As a personal injury lawyer, your typical day could involve several hours out of the office and plenty of time busy with casework and meetings. Meanwhile, your potential and current clients may be attempting to reach out to you. Will they be sent to voicemail? Will they be forced to select from the frustrating recording options? Or is your secretary/receptionist having a difficult time keeping up with the volume of calls? In case any or all of these scenarios sound familiar, then your callers might not be receiving what they want from you. When competition between personal injury law firms is fiercer than ever, losing even a single client is not an option.  A lawyer answering service is your solution. Why is it your solution? Let us find out.

You Won’t Miss a Single Phone Call.

Handling a large number of phone calls at a go can be overwhelming for your in-house receptionist or secretary. They can easily miss other calls. Alternatively, if your receptionist or secretary is on sick leave or off duty, you may find it challenging to handle phone calls and at the same time concentrate on your casework. If you partner with an answering service, you will work with numerous answering agents, and they will be responding to every call on time. No call will be overlooked.

You Will Receive After Hours Services

Rerouting prospective clients to voicemail after office hours, on the weekends, or when you are on vacation could result in considerable loss of leads. Without a prompt response, most prospects will hang up the phone and try contacting another firm for help. A lawyer answering service can help you cover your inbound phone calls after regular business hours. Answering agents will work around-the-clock to make sure all leads are captured & nurtured appropriately.

It Provides 24/7 Live Answering

Accidents do not wait for when you’ll be in the office for them to happen. Individuals seek legal representation for personal injury issues at all times, be it day or night. Whether you’re part of a small firm or solo practitioner, an attorney call center prolongs your working hours and makes you as good as the larger firms.

Appointment Scheduling and Reminders

Scheduling appointments is an essential process in your law firm. Before your potential clients hang up that initial phone call, you have to set up an appointment to know the next steps they should take in solving their case. If you partner with an answering service, virtual receptionists will always be available to schedule appointments for you, so you can use the time for something else that’s more important.  They can also use email, phone calls, or text to send appointment reminders to clients and use calendar integrations to add appointments to your calendar automatically.

Bilingual Answering Services

With the Spanish-speaking population growing rapidly in the country, some of your legal leads might not communicate in English fluently to express their needs, leading to a language barrier.  This language barrier may lead to misunderstandings. If you have Spanish-speaking clients, you can significantly benefit from the bilingual services that an answering service offers. Bilingual services will help your clients feel comfortable with your services and know that you care about them. They also help you to expand your reach.

Emergency Call Routing and Emergency/Disaster Response

If you have a virtual receptionist answering your phone calls, you will be able to focus on the more critical matters. However, sometimes you have to handle a call by yourself. When emergency calls come in, answering agents can transfer them to your mobile phone, office, or wherever you will be. Alternatively, they can send them to a member of your staff if you instruct them to do so.

A catastrophe may also strike within your area, for instance, a catastrophic bus accident, and your legal staff might not be available to handle phone calls. In the meantime, the number of clients needing legal assistance may increase. An answering service will cover your call intake during emergencies and disasters so all prospects can receive the necessary help on time.

Client Website Access Is Guaranteed

As a lawyer, you are always up and down, meeting with your clients, appearing in court, or chasing leads. An answering service could create an online portal for you to make it easy for you to operate your account from any place with an internet connection.

An Answering Service Will Help You In Lead Tracking & Tasking

In case your lead does not convert to a prospect during the initial phone call, your staff might not have the time to continue pursuing it. A lawyer answering service maximizes chances for conversion by texting, emailing, and outbound calling leads. You choose the frequency and times.

Call Filtering & Prioritization

Processing and prioritizing calls could take your staff away from critical casework. Your answering agents can filter any phone call that comes in as per priority, enabling you to handle urgent ones first and address others at your convenient time. Filtering and prioritizing calls ensures that you’re only interrupted from your duties when it is truly important or urgent and that you otherwise remain focused on the task at hand.

You Can Retrieve Abandoned Phone Calls

A legal lead may abandon a phone call for several reasons, from anxiety, distractions to spotty services. To ensure a caller like this one receives the assistance they require, you want to return the call. A top-notch attorney answering service will use the most advanced caller technology to immediately retrieve all the abandoned phone calls.

An Answering Service Will Compile Reports For You

Do you make sense out of your business’s analytics? Comprehending the info available to you is a critical aspect in expanding your reach to prospective new clients. An attorney answering service provides your practice with numerous dozens of marketing and call reports. You could use this info to come up with effective and targeted advertising campaigns in the future.

