How Legal Virtual Assistant Services Can Help Your Practice as a Business

Solo law practices oftentimes have many more tasks to complete on a daily basis rather than just spending time with clients or working on a case. These types of tasks can include appointment scheduling, answering phone calls and emails, legal intake, and so much more.

Although these tasks are essential for running your practice effectively, just imagine how much more time can be spent with clients if you didn’t have to do any of these tasks. 

You could potentially spend more time winning a case, taking on more cases, or spending previously lost time with family. That’s why lawyers today are increasingly relying on legal virtual assistant services to complete much of the repetitive grunt work their office is responsible for. 

Thus, virtual assistants offer lawyers a great opportunity to delegate their labor towards a more efficient avenue. Below, we’ll go over what a virtual assistant actually is, what tasks are commonly delegated and outsourced to virtual assistants for legal professionals, and more.

What are Legal Virtual Assistants?

As you may have guessed, legal virtual assistants help small law firms and solo lawyers with their legal work. 

Legal virtual assistants can be responsible for much of the legal research involved in gathering information about a case, administrative support, and marketing including social media management, client intake, client relationship management, and more. They can do everything a legal secretary can do.

Another reason outsourcing to virtual assistants has been more popular among lawyers than in-house staff assistants is 1.) it can significantly save on costs and; 2.) allow small law offices to pay assistants for when they actually work. 

Many legal professionals need work completed by an assistant, receptionist, or secretary like research, social media management, and phone answering. However, the law office doesn’t always have enough of those tasks to hire someone full-time. 

What Tasks Can You Delegate to a Legal Virtual Assistant?

Listed below are the most common legal virtual assistant services lawyers can benefit from. However, this list is not exhaustive and is generalized for all practices.  

Client Services:

• Scheduling and confirming appointments
• Client legal intake
• Pre-screening and conflict checking
• Scheduling a consultation
• Getting a fee agreement signed
• New client onboarding
• Assist in resolving client’s issues

Legal Support Services:

• General legal research
• Gathering information about a case and compiling it into a detailed, standardized report
• Drafting and proofreading documents and correspondence
• Assisting with the preparation of discovery, motions, legal pleadings, and interrogatories
• Managing client files and ensuring that all data are up-to-date and organized
• Conducting basic legal research and summarizing findings
• Create designs for law firm's marketing collaterals

Administrative Tasks:

• Data entry
• Prepare practice-specialty documents (litigation, estate planning, family law, corporate, immigration, etc.)
• Manage attorney calendars and schedule appointments
• Transcribe recordings and manage transcriptions
• Manage billing and invoicing processes for clients

Communication:

• Answering phone calls
• Email inbox management
• Responding to inquiries and comments on social media posts and inbox
• Managing inbound and outbound phone calls
• Communicating important information with clients and opposing counsel as needed

Social Media Management:

• Creating social media posts including creating graphics and copywriting
• Scheduling social media posts and stories utilizing social media management tools
• Moderating comments and DMs
• Pulling analytics reports for improved social performance
• Finding online groups (e.g. LinkedIn Groups) of like-minded lawyers for you to be a thought leader in
• Repurposing old content into graphics and video clips

Marketing and Promotion:

• Attracting new leads
• Collecting contact information
• Creating special email campaigns targeted at audiences looking for legal advice and tips
• Research trends in the legal industry to incorporate into blog content and other marketing collaterals
• Research legal events to attend and participate
• Manage and track the performance of ad campaigns

Note that while virtual assistants for legal professionals can perform general research based on the nature of your cases, the limit of their responsibilities may vary depending on the jurisdiction and the specific regulations governing legal practice in your area.

Does a virtual legal assistant have to have a degree?

Law offices sometimes require at least an associate’s degree in paralegal studies. Usually, they require some legal experience for the virtual legal assistants they hire. 

It all really depends on the law office and the lawyer who is hiring. Some virtual assistants won’t even need a degree if they only answer phone calls, manage social media, and do administrative work. 

Other law professionals may require their virtual assistant to have a degree in law or paralegal studies, or even Certified Legal Assitant (CLA) or the Paralegal CORE Competency Examination (PCCE) certifications.

Overall, it depends on the requirements of the practicing office, the tasks a lawyer expects their virtual assistant to do, and how much background knowledge they prefer their virtual assistants to have. 

Other Names for Legal Virtual Assistants

Sometimes, legal virtual assistants can assume many titles. For example, a legal intake receptionist would primarily be responsible for client intake and most likely manage little to no social media, legal research transcription, and most research tasks. 

Below is a list of commonly used titles for legal virtual assistants who are assigned specific roles and tasks. 

• Virtual Assistants for Legal Professionals
• Legal Intake Receptionist
• Legal Answering Service
• Paralegal Virtual Assistant

If you are a practicing lawyer, found this article interesting, and want to learn more about legal virtual assistant services, fill out this form, and one of our consultants will be in contact with you.

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