case start dates or completed activities will be helpful to your virtual assistant. But pay attention to the permissions that each piece of software has. This is crucial if you have been used to performing every task alone. For security reasons, you may want to restrict sure of your virtual assistant’s permissions, and you might need to maintain informational secrecy in situations when your assistant isn’t full tilt involved.
Services for Virtual Legal Assistants
What kind of virtual legal assistant businesses or persons should you pick now that you know how to select and deal with one? While working with a firm may provide you with more peace of mind, you can hire independent virtual legal assistants. This is because you can, as a rule, count on businesses to check their virtual assistants’ backgrounds and professionalism in detail. Additionally, a top-notch virtual legal assistant firm should be able to assist you if you need any more help.
Equivity
Equivity may support your law practice with a single devoted specialist or a wholly outsourced team, including virtual administrative, marketing, paralegal, and bookkeeping professionals. They can also offer your company an entire legal support staff. Equivity provides on-demand support and has adjustable options.
Use an Esquire
Esquire and Hire use suitable applicants after undergoing thorough screening and vetting. This guarantees that you will only be matched with very qualified personnel. Additionally, you may uncover over 12,000 skilled legal teams by using guided tools and built-in matching algorithms to customise talent to your needs.
Office Bets in the back
Back Office Betties offers specialised virtual legal receptionist services for solo practitioners and small law firms. You get a group that extends your law practice when you hire Back Office Betties. The unit can handle client intakes, make appointments, and handle every call from beginning to end.
You are now prepared to increase your company’s production and efficiency.
If you manage a legal practice, you no doubt believe there is only so much time in the day to get everything done. Virtual legal assistants can aid you in managing your firm better and able from rapid customer responses to document management, billing, and bookkeeping. Ensure well investigate potential candidates and firms before hiring a virtual legal assistant for your business. Consider their compatibility with your law firm as well. Make sure you express yourself sure to establish expectations right away. Virtual legal assistants can help you concentrate on more billable work if you provide them with clear instructions, consistency, and the appropriate software. in the end, this enables you to grow into a more successful law firm. If you want to hire qualified, screened, and experienced applicants for your firm, think about employing virtual legal assistant services like Hire an Esquire and Back Office Betties.
