How to Work With a Virtual Legal Assistant

If your law firm has yet to hire a virtual legal assistant, you may wonder why you should work with one. But if you’ve ever been overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work involved with running a legal practice, delegating work to legal virtual assistants can significantly free up your time. Since the newest Legal Trends Report found that law firms only spend an average of 2.9 hours each day on billable work, it’s more important than ever to find ways to do more billable work and improve your law firm’s profitability. 

Also, legal virtual assistant services can help your law firm increase efficiencies, scale more rapidly, and provide a client-centered experience. They can complete routine administrative tasks and improve customer service by managing client calls, coordinating important meetings and deadlines, and more.

Legal virtual assistants are also an excellent option for your legal practice if you are still deciding whether to add another full-time in-house staff member. Ultimately, virtual assistants save your law firm money since hiring a virtual legal assistant costs less than hiring another lawyer or in-house employee for your firm. 

In this blog post, we’ll share how you can choose and work with a virtual legal assistant for your law firm, including what virtual legal assistant services are available.  

Don’t forget to watch our webinar on building a fully virtual law firm as well!

How to choose a virtual legal assistant

Whether you’re using virtual legal assistant companies or hiring individuals, you’ll want to set up a thorough hiring process to choose the right virtual assistant for your law firm. Below are some tips for selecting the right remote legal assistant for your law firm’s needs.

Vet potential virtual legal assistants thoroughly

As you start researching your options for outsourcing legal administrative tasks to virtual assistants, you’ll likely get overwhelmed by the number of options. You should thoroughly vet potential candidates and companies to narrow down your choices. Make a list of all the qualities you need in a virtual assistant for lawyers. Be sure to check their previous experience and ask for references. Some essential qualities to consider:

• Work ethic
• Personality and rapport
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Availability
• Writing and communication skills
• Project management skills
• Legal research skills
• Technology experience
• Experience in your practice area
• Special skills in areas like marketing and accounting 
• Willingness to learn

For further guidance, check out our blog post on the best virtual receptionists for law firms. 

Consider how they fit your work style

 

If you are used to managing administrative tasks at your law firm, you may find it challenging to delegate work to someone else. After all, you’ll need to spend time onboarding your virtual legal assistant and getting them used to your law firm’s processes. That’s why finding a virtual assistant who fits your work style is critical. Choosing the right virtual assistant will help ensure a smoother transition for your firm while increasing their chances of success.

Determine what virtual legal assistant services you need

Consider all the non-billable work you’re currently doing and determine what help you need. In addition to routine law firm tasks like billing clients, document management, and managing client communication, do you need other virtual legal assistant services? For example, do you require your virtual assistant to help with accounting and marketing?

Set expectations

To avoid miscommunication and disappointments on both sides, set expectations with your virtual assistant from the beginning. For example, create a written contract or agreement so both parties are clear about the expectations of their professional relationship. Some points you should consider including in your agreement include:

• Clear and regular communication. In a virtual law firm environment, having clear and regular communication is a top priority. This term will help you stay in the loop with project and task updates and ensure projects stay on track.
• How you will communicate. If you prefer communicating via email, make that clear. You don’t want your virtual assistant to assume that video conferencing always works. Agree on the communication platforms you will use, keeping in mind that there are many communication tools available. 
• Your law firm’s processes and workflows. Not all law firms work the same way. To ensure your virtual assistant works seamlessly with your existing processes and workflows, spend time onboarding your virtual assistant. This way, they will have a clear understanding of how things work. 
• Your management style. Do you expect your virtual legal assistant to work mostly independently? How will you delegate tasks to them? Is there a project management system you use? How often do you expect updates and reports on their work? How often and in what way will you provide them with feedback?

Tips for working with virtual legal assistants

Get to know your virtual legal assistant 

Get to know your legal assistant to facilitate a more successful working relationship. This way, you’ll understand them better on a personal and professional level. It’ll also help you build two-way trust and get them invested in your law firm’s success. Virtual team-building games like online escape rooms or even simple icebreaker games done over video conferences can be lots of fun. 

Be prepared to project manage 

Although virtual legal assistants should significantly free up your time, you should still prepare to spend time working with them and managing projects. Another option is to delegate the task of project management. If you do delegate project management, you should still spend time introducing your virtual assistant to your law firm, its processes, workflows, and technology stack. 

Set clear expectations

 

Be sure to communicate clearly and regularly with your virtual assistant. Also, discuss how you will communicate and on what platforms. Let them know what reports you expect to receive and how often. Make it clear what your virtual assistant’s priorities are. For example, do you require a weekly report on your remote legal assistant’s tasks? Are you using a project management platform for visibility into their task list?

