How Can an Online Legal Assistant Help Lawyers? [Key Benefits Explained]

Online legal assistants are professionals who assist lawyers, and law firms in their legal work. According to a recent report from the American Bar Association, the United States is facing a huge shortage of legal assistant personnel in history. There are around 1.3 million lawyers in the US, but only 10,000 legal assistants. Therefore, employing virtual legal assistants is the answer to this huge shortage of working personnel.

There are numerous advantages to having a business law assistant, such as:

• Reducing the firm’s operational cost: We all know the expense of having a legal assistant on site. An online legal assistant costs many times less than an onsite virtual one.
• Time convenience: virtual assistants for attorneys can be at your service 24/7 from anywhere there is an internet connection, allowing you to seek assistance whenever and wherever you want.
• Enhancing your work-life balance: A virtual legal assistant can easily take away the workload of an attorney.
• Accessing a wide variety of talents: accessing an online legal assistant comes with a wide variety of talent from different judiciary fields worldwide.

Therefore, having an online legal assistant at your disposal can be a godsend for lawyers. 

What does an Online Legal Assistant do?

As we move into this day and age of the internet, online legal assistance has become a new thing in the eyes of the judiciary world. Today, more and more lawyers are seeking virtual aid to handle their time-consuming, repetitive, and crucial tasks. 

In this article, we have summarized 16 ways in which online legal assistants help lawyers:

1. Administrative Duties

Lawyers often spend a significant amount of time on administrative tasks, which are necessary but do not generate revenue. Administrative support like appointment scheduling, file management, document organization, corresponding drafts, and answering calls can consume lawyers’ hours and unbillable time. Therefore, having a virtual assistant for law firms to perform administrative work can be overwhelmingly beneficial. 

Benefits

There are numerous benefits to having a virtual assistant perform a lawyer’s administrative responsibilities. This virtual assistant can help lawyers with file management, scheduling appointments, calendar management, organizing documents, answering calls, emailing clients, and all the other tasks that can help a lawyer share their workload. 

2. Case management

A good lawyer is always busy and has to work simultaneously on different court cases. In many instances, the lawyer didn’t show up in court simply because they missed the date or lost their cases simply because they missed the deadline and couldn’t prepare their argument. In this regard, a virtual legal assistant can assist lawyers with their case management.

Benefits

One of the best benefits of having a virtual legal assistant is taking advantage of court hearings. The law firm virtual assistant helps track the deadlines for every case proceeding, which can be very helpful. They can also aid in maintaining a court case calendar for their lawyers to determine the priorities on which cases to work.

3. Calendar Management

Calendar management is a cognitive skill as well as a daunting task for attorneys to keep track of their day-to-day activities. It usually refers to applying time management skills, project management, and priority management to schedule time. It is traditionally based on understanding where your time is best spent and planning your calendar accordingly.

Benefits

The remote legal assistant can help their lawyer by scheduling appointments for their attornies according to their priorities. They coordinate appointments to ensure the client is well informed about the schedule with the lawyers. They alter and manage their employer’s calendars by making necessary changes according to their deadlines. In conflicting schedules, they work with all parties to reschedule appointments where required. This calendar management skill is vital in making life easier for lawyers. 

4. Billing and Invoicing

Anyone can be clumsy about keeping track of their billing and invoicing. Some legal practitioners might not have the necessary skills to focus on the financial side of their law firm. If you have an online legal assistant at your disposal, you will no longer have to worry about managing the economic aspects of the legal services that you provide to your clients. 

Benefits

The virtual legal assistant can help their lawyers by preparing bills and invoices for the clients. They help to track down unpaid payments from their clients. Furthermore, they also assist in tracking expenses, reviewing billings, and other due payments for their clients. The virtual legal assistant also acts as a Financial adviser. Furthermore, the law firm virtual assistant can keep track of account receivables, ensuring compliance with billing regulations and recordkeeping for future audits. 

5. Court Scheduling

Court scheduling typically involves coordinating and managing lawyers’ dates, times, hearings, and submission deadlines. A lawyer may work on so many cases and handle so many cases that managing court dates can be tricky for lawyers.

Benefits

An online legal aid assistant can carefully manage court schedules by logging down the dates in an organized pattern. Your virtual assistant takes notes to set the dates, times, hearings, and submission deadlines so you cannot miss any court proceedings. The legal practitioner will have enough time to prepare and update the court dates, avoiding mixups, thus helping you stay on track to winning every case. 

6. Client Communication and Appointment Scheduling

Client communication is a key part of the legal profession. For any lawyer, enough time is consumed by meetings, research, court appearances, etc. Thus, giving the best legal service to clients becomes very challenging. An online legal assistant can be a game changer for client communication and appointment scheduling. 

Benefits

Communicating with clients and setting appointments becomes much easier with a virtual legal assistant. This legal assistant can be an access point for the lawyers and the clients. They can give proper updates and guarantee a prompt response from the client to the lawyer. They can also help schedule appointments whenever required.

7. Website Management

For any business to survive, it is crucial to market itself to acquire more clients and stay relevant. A law professional must maintain a website to obtain more clients. Managing and maintaining a website can be daunting for a lawyer with many things in hand. An online legal assistant can be a gold rush, as they can easily handle and manage your website. 

Benefits:

An online legal assistant can easily assist the lawyer in updating their website. They can post regular updates on the lawyer’s behalf to attract new customers and retain current ones. Your legal assistant will be able to establish your brand with regular updates on your site. Aside from regular updates, your remote assistant can take care of the technical side, like making your site more responsive and mobile-friendly and addressing any discrepancies regarding your website.

