The Connected Lawyer – A Virtual Phone System Keeps You in Control

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I recently had a great phone conversation with Jay S. Fleischman, Esq, about his law practice and how he operates his practice. When I phoned him, I was directed via a great answering system that I had to know more about. Jay agreed to provide me with the following guest post. For those of you that don’t know, Jay has the Debt Relief law Center of New York. In addition he recently introduced MyThirdWave, a comprehensive practice management specifically for consumer bankruptcy lawyers. Jay also has a great blog called Bankruptcy Practice Pro, and in his spare time he does some very good Debt Podcast.

By Jay S. Fleischman, Esq,

I’ve had an answering service for about four years. They’re very good, and they handle all of my appointment scheduling. I’ve grown used to not having to worry about these phone calls, confident that they are handled expertly 24/7. But about a year ago the problem began to surface of how I could possibly handle all of the other phone calls that came into my office day after day.

Depending on the day of the week – indeed, the time of day – I may be in a number of different places. Perhaps I’m in the office preparing for a client meeting. Or maybe I’m in my home office, catching up on work and answering e-mails. Better yet, what if I decide it’s a really nice day and take my laptop out to the park to be productive and get a tan at the same time? How would people know where to reach me?

I originally did what many traveling professionals do – I turned on call forwarding, and made sure it was set to whatever phone happened to be closest to me. But that solution didn’t really make me happy, because callers would then bypass my gatekeeper, the auto attendant. Creditors would call to verify information on my clients, new callers would reach me directly, and I wouldn’t have any reliable way of routing calls effectively.

Enter GotVMail. This handy web-based virtual PBX allows me to have all of the convenience of a sophisticated voice mail system without having to be tethered to a physical location. I can program any extension to ring in specific places at different times of day or days of the week, and can change those settings on the fly through a web interface. Call into my office and you’ll have the option of making an appointment (this gets trunked out to the answering service), getting directions, contacting me, or any other member of my team. Depending on my whim, you may get me in any number of places.

And to make things more useful, the system can be set up to announce the name of the caller when you pick up the phone. That means I can have my office line ring my home phone and automatically know that it’s a work call when I pick up – no more worries about answering the phone unprofessionally!

In the interests of full disclosure, the link to GotVMail is an affiliate link. But fear not – you do not get charged a dime extra for signing up through this link. All income goes towards hosting costs for my consumer bankruptcy practice management and technology blog, Bankruptcy Practice Pro.

Related posts:

1. Grant Griffiths On My Virtual Phone System
2. Phone Tag And The Virtual Lawyer
3. GrandCentral – Will It Save My Phone Woes?
4. Cell phone vs. Landline
5. Connected Lawyer – Digital Dictation