Phone Systems for Law Firms, lawyers & attorneys is part of the VoIP for small business and it can be tremendously helpful. First at all VoIP is the next wave in communications. VoIP stands for voice over Internet protocol. This protocol is the networking standard that allows web contents and e-mails to transmit over the internet. VoIP phone systems for law firms allows the PCs within your law office or any other business to communicate by converting analog voice into digital packets that are sent over the same networks that carry data.
VoIP has evolved from mere internet telephony to full-scale business integration of IP-enabled voice, data, and video communications. Consequently, large companies around the world are starting to transition their communication systems to VoIP, indicating that VoIP is here to stay.
How can the technological advances of VoIP be applied to a Law Firm? See how VoIP is applied in the day of the life of a lawyer.
Day in the Life of a Lawyer:
6:00 AM – Wake up, read 50-100 emails on your phone from the late night before.
7:30 AM – Early morning conference call with a client. Because your VoIP has a desktop control panel that integrates with your existing personal information, you just click on a contact name to dial. Furthermore, each call is time and date stamped and you can add notes of your discussion.
8:00 AM – Post-meeting work: if you’re on the clock, you can sort the call history by client number at the end of each month and you instantly generate billing for all calls for each client and matter with time/date, duration, and annotations.
8:15 AM – Coffee Break.
8:30 – 9:00 AM – Second meeting. A few new clients are on call. Luckily, when your VoIP receives an incoming call, a caller ID screen pops up giving you all of the caller’s contact information and the call log for that person. Phew, disaster averted. The ‘call history’ feature displays any relevant notes from last time keeping you prepped on prior discussions.
9:00 – 10:00 AM – Start 200 page markup set on desk from yesterday. Prepare with meeting for Texas bigwig client, in regards to summary judgement motion in an employment case. Click “Answer”, or “Send to Voicemail,” or “Forward” to your secretary or associate working on the case.
10:00 AM – Court Case.
10:37 AM – Walk out of the Court Room. Realize you forgot your files, again. No worries, you have a saved copy in your Cloud.
11:00 AM – Prepare for verdict summary with clientele. Use VoIP to monitor conference line and alert you when everyone is available, a feature known as “presence awareness”. Just drag and drop a name into the conference box to add the person. Someone calls in late. The caller ID screen-pop lets you see who it is. It’s Doug…again. Click “Add” so he can join in while making a mental note to talk to him about being on time for conference calls.
11:45 AM – Check Voicemail. Four different clients have already sent voicemails on other projects, and there are two more meetings planned, both for calls at 12:30.
12:30 PM – Important call. You realize that your associate, Jim, needs to be briefed on a few points in the call in order to appear informed. Using VoIP, you privately message Jim during the call to keep him up-to-date of recent client developments. You record the call and save it as either a .wav or.mpeg file for later review.
1:00 PM – Review case material for meeting that was pushed back. Listen to voicemails which have been organized by your VoIP in descending priority and automatically cataloged according to client of origin. No longer have to scribble notes or exhaustively memorize key points from voicemails, VoIP has done the heavy lifting for you.
2:30 PM – Call forwarding. With so many clients assuming that they are the only one, it is important to convey an image of always being available, or at least appearing to be. By setting up multiple call-forwarding profiles, you can manage client and office communications according to hierarchy; senior-management has full contact access, whereas the general public goes to your voicemail.
4:00 PM – Get on the train for a ride into the city for a meeting. Arrive at the city office location, where you are assigned a phone. Simply punch your ID into the VoIP, and Voila, all of your profiles, speed dials, call lists, and address books are downloaded from the network. No one will know that you are not in your office, as the VoIP can connect to the network anywhere.
Benefits for your Office:
Aside from increased productivity, VoIP phone systems for law firms are also cost-effective, giving the office a significant return on investment. International calling, for instance, is relatively inexpensive as long-distance carriers are bypasses in favor of the free internet. For MACs (moves, adds, or changes) VoIP is a cheap and effective way of scaling for new hires or summer interns, without the significant expense of line changes inherent within a traditional PBX system.
With the transition to VoIP inevitable, it is best to take advantages of the cost-savings and network efficiencies today. The sooner you adopt, the sooner you save. Telx Telecom specializes in full-scale management of VoIP networks, leaving nothing to chance in your busy day. Furthermore, no work is necessary on your behalf. Once an issue is identified, simply call our team, and we will correct the problem quickly.