Give clear instructions

 

Walking to a colleague’s desk to ask a question isn’t quite possible in a virtual law firm environment. However, that doesn’t mean your virtual assistant should be guessing how you want them to complete each task. By giving them clear instructions for each task—whether emailing clients according to your law firm’s messaging guide or collecting payment from clients—the higher the likelihood of them completing the task successfully.

Be consistent 

Consistency goes hand-in-hand with running an organized law firm. Since your virtual assistant is not an in-house employee, they will not have full visibility into what goes on at your law firm every day. Sticking to consistent schedules, timelines, and deadlines will help your virtual legal assistant work successfully. For example, if you normally only do legal client consultations in the morning, let your virtual assistant know. If you’ve given your virtual assistant a deadline for a legal research task, try to stick to it as much as possible. 

Use software to collaborate and communicate 

Legal software like Clio can help your law firm manage tasks and collaborate more effectively. Your virtual assistant will benefit from being able to create standardized task lists and automatically set task deadlines based on case start dates or previous tasks. However, be mindful of permissions within each software. You’ll want to limit certain permissions for your virtual assistant due to security reasons, and you may need to keep information confidential for cases your assistant isn’t working on. These considerations are especially important if you are used to previously handling all tasks on your own. 

Virtual Legal Assistant Services

Now that you understand how to choose a virtual legal assistant and how to work with one, what kind of virtual legal assistant companies or individuals should you choose? While hiring independent virtual legal assistants is an option, working with a company may give you more peace of mind as you can usually rely on the companies to vet their virtual assistants for experience and professionalism. Also, if you need additional support, a good virtual legal assistant company should be there to help. 

Equivity

 

From virtual administrative tasks, marketing, paralegal, and bookkeeping professionals, Equivity can support your law practice with a single dedicated specialist or an entire outsourced team. They can also provide an entire legal support team for your firm. Equivity features flexible plans and offers on-demand support.

Learn more about how Equivity can help your law practice.

Hire an Esquire

With on-demand freelance legal staff, Hire an Esquire hires qualified candidates who undergo rigorous screening and vetting. This process ensures you will only match with highly-qualified staff. You can also tailor talent to your needs with guided tools and built-in matching algorithms to find over 12,000 qualified members of Esquire’s legal support team. 

Learn more about how Hire an Esquire works with Clio. 

Back Office Betties

Back Office Betties creates legal-specialized virtual staffing solutions that attorneys can trust. Their virtual legal assistants have experience working in law firms spanning all fields of law, and many are even certified paralegals. Back Office Betties’ assistants can lighten your workload by taking over everything from email and CRM management, to client communication and billing, to legal research and document preparation.

Learn more about how Back Office Betties works with Clio.

Lawfecta

Lawfecta provides virtual paralegal and virtual assistants for lawyers. Their network can assist with e-filing, case management, organization, public liaison, calendaring, drafting correspondence, vendor management, and much more. Law firms can choose from a flex retainer, subscription retainer, or one-time fee depending on their virtual legal assistant needs. 

Learn more about how Lawfecta helps law firms. 

Legal Soft

Legal Soft deploys a group of experts to assist firms at a fraction of the costs for local staffing, with their expertise ranging from personal injury to employment, immigration, workers comp, and many other practice areas. They offer firms virtual legal assistants, paralegals, attorneys, demand writers, case managers, intake assistants, and more. You are the law experts, and they are here to help with the business of law.

Learn more about how Legal Soft works with Clio.

You’re now ready to improve productivity and efficiency at your firm

If you run a law firm, you probably rarely feel like there is enough time to complete all the tasks on your to-do list. From responding to prospective and existing clients promptly to client intake, document management, billing, and accounting, virtual legal assistants can help you run your firm more effectively and efficiently by providing administrative assistance. 

When hiring a virtual legal assistant for your firm, vet potential candidates and companies thoroughly. Also, think about how they fit with your law firm. Make sure you communicate clearly to set expectations from the start. With clear instructions, consistency, and the right software, virtual legal assistants can help you focus on doing more billable work. Ultimately, this enables you to become a more profitable law firm. Consider using virtual legal assistant services like Hire an Esquire and Back Office Betties, where you can rely on hiring qualified, vetted, and experienced candidates for your firm. 

Remember, too, that using cloud-based legal practice management technology can help you seamlessly work with virtual legal assistants anywhere, at any time. Want to learn how? Check out our free webinar to Watch How Law Firms Use Clio.

We published this blog post in February 2021. Last updated: October 9, 2024.

Categorized in: Business