A legal answering service is an essential link between legal professionals and their environment. This position is all the more strategic since the telephone answering service of a law firm or notary office positions itself as the preferred contact for potential or existing clients, crucial contacts when choosing a collaboration or handling cases. But the mission of an assistant for lawyers goes beyond managing incoming phone calls and maintaining relationships with callers.
It provides genuine assistance to lawyers, notaries, bailiffs, and other legal assistants, providing essential support to allow them to focus primarily on their core business.
It is therefore essential to carefully choose the person or service provider to whom this responsibility is entrusted.
What are the qualities and skills required to practice this profession? Should you opt for hiring a legal assistant responsible for telephone answering or delegate it to an outsourced legal telephone answering service? Our advice for choosing the right legal telephone answering service.
The main missions of a legal telephone secretary
The legal secretary, or legal assistant, is required to carry out various missions within a law firm, a notary’s office, a bailiff’s office or any other office of legal and justice professionals. These functions can be classified into three main categories:
- Ensure the telephone switchboard and the processing of incoming calls: in this capacity, officially represent one or more legal assistants and ministerial public officers on the telephone. The telephone answering service must convey all the seriousness of these regulated and sworn legal professions. It is a question of image and credibility. This requires a professional telephone reception and compliance with criteria relating to both form (the manner of answering the telephone) and substance (the quality of the response or solution provided to the caller).
- Manage the appointments and schedules of one or more legal team members: whether they are lawyers or notaries, partners or employees. Practicing a legal profession involves meeting with various stakeholders, whether they are clients, colleagues, or representatives of judicial bodies. These meetings are essential for handling cases and ensuring progress. Proper management of your schedule and appointments by your legal telephone secretary is a cornerstone of organizational skills for a lawyer or any other legal professional.
- Handling administrative tasks: drafting and formatting legal documents, sorting and sending emails, researching information (case law, laws, regulations), filing and archiving, assistance in preparing files, preparing pleadings, contracts or conclusions, etc.
These tasks are time-consuming, but essential and indispensable to the functioning of the business. Delegating them to a dedicated secretariat allows legal professionals to free up time and increase their efficiency, to better focus on their priorities and defending the interests of their clients.
To choose a legal telephone secretarial service capable of meeting the operational needs of one or more legal professionals, it is advisable to first and precisely identify the tasks and responsibilities that you wish to entrust to them.
Qualities required to provide telephone reception and legal assistance
Legal telephone secretarial services are a profession in their own right, requiring professionalism, interpersonal skills, as well as know-how.
To provide telephone reception and assistance to a legal or justice professional, the secretary must demonstrate technical skills, legal knowledge, and personal qualities:
- Interpersonal skills: to be able to communicate and exchange regularly with different correspondents and stakeholders on cases, to be able to work effectively in tandem with an independent liberal lawyer or in a team within a legal structure.
- Good oral expression: a legal telephone secretary must be able to express herself clearly on the one hand to make herself clearly understood, and on the other hand to convey a good image of the firm or the legal assistant she represents.
- Listening skills: to understand the requests of those you speak to in order to handle them correctly, both those of your telephone correspondents and those of your hierarchical authority.
- Legal knowledge: be comfortable in a legal environment, know its functioning and procedures, organization and technical vocabulary: private or public law, court of appeal or cassation, administrative or district court, act, contract, summons, appeal, conciliation, appearance, mediation, etc.
- Adaptability: to different audiences and different situations, taking into account the diversity of cases and files entrusted to lawyers, notaries, bailiffs, legal experts, etc.
- Writing skills: because writing plays an essential role in the field of lawyer’s telesecretariat , whether it involves drafting official documents or returning messages.
- Computer skills: proficiency in computer tools, office software or business applications used daily by a legal secretary.
- Discretion required: because the information transmitted through a legal telephone secretariat is sensitive and confidential, knowing that lawyers, notaries and bailiffs are bound by professional secrecy.
We can add to this list a sense of organization and priorities, time and stress management, other essential qualities when providing telephone reception and secretarial services for a legal profession.
What solutions are there for telephone secretarial services for legal professionals?
There are three options available to legal professionals and court assistants when it comes to legal telephone secretarial services :
- An integrated legal secretary and telephone hostess: or hiring an in-house legal assistant, an option that involves financial investments, administrative and employer obligations: recruitment, declarations, HR management, working hours and rights, salaries and charges, training, paid leave, provision of an office, purchase of IT equipment, technical installations, a telephone switchboard, etc.
- Outsourced legal telephone answering: an increasingly popular option among legal professionals, as it allows them to circumvent the challenges and overcome the constraints of hiring an in-house secretarial service. Delegating telephone reception and legal assistance to call center telesecretaries is a particularly popular solution due to its cost and flexibility.
- A complementarity between the two options: outsourced telesecretaries take over from the integrated telephone switchboard and secretarial services in order to ensure the continuity of assistance for legal professionals in certain situations: overflow of calls and busy lines, holidays, RTT or sick leave, temporary absence from the office, lunch break, before and after office opening hours, etc.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Legal Telephone Answering
If outsourced legal telephone secretarial services are so successful, it is because they represent an undeniable interest for legal professionals, whatever their profile and place of practice: independent liberal lawyer starting out in the provinces.
There are three main arguments that can be cited which encourage the choice of outsourcing telephone reception and a legal telephone secretarial service:
- Cost control and “all-inclusive”: a service that includes all the human resources and technical means mobilized to provide a remote service, a formula that is often much more economical than salaried employment and without any unpleasant financial surprises.
- Flexibility and adaptability: By choosing a call center specializing in legal telephone secretarial services, lawyers and legal professionals benefit from a flexible solution and modular services that adapt to their needs and budget.
- Continuity of service: even during periods of holidays, epidemics or pandemics, legal tele-secretaries and telephone operators take turns to ensure uninterrupted service, on the days and at the times defined with each client.
Our loyal clients are many lawyers and legal professionals who testify to their satisfaction and to whom we guarantee:
- Quality services at competitive prices: tailor-made services and a fully personalized telephone reception at the right price.
- Qualified and experienced tele-secretaries: recruited for their experience and skills, continuously trained and supervised on a daily basis.
- Availability and responsiveness: services activated and operational quickly, with permanent monitoring and technicians available when needed.
- Compliance with instructions and confidentiality: total discretion from our teams and total respect for the instructions of each of our clients.
- A legal hotline available 24/7: for legal professionals who need to remain reachable at all times.