This article was provided by Abby Connect, a human receptionist service backed by A.I. technology. We provide dedicated teams of receptionists who answer, transfer, take messages, make outbound calls, schedule appointments, and more, all while sounding like they’re in your office. Every Abby team member, from receptionists and CS to sales and the office team, is dedicated to revolutionizing the small business customer experience—providing professional and personal customer service in an increasingly disconnected world.
As technology evolves, firms are faced with a strategic dilemma: what should be automated and what should be outsourced?
Luckily, there is an intuitive framework that can determine when to implement a software solution and when you need real human expertise.
- If the task requires human intelligence, outsource it
- If the task can be tackled by artificial means, automate it
Most firms require some combination of outsourcing and automation to successfully tackle their caseload and grow their firm. Automation is effective for repetitive tasks that are standardized and can be prepared for in advance. Outsourcing, on the other hand, is for those tasks that entail responsivity, subjectivity, or complexity.
What to Automate
To protect your billable hours and your team’s time, reducing redundant tasks can increase efficiency. Automation won’t replace your team. Instead, it allows you to spend more time working on cases and less time managing your caseload.
Client Intake
Manual client intake is time-intensive and isn’t always a good client experience. Luckily, information gathering can be automated to ensure speed, efficiency, and accuracy.
Your entire initial intake process can be hosted online using forms or cloud-based automation. Then, you can sync this information with your practice management software so everything you need is available exactly where you need it. Look for software that includes customizable intake forms, e-signature tools, and scheduling capabilities.
Document Management
Documentation is perhaps one of the most important, and frequently manual, organizational processes in your firm. If you can effectively create, edit, organize, and share documentation, you can often save your team hours of work.
Look for automated documentation management that includes:
- Secure, central storage
- Collaboration tools
- Customization
- The ability to create and edit templates
Payment Collections
An optimized billing system will help you save time and ensure timely payment from your clients. Automation can help with invoicing, payment reminders, auditing, error reduction, and accounting—all while streamlining the process for your staff and your clients.
There are plenty of automation opportunities in email—including marketing messages, reminders, invoices, confirmations, scheduling emails, and more. Sent manually, these emails could devour billable hours daily. Once automated, email marketing can improve client relations, reach potential clients, strengthen partner relationships, and more.
What to Outsource
Your firm is busy. You and your staff can’t be legal experts and customer service, marketing, and IT experts all at once. But work that is subjective and complex requires a human touch to react, adapt, and solve problems. Outsourcing these responsibilities to dedicated experts can provide invaluable peace of mind.
Your Phone Line
Nobody likes to be sent to voicemail, through a phone tree, or reach a robot. But answering your own phone isn’t always the most lucrative option. It’s a flip of the coin whether incoming calls are potentially profitable, or a waste of time. And your time is valuable.
That’s where a virtual receptionist service like Abby Connect comes in. Trained receptionists get to know your business and can answer, transfer, take messages, schedule appointments, and more. It’s like getting 5-10 highly-trained employees, at a fraction of the cost of an in-house hire. And, unlike robots, human receptionists can react, respond, and proactively solve problems on your behalf.
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Other Admin Tasks
Other daily administrative tasks can also be outsourced, freeing up your legal staff for higher-priority work. This can include invoicing, scheduling, bookkeeping, and data entry. Administrative experts will work faster and more efficiently than someone on your team can, and you only pay them for the work they do.
Legal Research
The associates at your firm spend a lot of time researching, writing, and reviewing. Some of this work can be outsourced to better utilize your team’s time—allowing them to focus on priorities. Plus, tasks like doing research, coding documents, and preparing summaries can be tedious and aren’t always billable, but a robot can’t do them for you.
IT Services
Nothing is worse than the internet going out when you’re close to a deadline, or a data breach that threatens privileged information. Outsourcing your IT to an external expert enables you to protect your clients’ data, keep the firm running, and prevent outages. You’re a legal expert, you shouldn’t feel like you have to be an IT expert too.
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