The legal profession is one of the most challenging and competitive industries to work in. Lawyers must be adaptable, detail-oriented, and analytical—and they also need to be able to juggle many different responsibilities at once. Virtual assistants can help you to balance your workload so you can give your clients the attention they deserve while focusing on your practice areas that you excel in.
With a virtual assistant, you’ll be able to meet your clients’ demands and expand your services at the same time. A virtual assistant can help with just about any task that doesn’t require extensive knowledge of the law or privileged information about your clients. Virtual assistants are great for administrative tasks like scheduling appointments, managing calendars, booking hotels and flights, taking notes, sending email correspondence, editing documents, locating contacts and records, and updating databases.
Hiring a Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant will help you to quickly and efficiently tackle your daily tasks so you can focus on improving your practice. Virtual assistants can help with any administrative tasks that don’t require extensive knowledge of the law or privileged information about your clients. You can hire a virtual assistant to tackle tasks like booking travel and hotel rooms, taking notes during meetings, editing documents, scheduling appointments, updating databases, compiling research, and much more.
You can hire a virtual assistant for hourly or per-project rates. In most cases, it’s more cost-effective to hire a virtual assistant on a per-project basis, because you only pay for the work that you need completed. Typically, you’ll pay less for per-project work than for hiring someone on an hourly rate.
By Virtual Assistants
There are many ways in which a virtual assistant can assist you with your practice. They can help you to find new leads, reach out to prospective clients, do research and put together contracts and proposals that meet your clients’ needs. They can also help you to organize your office files, manage your emails and calendar, and stay on top of your billing, as well as provide you with additional administrative support.
Virtual assistants can be hired to manage specific projects or to assist you all throughout your practice. If you need administrative support on a short-term basis—for example, if you’re working on a big case and have a large document load—a virtual assistant can be a great solution. If you hire a virtual assistant on a short-term or project-by-project basis, your responsibilities don’t end at paying them. You’ll also have to manage your virtual assistant, which can be challenging if you’re not used to having someone else working alongside you.
Addition of an Attorney’s Assistant
A legal assistant can give you an additional set of hands and eyes to help you with your daily tasks. Legal assistants can help you to conduct legal research, draft and edit documents, manage your calendar, schedule appointments, handle emails, and much more. Legal assistants also have access to client information that your virtual assistant may not have access to. Legal assistants can be helpful to attorneys, particularly those who are working in solo practice. Legal assistants can help with all the responsibilities that virtual assistants can perform.
They can also assist attorneys by taking notes during meetings and depositions, researching new cases and clients, drafting contracts and finalizing agreements, managing the office and managing the administrative tasks that attorneys need to stay on top of.
ADA Compliance and Virtual Assistants
You need to be aware that many states require attorneys to have an in-office employee who is either a legal assistant or a paralegal. Even if you’re working out of your home office, where there are no other employees, you may still need to comply with ADA accessibility requirements. You may not be aware of this, but ADA compliance can affect your hiring decision. There are a couple of ways that you can meet ADA compliance when hiring a virtual assistant. You can hire someone who can work completely remotely.
You can also hire someone who has a disability that restricts her or his ability to travel. In order to comply with ADA hiring standards, you can ask a potential employee how they can perform their job duties. You do this by including a question about compensability in your job posting and in your job application. You can also ask a prospective employee to provide a copy of his or her driver’s license so you can verify their home address.
Hiring a VA: Finding the Right One
Before hiring a virtual assistant, you must first decide what tasks you want them to perform. You also need to determine what their role will be within your office and the hours that they’ll be working. You also need to decide what their payment structure will be. You’ll need to set clear expectations for the work that they’ll be doing, as well as any equipment they’ll need to complete that work. You’ll also need to set clear guidelines and boundaries for your relationship.
You may want to put together a hiring checklist to help you to determine if a potential virtual assistant is a good fit for your office. Once you’ve decided what type of person you want to hire, you’ll need to post your job and accept applications from prospective employees. You can post your job on a virtual assistant website, like Upwork, or you can post on online job boards focused on hiring virtual assistants, like Craigslist. You can also post on professional networking websites, like LinkedIn. You can also consider hiring an executive search firm to help you find the right person for your office. You’ll want to make sure that the firms you’re considering are experienced in hiring virtual assistants. Or simply just use Marketers who hire elite virtual assistants that are fully managed and trained.
Working with a virtual assistant can be a great way to take some of the weight off your plate. However, hiring a virtual assistant can be tricky. You want to make sure that you select the right person for the job. This can be challenging, especially since you won’t be able to meet with them in person. To help you in your search, it’s a good idea to hire someone temporarily while you’re looking for the perfect candidate.
