Why Your Banking & Finance Law Firm Needs an Answering Service

The banking and finance law sector is incredibly widespread. It includes a host of subspecialties, including the following:

• Bank lending

• Property finance

• Project finance

• Acquisition finance

• Assets finances

• Contract law

• Derivatives

• Capital markets

• Mergers and acquisitions

Given the immense complexity of banking and finance law, legal teams in this area spend a great deal of time researching, conducting due diligence, and communicating with clients, other legal teams, industry experts, and more. That leaves precious little time to handle the daily work required to build a thriving practice, like answering phone calls in the office, setting appointments for clients, or even processing payments. 

Banking and finance law firms often find that in-office productivity and efficiency are very low. That can affect everything from office morale to profitability and the ability to compete within the industry. A legal answering service can provide the solutions your law firm needs so you can focus on how best to serve current clients.

Successfully streamlining the lead vetting and intake process

While you and your team are working with banks, corporations, and other clients, your marketing efforts are out there in the wild generating results. Even a moderately successful marketing campaign should result in an influx of phone calls, emails, or even text messages. On the surface, that’s a great thing. However, when you dig a bit deeper, you’ll realize the problem.

Simply put, if your team is busy working with other clients, who’s handling lead-facing communications? Maybe you have a receptionist, but they can only do so much. You might tap other team members to field phone calls and reply to emails, but who will handle the responsibilities they had outside the office? 

You can see that the issue quickly snowballs. It also creates a catch-22 situation. You can’t grow your law firm without a steady flow of new clients, but you can’t afford to sacrifice team members to handle lead-facing communications at the cost of serving your existing clients.

A legal answering service is the solution you need. With a scalable team of live, virtual receptionists, you never need to worry about shuffling team members back and forth or the inevitable hit to productivity and client satisfaction that it creates. 

• Answering phone calls: No matter how many or how few calls your office receives, it’s critical that they’re answered when they come in. Forcing a potential client to wait days or even a week or longer for a callback is a poor business practice. With virtual receptionists, you know that every call that comes in will be answered promptly and professionally. 

• Flexible answering plans: Every banking and finance law firm has unique needs when it comes to call answering. Some might need assistance at certain times of the day, others might need help several days during the week, and yet others might want after-hours support. The right legal answering service will offer flexible plans to suit your needs, goals, and budget.

• Handling website leads: According to Clio, one-third of all leads a law firm receives come from web-based marketing. Often, that means an online funnel that directs leads to the firm’s website, where they can then fill in an email form. Answering web-based communications is even more challenging for banking and finance law firms than answering phone calls, but they’re no less critical. A legal answering service can handle email communications and even provide AI-powered (and human receptionist-supported) website chat.

• Dealing with the billing conundrum: How much time does your team spend handling billing and processing payments? Considering most of your clients are on net 30, 60, or 90-day billing plans, it can be challenging to keep cash flowing, the team paid, and the lights on. The right legal answering service can do much more than just answer phone calls and reply to emails. A virtual receptionist can take payments and even handle past-due collections from slow-to-pay or non-paying clients.

• Say goodbye to appointment complexity: Scheduling appointments is challenging at the best of times. The situation becomes even more complex when dealing with banking and finance-related clients. National and international corporations lack the agility that smaller businesses have, making it harder to set or change appointment dates and times. An experienced virtual receptionist can work with each client to set appointments that work for them and your firm and ensure that those dates and times are marked as unavailable, so you and your team never miss one.

• More intelligent decision-making: Any banking and finance attorney knows that sound decisions are made on accurate information. That can be hard to come by if you don’t have dedicated personnel to handle communications. Virtual receptionists can gather call intelligence and metadata and then integrate that directly into your CRM so that all team members with access to the system can benefit from accurate, timely information.

Serve your clients better while growing your firm

Ultimately, a legal answering service that integrates with your firm is an immense asset. Virtual receptionists work as part of your team while freeing your key people to focus on handling the legal needs of your banking and finance clients. 

Smith.ai’s experienced virtual receptionists understand the vast complexity of the banking and finance industry. We’ve worked with small, medium, and large firms to help them offset their in-office communication needs, streamline their lead intake process, transform their appointment setting, and more. From email and phone calls to customized plans tailored to your firm’s unique requirements, we can help.

To learn more, schedule a consultation or reach out to hello@smith.ai.

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