We’re not much for muckraking, but we heard a question the other day we wanted to answer.
There’s a practice popular with some Denver personal injury lawyers–the 24/7 phone line. You may be wondering just how it’s possible for a lawyer to maintain a 24/7 phone line.
Let us be clear, we would never accuse any other personal injury attorney of doing something like this.
While we can’t speak to the professional practices of other firms, we can explain one option we found in our research for our own practice. Ultimately, we decided that we felt strongly that the best personal injury attorney should be as close to his phone as possible.
Why does a lawyer need a phone, anyway?
This may seem like a silly question at first, but it really isn’t.
Even though lawyers spend a lot of time filling out paperwork, cases aren’t all unique. After years of experience, a lawyer develops systems. For example, a lawyer may learn to break each case up into stages. A lawyer might also devise a unique color coding scheme. Those kinds of systems make it easier to do the day-to-day work of running a law firm. Still, the time of the lawyer is probably the single greatest expense at the law firm.
Let’s say a lawyer creates a survey for incoming clients. If the survey asks certain questions and the client responds with the ‘right answers,’ then the case may be worth a lawyer’s time.
This survey helps to decide if the case is worth taking. One of the best parts about it though, is that it doesn’t have to actually be asked by a lawyer.
There are actually services that answer the phone for you–as long as the questions are simple, and you provide a script.
The 24/7 Answering Service
One example is the “answering service.” Modern answering services are often provided by call centers that specialize in sales and customer relationships.
Answering services aren’t new.
Professionals like lawyers and doctors have been using them for a very long time. With that being said, it can be disconcerting to think you are calling a lawyer only to be speaking with a far away call center.
If you’re looking for a lawyer, you should always feel comfortable to ask if you are speaking with a call center.
We’ve wrote a guide to attorney reviews HERE.