Cost-Effective Services

In case your receptionist/secretary finds it hard to field clients’ phone calls during busy periods, you might have the option of hiring more staff members. Alternatively, you might have to ask your other administrative staff members to abandon their regular duties temporarily and assist with reception tasks. Both of these scenarios could cost you a lot of money. Partnering with an attorney answering service means you have a customized solution available whenever you need it. Also, you will only pay for what you use. This enables you to save a substantial amount of money compared to when you hire in-house staff.

Professional and Specialized Services

Answering agents are trained professionals. Unlike answering agents for other answering services, legal answering agents are familiar and experienced in common law terminology. Thus, they are capable of categorizing phone calls as per the type of case. These agents can answer clients’ questions with professionalism and confidence, providing all kinds of info about your practice.

Customized Call Intake

Potential clients with different legal issues have different needs— intake isn’t one-size-fits-all. That is why to simplify the call intake process, an attorney answering services customizes intake scripting as per your personal injury practice, campaign at hand, or case type.

Human Interaction Wins More Clients Than Automated Services

Callers prefer connecting with humans when they call instead of a machine. Whether a prospect is expected to talk with an automated robot or leave a voicemail, your odds of landing a consultation are diminished. However, if your business is gaining popularity, you may feel you have to hire extra staff to solve this issue. Still, adding staff members may not be able to mitigate this problem. Any prospect wants his/her situation to be met with enthusiasm and feel like they matter. Do not let an automated machine be the first touchpoint. Make the first impression that counts by partnering with a legal answering service.

Calls Will be Forwarded to Your Cell Phone

Answering agents can forward clients’ phone calls to your cell based on the number of rings, phone number, time of day, etc. The solution you need for your practice will be completely customizable. In case your lawyers can take clients’ phone calls, the agents will transfer the calls to them or send a message via SMS text or email. An answering service could create a messaging application so that on its dashboard, you’ll be able to access your text, email, and voicemail anywhere, anytime.  So when you need to check in on a family vacation or are on your business trip out of town, you will have easy access via your App.

Answering Agents Will Answer Frequently Asked Questions On Your Behalf

What kind of personal injury cases you handle, your location, hourly rates, and these kinds of questions are basic to almost every law firm. Answers to questions like these could be available on your website. However, callers may not see it or have time to access it. An attorney answering service will help you answer these and any other basic questions exhaustively and professionally.

Better Organization

One of the hardest parts of handling calls is the capability to maintain a better organization. If you have a legal answering service working for you, answering agents will extensively do this. As they take phone calls, they will record the caller’s name and date & time of calling. They will also document the reason for the call in detail and include answers to the basic qualifying questions that the caller asked initially.

You can ask the agents to send all this info to you at particular intervals through electronic means. You could also access the information by checking your account at any time. By this, it means you address the phone calls one at a time without being overwhelmed with the several messages that come your way simultaneously. This information is stored, enabling you to search through it and manage your messages later.

Managing Old Lead Lists

Working with old lead lists can be time-consuming. But old leads could have lots of potential for conversion. Virtual receptionists can take dead or old lead lists and contact them to check if they are still interested in your services. Even though it is a long process, this could land you numerous new clients.

Discretion When Handling Sensitive Issues

Most clients are concerned about confidentiality when they contact law firms for help. If their issues are not treated with privacy, it could ruin your reputation. A legal answering service will help you maintain your reputation by keeping clients’ information discrete. Answering agents have undergone detailed training so that they understand attorney-client confidentiality.

Free Up Your Staff’s Time

Your office is undoubtedly a busy place. It does not matter if your firm is large and you have employed a hundred people or a small practice with just you and your legal assistants. Your team’s time is critical for your clients’ cases. It is not beneficial to have your administrative staff spend several hours answering non-legal questions over the telephone. Partnering with a legal answering service frees your staff up so that they can focus on time-sensitive tasks. Whereas answering agents will not be able to give legal advice, they can:

  • Take messages for lawyers.
  • Confirm appointments
  • Give directions
  • Provide info about business hours

All of this info is then input and accessible by everybody at your office.

Make Your Personal Injury Law Firm Stand Out With A Legal Answering Service

Remember, if your law firm isn’t there to answer clients’ calls, another will. A client calls your firm because they’re devastated and need your help urgently, also considering the statute of limitations in personal injury cases. Therefore, you have a short window on your part to secure their business. Placing a client on hold, failing to respond to their calls, or sending them to a machine could cost you casework. But if you handle their needs on time, your reputation and that of your company will stand out as always being there when clients need you the most, which means more business. An answering service will help you attend to your clients in a timely manner, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. Imagine if you secured one extra client per month, how much would your firm grow?