Back to Blog | Jul 3, 2018 | 5 min

Is Your Law Firm Future-Proof?

New technologies are rapidly shifting law firms into a digitally-driven environment.

According to Law Practice Today, the need to shift and change in the workplace is driven by many factors, including technology, profitability, attracting young talent and increasing productivity.

Resisting this shift could potentially be detrimental to your firm’s success in the future.

Here’s why you should make sure your law firm is future-proof.

Technology, Efficiency, and Profitability

“[Technology] is fundamentally altering what it means to be a law firm in the 21st century.”

“…In the near future, the winners will increasingly be legal companies—law firms or alternative service providers—that can deliver efficient solutions” (The American Lawyer).

It is predicted that if firms remain the way they are now, they will lose ground to “new law” providers.

Technology can exponentially increase the efficiency of a law firm, from conversion of clients to operational functions.

Not sure where to begin?

Two of the most effective and easy technologies available to implement today are Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and virtual receptionist services.

These technologies will help you keep expenses low and earnings high. Most importantly, they will help keep you in the race.

CRM Systems

While it’s important to continually gain more leads, it’s equally as important to capture the ones you already have. If not, you are letting all of your advertising dollars go to waste.

CRM systems help to improve business relationships. So, with a CRM system in place, you can more effectively capture leads, nurture them, and eventually turn them into paying clients.

Customer Relationship Management systems are one of the most valuable efficiency hacks for law firms today.

According to Destination CRM, 50% of lawyers strongly agreed or agreed that their firms saw measurable returns from their CRM initiatives. Additionally, more than half cited “better client relationships” as the primary benefit of their CRM systems.

Other benefits mentioned were improved efficiency in serving clients, increased revenue and profitability, and cost savings.

Implementing a CRM system is just the first phase of automating your firm’s operations, but it’s a great place to start.

Virtual Receptionists

Do you feel like you spend too much time on admin tasks, like answering the phone, when you could be using your time more wisely? You’re not alone.

Do you feel like hiring and training another person or two to pick up the phone when you can’t is worth the cost? If you answered no, you’re still not alone.

Virtual receptionist services can help you deal with these admin tasks and help you avoid the burden of hiring on another employee.

Not to mention, it will take your law firm to another level when it comes to capturing leads.

This is why many firms have decided to hire a virtual receptionist service to field their incoming calls, whether it’s all the time, after hours, or on holidays. It can be different for each firm’s needs.

When it comes down to it, your potential clients simply don’t want to leave a voicemail. They want instant gratification and to know that a real person will pick up when they call.

Virtual receptionist services have all of the technology in place to help your law firm flourish at a lower cost. Your callers won’t even know they aren’t talking to someone physically at your firm.

Alert Can Help You Future-Proof Your Firm

Alert has many high-tech systems in place to help your law firm succeed.

First, Alert integrates with multiple CRM systems, including Captorra, Law Ruler, Needles, Lexicata, Leading Response, Foster Web Marketing, Sugar CRM, and Salesforce. If your firm uses a different system, don’t worry! We can pretty much work with any CRM. It’s just a matter of getting it set up and working seamlessly and consistently.

Next are our award-winning virtual receptionist services. Our phone answering services are ranked #1 in the nation by ATSI, and we’ve been doing it since 1965. Since then, we’ve grown and adapted to the times, implementing technologies to help law firms around the country succeed.

Some of these technologies include live transfer and call routing, integrating with your online calendar to schedule appointments for your firm, web form submission response and outbound calling, and we can get contracts signed for you via your clients’ mobile phones. Read more about our services on our call, intake, and contract services pages.

Finally, with technology, there are always some hiccups every now and then. This is why Alert has backup systems in place so our call center (and your law firm) is never down for answering calls. We have massive backup generators to make sure of that.

At Alert, we also redundantly secure, protect, and safely backup data, so your client data and leads are always protected. We routinely back up the data on our servers, which are located in-house. We never outsource information to a third-party, so we have complete control and sole access to this data.

Are you ready to become future-proof? We’re here to help. For more information, visit https://www.alertcommunications.com or call 800-788-3934.

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