Legal Practice Pro» virtual assistant

5 Ways I Find Virtual Assistants For My Law Firm

Jay Fleischman — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:21:47 +0000

Once upon a time, your law firm placed an ad in the classified section of the local newspaper when a new staff member was needed. If you were looking for a lawyer, maybe you’d get in touch with a local law school. But times change, and so do the ways we use to find help.

The virtual assistant is like a siren, music to our ears. We want to outsource as much as possible, leaving us to focus on the heavy lifting of running a law firm. So we set about putting together processes and procedures, creating workflow manuals, and getting everything ready for the big push to getting a virtual assistant for the law firm.

We do our best to wrap our heads around the mindset needed when dealing with virtual assistants rather than in-house staffers. Finally, we’re all set to go.

Then reality sinks in. You have no freaking idea WHERE to find virtual assistants. So you’re pretty much screwed.

I know how you feel. I’ve been there.

In the seven years that I’ve used virtual assistants for my law firm (yikes! time flies when you’re having fun) I have learned one thing if nothing else – finding help for your law firm is no easy task, whether that help is virtual or “in house.” You’ve got to approach it with the same sense of organization no matter which way you’re going. And with that organization comes the responsibility to look in every possible place.

Here are my 5 favorite places to find virtual assistants for my law firm:

Craigslist. This is the grand-daddy of classified ad sites online, and a place where there are a ton of help-wanted ads. Though the company is not publicly held and, therefore, doesn’t disclose income, a report from June 2009 indicates that revenue at the company is approximately $100 million. 80% of that income comes from help-wanted ads. Do a little math and you’ll find that there’s a TON of hiring activity there.

But we’re not going to stop there. If you go into the Resumes section of the site you’ll find people who are looking for work. Do a few searches and you’re sure to come up with a treasure trove of potential hires. My favorites are stay-at-home parents (they used to be “stay-at-home moms” but now more dads are choosing to stick around with their kids) and retirees.

oDesk. oDesk is a site that brings together freelancers and people who need help. You can find a transcriptionist for your legal pleadings, a virtual receptionist (though I use Call Ruby – and you should, too), an appointment scheduler, a proofreader, a graphic designer … you get the picture. It’s like heaven for virtual assistants, and I use oDesk extensively.

Twitter Search. More and more, Twitter Search is the first place I turn for pretty much everything. Use it just like you would Google Search – type in a few key terms that describe what you’re looking for, check out some of the status updates that match your search query, and dive deeper into the profiles of the people you uncover. I found my bookkeeper, the wonderful Candy Beauchamp, through a Twitter Search. I also found my virtual assistant Suzie on Twitter, though that was the result of following her for a number of months.

Elance. Elance is the mack daddy of the outsourcing universe, operating like oDesk but with a far deeper pool of service providers. I’ve used Elance to find lots of help over the years – a virtual assistant here, a programmer there, a graphic designer or two in the mix as well – and it’s a great starting point for your search.

Google Blog Search. Bear in mind, I’m not talking about using the “regular” Google search for your virtual assistant needs. Why? First, if you type in “virtual assistant” you’re going to get a bazillion hits. Many of them will be for companies, some will be completely useless, and often you’ll end up on a directory site filled with a bunch of links for virtual assistants. Not so super helpful unless you’ve got years to wade through those links.

Second, you need to remember that a virtual assistant has got to be someone comfortable with technology. After all, you’ll probably be making use of a variety of applications to share information, transmit data and the like. With that in mind, you’re probably going to want to find a virtual assistant who’s got some level of agility with online publishing platforms like … a blog! Head directly to the blog search and run your queries there to save a bunch of time and headache.

Image courtesy: taylorkydd (Flickr)

4 Steps To Training Your Virtual Bankruptcy Assistant

Jay Fleischman — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:00:15 +0000

A virtual bankruptcy assistant can be the most helpful resource in your office, or the worst. And it all depends on how you approach it.

Every week I get at least 4-5 emails from bankruptcy lawyers telling me that they admire my use of virtual assistants in my office. They lavish praise and then immediately tell me that it would never work for them.

They’ve tried going that route already, but none of the virtual bankruptcy assistants they hire are worth their weight in salt. Plus, they charge a ton of money.

It’s tough to justify bringing on a virtual bankruptcy assistant when you’ve got that sour taste in your mouth, right?

Wrong. You’ve got to get over it and realize it’s totally worth it.

Let me be clear – I do not know the formal training process undergone by those who are certified as virtual bankruptcy assistants. Nor do I care. My concern is solely with the quality of the work product as it compares with the standards and practices established by the individual law firm.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can worry about getting the right virtual bankruptcy assistant for your office. Here are my top 4 steps to training a VBA:

Establish clear lines of communication. By speaking regularly, you and the outside professional can keep things clear.