8. Legal Research

Legal research is one of the most crucial tasks for every lawyer to do to build a strong case. Good legal research aids a lot in winning court cases. This research helps gather valuable information to support their arguments, strengthen their case strategy, and win cases. It also helps them stay updated about the current laws and laws across different states. This legal research is often very time-consuming and can be boring for lawyers. An excellent online legal assistant can be a game-changer for law professionals.

Benefits

Having a virtual legal assistant can save lawyers a lot of research time. An experienced online legal assistant can help build a strong case that supports their argument and strengthens the case strategy. They also help identify and analyze legal issues relevant to the client’s case, which may help win cases. By conducting comprehensive legal research, online legal assistants can pinpoint vital legal problems and develop a strategy to help court cases. 

9. Language Translation

As we move into a globalized world, immigration lawyers always need someone to translate for them. Understanding an entirely new language can be challenging. Some people need legal assistance but may not be familiar with the English language. The lawyer can hire an online legal assistant familiar with that language to access those clients and give them proper legal support.

Benefits

A virtual assistant can work as a language translator. They can use their language proficiency and translation skills to assist attorneys and clients. They can help by translating documents, providing interpretation services, facilitating client-lawyer communication, and conducting legal research and analysis in the client’s native language. 

10. Transcription

Lawyers always need a transcriber to convert their clients’ audio or video conversations into text. Transcription is usually the process of making copies of video or audio content or converting live human speech into text. In such a context, law professionals always need a transcriber to translate speech into text form. 

Benefits

There are several benefits to having a law firm’s virtual assistant, including transcription. The virtual assistant can quickly transcribe video and audio speeches into proper text form to assist lawyers in planning their arguments. These transcribed documents can help the lawyer develop a proper strategy and win cases.

11. Data Entry and Management

Every day, lawyers have to review thousands of documents to work on their cases. Searching those piles of documents for specific information can be tedious and time-consuming. Law firms are now opting to convert these files into digital formats, utilizing data entry and management to ensure that these files don’t get stranded or lost. 

Benefits

One crucial benefit of having an online legal assistant is saving time and organizing documents through data entry and management. Your virtual assistant can help you organize those piles of documents and make your work seamless.

12. Legal Document Preparation

As said earlier, a legal practitioner has lots of jobs on their hands. They usually have an overwhelming workload. Due to time constraints, they often need help performing basic tasks like drafting, reviewing, or preparing legal documents. There are also many times when an attorney needs more resources to prepare legal documents. Having an online legal assistant helps lawyers answer all these problems.

Benefits

A law firm virtual assistant can help lawyers prepare all your legal documents. They often come with huge experiences where these legal assistants can easily draft, review, and finalize your legal documents. They can conduct extensive legal research to review case laws, statutes, regulations, and legal precedents to support the arguments presented in the documents. Therefore, having an online legal assistant can be a godsend in helping lawyers prepare legal documents.

13. Proofreading

Lawyers are often seen making silly grammar, spelling, punctuation, or format-related mistakes. These mistakes often make the lawyers look bad in the eyes of the judge. Making these mistakes on legal documents can be detrimental, as they can have serious consequences, including legal liability and harm to the client’s case. Thus, proofreading is crucial for attorneys, and an online legal assistant assists the lawyers. 

Benefits

A virtual assistant can easily assist lawyers in proofreading legal documents. They usually have experience fixing grammatical errors. Your business assistant can ensure the format is consistent, accurate, and complies with the legal department’s formats. 

14. Social Media Management

Today, marketing and social media management play vital roles in a business’s success. Social media management can allow lawyers to increase visibility, networking, relationships, and brand awareness among potential clients. It also now acts as a platform to educate and inform the public about various legal topics, rights, and responsibilities. However, managing social media can be hectic and time-consuming since attorneys have many other responsibilities. 

Benefits

A virtual assistant is crucial in supporting lawyers in social media media management. The virtual assistants can create content on legal topics to educate their audience. They can engage with your social media followers and community members by promptly responding to comments, messages, and inquiries. Your virtual business assistant can also create social media advertising campaigns to promote your law firm. This management can help you reach many potential customers and boost your firm’s business. 

15. Email Management

Email has become one of the best means of contact in today’s world. A lawyer’s email can easily become full in a short period of time. Therefore, responding to all the emails can be tough and time-consuming. On the contrary, you must respond to all those emails to maintain proper communication channels. 

Benefits

Your online legal assistant can help by categorizing messages, creating folders, and applying filters to prioritize important emails. They can also help lawyers quickly identify and respond to urgent or high-priority emails without getting overwhelmed. Your virtual legal assistant can easily provide you with top-notch email management services for meaningful communication.

16. Handle Bookkeeping and Accounting

For any law firm, bookkeeping and accounting are critical to maintaining its office and business. Bookkeeping helps to record and classify the firm’s financial transactions systematically.

Benefits

Having a virtual legal assistant is a blessing, as they can help with all your bookkeeping and accounting for your law firm. Your online assistant can help you keep track of all your expenses. They also help ensure accuracy and compliance by maintaining all your books. Furthermore, the online legal assistant also helps to meet deadlines for tax filings, invoice submissions, and financial reporting requirements.

Final Verdict

As said earlier, having an online virtual assistant is a big blessing. They help reduce your extra workload so that you can focus on winning cases. We all know that having an online legal assistant is much more cost-effective than having an onsite one.  

A virtual legal assistant can perform almost all tasks, from administrative duties to billing and invoicing to bookkeeping and accounting. They can also help with extensive legal research, document preparation, and case management. Your online virtual assistant can also manage your social media and email accounts, handle client communication, and set appointments. 

Finding a reliable online virtual assistant is always tough and takes a lot of work. In this regard, you can always get help from professionals like Yes Assistant, who have years of experience providing quality virtual assistant services to lawyers with huge success.