Strategies and Tips to Optimize Operating Budget
Running a law practice can be challenging, not only because you have to manage your clients and their expectations, but also have to keep your firm financially stable. If you’re not careful, small expenses can quickly add up and create a big dent in your operating budget, which could spell trouble for your firm down the line.
Given that overhead costs for law offices can be expensive – around 45% to 50% of their total revenue – it’s important to know how and when to cut your operating costs. Doing so will allow your practice to scale in a way that’s sustainable and profitable in the long run.
Which Areas of Your Law Firm Can You Cut Costs?
One of the most often overlooked parts of law offices where attorneys can save money is how they manage their phone calls. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on hiring a full-time law firm receptionist, why not hire a professional legal answering service instead?
By partnering with a telephone answering service, you can free up more of your budget to spend on other areas of your firm, such as marketing and client development. Additionally, virtual receptionist services offer a wide range of features that can help streamline your office workflow, including 24/7 phone answering, message taking, appointment scheduling, and so much more.
How Much Can You Save by Hiring a Phone Answering Service?
According to Salary.com, the average annual salary of a full-time receptionist in the United States is around $36,750, which translates to roughly $3,062 per month. This excludes additional benefits such as health insurance, retirement contributions, and paid time off.
One of the biggest downsides to hiring in-house receptionists is that they’re only available during regular business hours. While it is possible to hire another receptionist for after-hours and weekend shifts, this would almost triple your monthly operational costs. In addition, it’s impossible to hire a fractional receptionist who would be willing to work only a few hours per week. This makes hiring a full-time receptionist a costly and inefficient use of resources, especially for solo law practitioners and smaller law firms.
On the other hand, phone answering service for lawyers are available to answer your calls 24/7/365 for just a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time receptionist. In fact, even AnswerHero’s most expensive plan costs only $1,595 per month – which includes 2,000 minutes of talk time, bilingual legal answering service, message taking, appointment scheduling, and so much more.
Overall, you can save more than $17,000 per year by entrusting your phone answering needs to a professional answering service for lawyers, rather than hiring an in-house receptionist. This will allow you to focus more of your budget on scaling and growing your law firm, so you can continue providing high-quality legal services to your clients.
Top Benefits of Hiring a Lawyer Answering Service
In addition to growing your practice with less investment, there are many other benefits to hiring a phone answering service for law office.
Never Miss a Call
When you have a team of legal virtual receptionists available 24/7/365 to answer phone calls on your behalf, you’ll never miss another business opportunity ever again. This is especially important for solo practitioners and smaller law firms that rely heavily on incoming calls to grow their client base.
Reduce Interruptions
Answering calls, especially during peak hours when you’re busy with other tasks, can be extremely distracting. Entrusting this responsibility to an answering service allows you to stay focused on the tasks at hand without having to worry about missing important calls from prospective clients.
Optimize Your Calendar Bookings
Answering legal service calls can be extremely time-consuming. Fortunately, answering services like AnswerHero can help you streamline your client intake process and minimize the amount of administrative work you have to deal with. This makes client management easier while preventing scheduling conflicts and double bookings.
Screen Prospects for Higher ROI
By partnering with an answering service to screen your inbound calls, you’ll be able to focus more of your time on high-value prospects, rather than fielding calls from unqualified leads. This will help you optimize your return on investment (ROI) for client acquisition while saving you valuable time and resources.
Improve Your Law Firm’s Image
Providing quality customer service starts with answering each call in a timely and professional manner. If you want your potential and existing clients to view your law firm as trustworthy and reliable, hiring a virtual receptionist service can help you establish a solid reputation and improve the way others perceive your practice.
Maximize Your Time, Budget, and Resources With AnswerHero
If you want to save time, money, and resources while providing your clients with exceptional customer service, AnswerHero’s law firm answering service is perfect for you. Our team of legal virtual receptionists can help you scale and grow your practice by answering calls 24/7/365, so you never miss another important business opportunity again. AnswerHero offers quality service at an affordable cost, so you can focus on what matters most – growing your practice and providing outstanding legal services to your clients.