Create A Detailed Guide. Your trustees prefer that you not break out every single type of household good? Your courts look at Schedule J more closely, disallowing any food expense above $200 per adult in the household? You like credit reporting agencies listed on Schedule F? How will your VBA know unless you tell him or her?

Consider Video. I’m not talking about a movie. Rather, consider using a screen recording program such as Camtastia (I use Screenflow for my Mac, and it’s awesome) to walk a VBA through the actual buttons you press for each part of petition preparation. I’ve used this method to train countless people to handle petition preparation for my office, which allows me to educate from the ground up rather than looking for the most experienced person.

Manage Your Own Expectations. Your virtual bankruptcy assistant isn’t going to be able to read your mind. Mistakes will be made from time to time, and that’s OK. After all, no in-house legal assistant gets it right 100% of the time either, do they? Though there are differences between a virtual bankruptcy assistant and a staff member, here’s one place where there is very little differentiation between the two.

Have you hired a virtual bankruptcy assistant in your office? How did you train him or her? Add your comments below!

Photo courtesy of fdecomite.

Staffing A Bankruptcy Law Practice $1 At A Time

Jay Fleischman — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:00:01 +0000

Bankruptcy lawyers are currently experiencing a boom in business such as has not been seen in years. Small practitioners are finding themselves flooded with new work, and new lawyers are entering the field faster than ever before. The economy is in the toilet, and consumers need help.

To some extent, the main concern is how to get the work done without losing your mind. The phone rings off the hook, new clients pour in the door (assuming you’re marketing with any degree of effectiveness), and the court calendar fills up fast.

How the heck do you get all the work done and manage the staff effectively? My answer for the past number of years has been:

The Best Way To Staff A Bankruptcy Practice Is One Dollar At A Time.

What this means is that whenever you’re taking on a new client or task, opening up a new office or hiring a new staffer (real or virtual), your first inquiry needs to be one of how much much it will cost to accomplish the task versus how much money it will make to do so.

This is, after all, a business. Make money and you live to fight another day. Break even or lose money, and it’s curtain time.

Turning down a new client or working without that new legal assistant can be tough to do, though. We bankruptcy lawyers tend to run on a treadmill like little gerbils, always sprinting to catch that next client for fear the phones will go dead next month.

But think of it this way. If you take on 3 new clients this month above what your staff can reliably handle, you’re going to need to either pay overtime or hire someone new. That costs more money than the additional income from those three cases. Maybe you “cheap out” and decide to just work everyone that much harder. What happens then? Reduced productivity, sloppier work product, and a downward spiral into the abyss.

One simple way of managing your practice one dollar at a time is to plan ahead whenever possible. If you see that things are growing by leaps and bounds, take the time to sit down with your existing staff and find out how much more they can reasonably be expected to handle. If they’re close to the breaking point, start looking for a virtual assistant to take on some of the well-defined tasks while you determine if it’s just a blip or a long-term growth pattern.

If you’re experiencing a long-term growth pattern, watch for a few months to see where it goes. If you have a virtual assistant who is handling the overflow more cost-effectively than a staff member then “keep on, keepin’ on,” as they say. But if you can see the tipping point (financially) coming in short order, start looking for an in-house staffer now.

By beginning the search before it’s an emergency, you won’t feel the pressure to hire the first person who crosses your threshold. Take the time to interview wisely so that you minimize your chances of making a bad hiring decision.

In taking care to keep the costs of personnel in balance, you can keep more dollars in your pocket while maintaining a consistently high quality of work product.

Photo courtesy of pfala.

Five Questions to Ask a Virtual Bankruptcy Assistant

Tracy Coyle — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:00:41 +0000

As business people we are faced with hiring decisions all the time. The initial appointment with a potential client should answer two questions: can I help this person with their issues? Can we work together? A potential client that is evasive, irritating, frustrating and combative at the initial appointment is not likely to improve over time.

If you are considering hiring a Virtual Bankruptcy Assistant (VBA) the initial discussion should also answer two questions: can this person help me and my practice? Can we work together?

Over time you have developed a series of questions that helps you get to the issues and feel out a potential client. When I talk to a potential client, there are five areas I expect to discuss. An attorney that does not cover these areas is likely to be frustrating and difficult to work with over time. Here are five questions that I have been asked and expect from a potential client:

1. [Quantity] How many petitions have you prepared?

Volume is important. The more situations a VBA has dealt with, the more potential issues they will be aware of in new cases. What is a good answer? I think it depends on YOUR practice. If you handle 30-50 cases a year, after four or five years, you probably consider yourself experienced enough to deal with your potential client base. A VBA that has done 150 to 250 cases is probably a reasonable experience level for your practice size. A high volume practitioner that handles 200 or more cases per year will probably consider a thousand cases as a minimum level of experience. Matching your volume for five years to the VBA’s numerical experience will probably give you a VBA that can handle many of the issues likely to come up in YOUR practice.

