Why Your Personal Injury Law Firm Needs an Answering Service

Personal injury law is a crucial part of our legal system. It’s what allows a shopper who slips and falls on a wet floor without critical signage to sue the store. It’s what allows drivers and passengers injured in trucking accidents to sue negligent trucking companies. With hundreds of thousands of new claims per year, it adds up to a lot of victims in need of legal representation. That’s good news for your personal injury law firm.

What’s not good news is the increased amount of communication and back-and-forth your team must endure thanks to the increase in personal injury claims. Chances are very good that your team spends more time answering phone calls, replying to emails, and fielding text and web-based chat messages than anything else. While that might be considered the cost of running a personal injury law firm, there’s no denying the fact that every minute spent handling communications is time taken away from more critical tasks, like due diligence, investigating accident scenes, speaking with witnesses, and more.

You don’t have to struggle through this situation. A legal answering service can handle your communications-related needs, ensuring that your team can be deployed where their skills and experience are of the most value. What advantages might your personal injury law firm find when working with an experienced answering service?

How personal injury law firms benefit from partnering with an answering service

Personal injury firms are no strangers to synergistic partnerships. You likely work with a marketing firm, perhaps a professional photographer, an accounting firm, and many others. A legal answering service is no different. It’s a beneficial relationship that helps you achieve important goals.

1. Serve your clients better

The sole reason for your law firm’s existence is to serve your clients. You’re there to help ensure that those injured through no fault of their own get the justice they deserve. In many cases, you also help hold negligent businesses and individuals accountable for their actions and decisions. 

Unfortunately, the need to answer phone calls, reply to emails, and handle chats/texts takes away from your ability to focus on your primary mission. Yes, answering calls from potential clients is important, but it’s more important that you give existing clients your utmost attention. You can’t do that well if you and your team are constantly having to stop and answer calls or reply to emails. 

A legal answering service helps ensure that you’re able to focus on what matters most, without sacrificing new client intake. Experienced virtual receptionists answer each call as they come in. That means no more fielding voicemails days after they were left and no more hang-ups because the receptionist was on the other line. It also means that you and your team can serve your clients to the best of your ability, which is a critical consideration for any personal injury attorney.

2. Map the customer journey and leverage data

You operate a legal practice but don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s also a business. For every client that you must represent, there are hours of administrative work that must be done. And like any other business owner, you must make informed decisions with your budget, outreach strategies, service offerings, and more. Getting access to the data you need can be challenging.

With a legal answering service, you surface critical details that allow you to make more informed decisions. That includes call recordings and transcripts, as well as metadata from every call, including actions taken, previous touchpoints, point of origin, relevance to your firm, priority, and a lot more. 

With this information, you can map out the client journey and improve the overall experience. You can also make more informed decisions about where you spend your marketing dollars, the particular demographics to target with your ads, and other important business decisions.

3. Expand your availability

Your law firm doesn’t operate 24/7. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for life itself. Potential clients may be injured at any time of the day or night and call seeking legal counsel during these trying times. 

Ordinarily, calls that come in after hours go to voicemail and are returned when your team has the time. That’s a lot of time wasted – time during which the lead could call a competing firm or simply decide that they don’t want to work with you because you took too long to call them back.

A legal answering service expands your availability, ensuring that no matter what time a potential client calls, they’re answered by a live, compassionate professional. Virtual receptionists provide thoughtful, accurate answers to questions, explain your firm’s policies, and can even begin the intake process.

It’s not just about after-hours answering, either. A legal answering service ensures that there’s always a live receptionist available, whether your office is closed, it’s a holiday, or your team is tied up with other phone calls.

Get the answering service you need

There’s more demand for personal injury attorneys today than at any point in recent years. However, you and your team must be able to handle the increased volume of leads contacting your practice and balance that with serving your existing clients. It’s difficult to do on your own but working with a legal answering service ensures that it’s possible.

At Smith.ai, our experienced virtual receptionists can dramatically expand your availability with 24/7 answering, overflow answering, and after-hours answering. We also give you access to real-time data to inform your decisions and ensure you’re able to serve your current clients to the best of your ability. 

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

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