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Regardless of what type of law you practice, there are a million little details that need to be addressed on a daily basis. From filing documents to drafting contracts to scheduling meetings, most of those tasks could be delegated to an assistant. Traditionally, this involves bringing legal assistants on staff and into your office. While this will get the job done, hiring and resourcing those assistants creates a whole new set of tasks that someone will need to manage. For law firms looking for qualified support that is efficient and affordable, virtual assistants are a great choice.
Traditional vs. Virtual Assistants
There are some tasks that require a traditional, onsite assistant. Filing, for example, will require someone who is physically in your office. An assistant who serves as a receptionist, greeting clients and receiving deliveries, is another example of someone who must be onsite. Firms that already have these staffing needs may think it more efficient to expand onsite staff to handle all administrative and legal support work. Before you choose that path, consider the cons of traditional assistants.
Obviously, local employees need to be geographically close to your office. This limits the pool of people from which you can hire, thus limiting the number of talented people from which you can select. Virtual assistants work remotely, meaning they can be located anywhere in the world. This greatly expands the talent pool from which you can hire, giving you a greater opportunity to find experienced people with a proven track record of success who fit the needs of your firm.
Onsite employees also demand a long list of onsite resources, which mean expenses the firm must incur in addition to financial compensation. Office space, a desk, a computer, and a phone will be the minimum in terms of resources for onsite employees. You may also need to provide parking, which often can be at a premium. Finally, expenses like health care, paid leave, and taxes can quickly add up for traditional assistants. Virtual assistants demand none of these resources. As remote workers, they provide their own equipment, with task management software being the only resource the firm typically needs to supply. Also, they are normally part-time contract workers, which removes many expenses associated with onsite assistants.
A final consideration is how an onsite employee can affect office dynamics. Company culture is a business buzzword that cannot be ignored, regardless of the field in which an organization operates. Employees are looking for more than a paycheck when they commit to a position; they want a positive work experience. This demands extra care when hiring an employee that will be introduced to the local work environment. Onsite employees need more than skill; they need to fit the culture of the company. Failure to address culture issues results in higher employee turnover rates. With virtual assistants, issues with office dynamics are virtually nonexistent.
For firms considering hiring their first virtual assistant, the logistics can be confusing. Common questions revolve around how to keep these new employees informed, how to clearly communicate tasks and expectations, and how to ensure that offsite employees are honest about time spent and work completed. These are valid concerns, but they can all be adequately addressed. The move to remote work forced upon companies by the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the development of new technologies and methodologies that allow remote work to be done effectively and efficiently with as much remote oversight as a company demands.
How to Prepare for a Virtual Assistant
Traditional assistants typically spend 40 or more hours per week onsite and are expected to do a wide range of tasks, some of which may evolve over time. The work assigned to virtual assistants will be more task-focused. This may require a different type of pre-hire preparation than that to which your firm is accustomed. A good starting point is to define the tasks that the virtual assistant will be required to complete.
Common tasks that virtual assistants can manage for law firms include:
- Researching topics or individuals,
- Monitoring targeted social media accounts,
- Data entry,
- Follow-up phone calls,
- Scheduling and confirming client meetings,
- Handling emails (particularly those that don't require confidentiality),
- Proofreading and editing,
- Travel planning,
- CRM and software updates, and
- Managing accounts payable and receivable.
When making the transition to virtual assistants, it is helpful to keep in mind the financial efficiency that they can help your firm to achieve. Even if the hourly rate for a focused virtual assistant is more than the normal pay rate for onsite support staff, the overall expense will often be less due to a higher level of efficiency. A virtual assistant hired for a specific task can accomplish your goals with greater speed and provide better quality work due to greater focus and greater expertise.
Once tasks are determined, the next step is determining:
- Scope of work,
- Required skills,
- Required availability,
- Required technology,
- Project length,
- Training needs, and
- Workflow process.
Where to Find a Virtual Assistant
There are a wide variety of companies that can help you to connect with virtual assistants, but the degree of support that they provide to you in your search varies widely.
As the CEO of a global company that has helped more than 1,000 organizations to connect with virtual assistants, my recommendation is that you avoid the types of sites that simply connect employers with freelancers and, instead, seek out established companies that specialize in providing industry-specific virtual assistants.
Upwork is an example of a site that allows companies in need of virtual assistants to connect with freelancers, such as social media managers, proofreaders, or bookkeepers. Upwork allows you to post a job opportunity, to which freelancers respond. While Upwork will show you ratings that freelancers have received from previous work, it leaves you with the ultimate responsibility of discerning if the person is a smart hire.
A better course for securing a virtual assistant will involve partnering with a company that has a proven process for helping you to identify, secure, and manage virtual assistants.
At Cyberbacker, we partner with companies who are looking for talented and proven specialists who have the skills to accomplish needed tasks and facilitate company growth. Cyberbacker's process helps companies determine the exact needs they have, creating a perfect job description for the position. This helps companies to maximize the full potential of their future assistant. Cyberbacker then provides a pool of people who we know are qualified for the job. Once companies select their virtual assistant, we continue to work with them, providing training when necessary and helping them to find alternate talent if the relationship doesn't work out as expected
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted advances in technology that have made it easier than ever to manage and benefit from the work of virtual assistants. Modern law firms are required to accomplish a litany of tasks that don't require the expertise of a lawyer and don't require a full-time commitment. Now is the time to begin to explore the world of virtual assistants. The remote team that can help you to take your firm to the next level might only be a click away.
Craig Goodliffe is the CEO of Cyberbacker. Launched in January of 2018, Cyberbacker is a remote working company, currently providing online services to over 1000 companies around the world. Goodliffe decided to start franchising Cyberbacker with a goal of making a dent in global poverty on a greater scale.