2. [Breadth] What type of cases have you handled?

A VBA that has never handled a Chapter 13 case has seldom had to face the issues that asset cases address. It is like a car mechanic that has never dealt with a manual transmission. Chapter 7s, Chapter 13s, individuals, couples, same sex couples, sole proprietorships, federal and state exemption rules, multiple districts and multiple attorneys gives a VBA a vast array of experience that improves the quality of their work.

3. [Depth] What type of information do you provide when you return a petition?

A VBA should offer a comprehensive list of concerns, missing items and legal issues. The issues can be as simple as they were missing one paystub in the last sixty days to ‘Did you know they had $22,000 deposited in their checking account two months ago and it was withdrawn the next day?’ Seeing a lien on a car title but the creditor wasn’t listed in the schedules; A married couple with no jewelry listed on Schedule B and two jewelry store credit cards with large balances on Schedule F.

A report of the issues and concerns raised during the preparation of a petition gives attorneys two vital pieces of information: issues to be aware of in front of a Trustee and how forthright a client is in their discussions. A VBA should never assume an attorney knows what is missing or what issues exist. Most attorneys are aware of the credit counseling requirement but listing the absence of a credit counseling certificate in every case where it is missing is the job of the VBA. It gives the attorney confidence that when they sit down in a 341 hearing, the Trustee is not going to ‘surprise’ them.

There is one other area/issue that a VBA should not be afraid to advise the Attorney about: legal issues. I may get some flack about it, but a good VBA knows the rules and the law. I am not suggesting the VBA tell the Attorney HOW to practice bankruptcy law, but when a client has not lived in a state for two years, noting that different exemptions apply is part of our job. Legal issues will be rare, but they are 800 pound gorillas and catching them before a Trustee does makes a VBA invaluable to an Attorney.

4. [Performance] What is your turnaround time?

A nuts and bolts question? A VBA that answers ‘within 24 hours’ or ‘within 48 hours’, probably has a low volume business – nothing wrong with that, but the answer should be consistent with the answer in question number one. An answer of 7-10 days either indicates an extremely busy VBA business (and then you want to be careful with quality) or a VBA with other obligations (a regular job?). In the end, it is an issue of YOUR practice. If you routinely plan to file petitions quickly after obtaining the information from the client, a long turn around will impact your business processes. Also, if it is normal to file all your cases in the first week of the month, having longer turn around times may not impact your practice at all. A VBA should always offer that if you have an emergency filing, they will do their best to turnaround the petition as quickly as possible.

5. [Quality] What documents do you need to prepare a petition?

Most attorneys have a booklet or set of papers that a client fills out with the information necessary for the petition. That booklet is a foundation, but far from enough to complete a quality petition. In addition to the booklet, at a minimum: deed(s), title(s), 2 years of tax returns, 3 months of bank statements, 3 months of financial and creditor statements (especially secured debts); 6 months of pay stubs; any summons/complaints for lawsuits; credit counseling certificate. (I prefer and review 6 months of financial statements. 90 days covers SOFA #3 but could be an issue on balance transfers – our trustees ask about balance transfers over the last 120 days.)

VBAs that ask for less are not bad, but you need to compare the amount of information provided to the VBA with the detail expected back from them. A reasonable inquiry applies to all the steps in the preparation and filing of a bankruptcy petition. We have seen at 341 hearings the result of debtors filing their own petitions. VBAs that take only the minimum information provided and prepare a petition from it will fare no better.

A VBA that requests a significant quantity of documents is more likely to return a petition that accurately reflects the debtors financial condition, but reviewing such a load of documentation will take much longer also – expect to pay for it.

Those are the important five. They cover quantity, quality, depth, breath and performance. You will ask other questions as the discussion evolves.

But, you might notice there is no discussion of cost: how much do you charge? If you get good answers to the above questions, pay whatever the VBA asks. It will be worth it. When you bill clients for staff work, the amount is more than you actually pay the staff. The number reflects the overhead costs and carrying costs of having staff performing necessary work. The VBA provides their own computer, facilities, training and overhead. The VBA only gets paid when you need them, whenever you need them. No staff member would accept four hours of work this week, then sitting at home unpaid for 10 days.

Consider the amount of time you (or your staff) spend preparing petitions and then multiply that by your staff billing rate. It will be a reasonable starting point for fee negotiations with a quality VBA.

Tracy Coyle is a virtual bankruptcy assistant working with consumer bankruptcy lawyers nationwide. She can be contacted by email at tracy.coyle@gmail.com.