7 Tasks A Bankruptcy Lawyer Can Outsource Right Now

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Outsourcing is a hot topic these days, as bankruptcy lawyers looking to manage their practices run into brick walls in their office management abilities.  After all, we’re still working on a machine to help us squeeze 29 hours out of each day.

But what you want from your practice is freedom, right?  Freedom to be more productive.  Freedom to spend time with your family.  Freedom from mind-numbing minutae.

We can do a few things: (a) hire more bankruptcy paralegals and support staffers in the office; (b) decline more cases; or (c) outsource more of our work to professionals who can help us manage the workflow in the office.  If you were practicing bankruptcy law in 2005 you know what happens when you bulk up the staff and then the market crashes.  So, too many bankruptcy lawyers are just now digging out of the red ink caused by BAPCPA, so turning away more cases is particularly difficult for many to imagine.

So that leads us to outsourcing (surprise, surprise!).  But the question remains …

What Can A Bankruptcy Lawyer Outsource Quickly And Profitably?

Here are just a few ideas:

1. Bookkeeping. Ask your accountant to handle the books each month, or find a bookkeeper to do them for you.  The cost is minimal in many cases, and is a job that many retired people will gladly do.
2. Mailing. If you’re not using CertificateOfService.com for your court mailings … you’re a glutton for punishment.  Give up the paper cuts and the doldrums of mailing out 48 copies of your latest lien strip motion.  The service is so worth it, you should send them flowers.
3. Answering Your Phone. For a live operator who will hunt you down and patch through calls, go with CallRuby.com If you’re comfortable with voicemail, consider PhoneTag.  For $30 a month PhoneTag will send your messages to your email box in mp3 format as well as transcribed so you can read them on the go.  Transcription is fantastic.
4. Your Fax Machine. End the hassles associated with running out of paper mid-fax, busy signals, and replacing the toner or drum.  Sign up with MaxEMail.com, eFax.com or any of the other fax-to-email services out there and you’ll soon be receiving your faxes by email in PDF format.  It’s a handy way to avoid scanning in huge documents, wasting paper and toner, and standing by the fax machine.  Yes, you can fax the documents out from your computer as well.
5. Standard Motion Drafting. Check out one of the many online marketplaces for virtual assistants and let someone else fill in the blanks on those annoying (yet necessary) form motions.  You’ve done how many lien strips over the course of your career?  Come on, now – you can’t honestly tell me that you don’t have a basic form you work with.  Send out the basic form by email to your virtual assistant and it will come back faster than you can say, “I wish I didn’t have to draft that motion.”  Extra bonus points for finding someone in a foreign country so you can send it out at 5:00pm and have it on your desk by 9:00am the next morning.
6. Client Reminders. Get yourself another one of those virtual assistants and put her/him on the notification list for your CM/ECF account.  Each time a case is filed, have them calendar the due date for the financial management certification, 341 documents, and the like.  Let them send out your form letter to the client and hound them by phone and email until they comply.
7. Petition Preparation. Virtual bankruptcy assistants, trained “normal people,” whatever your preference.  Get someone to handle the drudgery of inputting 36 unsecured creditors into Schedule F for you.

Photo courtesy of Guille.

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