The virtual paralegal and your law firm

One question I am often asked by lawyers is what services can I do for them? I thought it might be helpful to list some of the services I perform for lawyers in an effort to save them time and money.

Travel arrangements: A service I often perform for my clients entails finding and making reservations online for upcoming travel. This usually consists of making flight reservations – including finding the most economical fares – hotel reservations, car rental reservations and keeping track of flight credits accumulated and ensuring they are used before they expire.

Contacts organization/business card entries: Clients often have a stack of business cards that are in need of a home or that don’t seem make it into their Outlook or Blackberry database. By scanning the cards and emailing the files to me, I can remotely input them into their Contacts database. I can also keep on top of address changes.

Transcription: If clients regularly use a digital voice recorder to record correspondence or notes, the audio file can be sent via email. I can transcribe the recording and email a completed document back to them. Even if clients don’t have access to a digital voice recorder, recordings can be made by phone, have the audio file sent to me and I can transcribe it and send the completed document back to them.

Mail merge/template document organization: Law firms often have letters of introduction, ongoing letters to update clients and other correspondence that is used repeatedly. By transforming the correspondence into a template or a mail merge format the resulting forms are easily available when needed, create a uniform look when used by different members of the firm and save time in formatting.

These are just a few of the many services I can provide in an effort to help you run your business more effectively. I hope I have opened up some possible avenues that you may potentially make use of a virtual paralegal. If you think of all the administrative and unbillable tasks you perform each day and how you could outsource those to a virtual paralegal, imagine how much more time you could spend on building your business.

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