Quote:
Originally posted by Austintatious
This is probably the wrong place to ask but ...
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Why? - We have small firms in Texas. I'm possibly the smallest one. Ditto the office sharing - it works well for a lot of small firms I know. Sometimes each attorney has their own ring so the receptionist knows how to answer - othertimes em just answers "Law office" which is perfectly acceptable. Even better is to have office sharing in areas that lead to in-office referrals - mutual back scratching. I see nothing wrong with voice mail, however - people are conditioned to it now.
As a one chick operation, my clients can get me on my mobile almost 24/7 - luckily they are respectful enough to call during the day unless it is a crisis. If they get voice mail, they know I will call them within hours of finishing up whatever I was doing and they know I do not work everyday - most have met the baby. This would not work for most people, obviously. (I bake cookies for them at Christmas too which is pretty much unheard of). I am in the process of training them to ask questions via email and have added my email address to my voicemail message. Email solves both phone tag problems, impatient clients, and end of the month billing issues, when I am trying to reconstitute the entire month.
At my old firm we had an answering machine to pick up if we had a rare lapse in assistant/receptionist coverage and the clients did not seem to mind at all - so long as the call was returned. As Ann pointed out, you have to request they leave all their info or you get things like "Hey, this is Bill. Please Call" when you have six clients called "Bill." You should put on the message something like "...and please leave the number where we can reach you today" to encourage them to leave a good number - I hate having to guess which of a client's five or so contact nimbers to call first.
-TL
