The Success of Law Firms Hiring Remote Staff
Law firms are now trying to keep up with technological advancement by preferring remote work than the traditional office set up. 80% of firms have shifted to remote work, while only 10% perform legal operations in their physical offices. The transition to remote work allowed legal employees across the world to work together in a virtual space.
In this guide, I discuss with you the importance of law firms with remote staff, including the benefits of having stateside employees and offshore legal employees. I also present the possible challenges every law firm owner can encounter when working with remote teammates and ways to keep virtual legal assistants productive.
How Law Firms Transitioned to Remote Work
The impact of the pandemic produced a major shift to employment, especially in the legal industry. The traditional way showed that law firms always depend on functioning at office-based systems. Working a 9 to 5 or working additional hours is inevitable if clients are in urgent legal need. Law firms back then heavily adapted face-to-face collaboration with employees, clients, and organizations to settle negotiations.
But now, remote work is the modern law firm. With the rise of hiring virtual legal assistants, remote work continues to be more efficient for managers and employees. At Ethen Ostroff Law, we formed a healthy work community following a people-first approach. Due to the travel constraints brought by the pandemic, the world provided a smarter way for companies to save time and money from allowance and transportation. I’m proud to say that the well-being of my employees will always be my priority.
Thanks to technology, home or remote work settings have become convenient for me and my employees. Virtual law firm operations like us started using project management tools, Google workspace, and E-signature platforms for contracts and pleadings.
Benefits of Law Firms Hiring Stateside Employees
For a successful remote law firm management to work, it should be aligned with the working conditions of both offshore and stateside employees. At Ethen Ostroff Law, I make sure that stateside staff receive the local benefits they deserve like paid time off for personal, vacation, and holiday leave. Below are the benefits of law firms hiring stateside employees:
Easy compliance with employment regulations
Since stateside employees are hired within the U.S., it simplifies:
- Payroll and reporting of taxes
- Confidentiality and data privacy information
- Compliance to labor law
Similar Timezone
I have the similar timezone as our stateside team at Ethen Ostroff Law. So, this makes it easier to:
- Manage real-time client interactions
- Talk to lawyers during business hours
- Work on court deadlines
- Set emergency or urgent meetings
While remote work is the new normal, it’s still important to show up on time. Working from home may be comforting, but I still prefer for everyone to be punctual during business hours. No internet connectivity or a personal emergency is understandable, as long as you complete the required tasks within the given work hours.
Enhanced credibility
I’ve always believed that credibility is your number one asset when it comes to finding clients. I usually advise other law firm owners to be more aggressive when calling potential clients. It’s no secret that we usually have more personal injury clients because of our Google reviews.
When it comes to enhancing credibility, your stateside employees play a vital role in encouraging clients to use your legal services. You don’t need to be the most perfect law firm in town, you just need to apply the right strategies and know where to find clients.
In my law firm, our clients recognize and remember the hardwork of our offshore legal employees. But they also put a huge amount of trust in our U.S.-based employees. We usually get more clients in practice areas such as:
- Workers’ compensation
- Mass torts
- Personal injury
- Criminal defense
- Premises liability
- Civil rights
- Malpractice
- Defective products
- Vehicle accidents
Frequent exposure to firm culture
Both of our stateside legal employees and virtual legal assistants practice the culture of paying attention to detail. But our stateside employees are more exposed to applying the necessity of listening through face-to-face interactions with clients.
In our firm, stateside employees are usually exposed to:
- Personal team meetings or training sessions
- Building rapport with the legal staff and attorneys
- Alignment with the company’s working hours and holidays
Knowledge and experience applying state laws
Hiring stateside employees in a remote setting makes it more convenient for your firm to function effectively. They are already familiar with:
- Where to find documents of court rulings
- Documents on ethics rules, local compliance, and legal standards
- Diversity of U.S. legal terms and procedures
These perks make it easier for stateside employees to teach what they know to offshore legal employees, ensuring they are all on the same page.
Benefits of Law Firms Hiring Offshore Employees
A thriving law firm with remote staff wouldn’t be possible without its virtual legal assistants. Here are the benefits of law firms hiring offshore employees:
Saves money for your firm
At Ethen Ostroff Law, we have a large team of virtual legal assistants in the Philippines, specifically in Bacolod City. Without my hardworking team, we wouldn’t be able to work with 200 law firms across Philadelphia. Hiring offshore employees saves you money not only because of the currency difference, but also because you won’t need to think about paying 100% of their local benefits.
What do I mean by this? There’s a difference between hiring stateside employees and legal assistants from other countries. Stateside employees can still be entitled to receiving mandatory employee benefits since they reside in the U.S. However, offshore employees are often independent contractors, and you only get to pay their salary. As for their mandatory local employee benefits like taxes, they will be the ones to file it under their country’s laws.
Hiring offshore employees means your virtual law firm operation is focused on:
- Having the option to hire full-time, part-time, or project-based staff depending on their role and experience.
- Reducing expenses related to in-house resources like offices, transportation, allowance, and utilities.
Receive access to a large talent pool
As an owner, you’re already aware how competitive and challenging the modern job market is. As the population of fresh graduates and people with work experience increase, so does the demand for finding high-quality talent. Hiring offshore legal employees for your virtual law firm operation lets you have options in choosing the right candidates that align with your firm’s values.
There are many experienced employees in countries like the Philippines, India, and South Africa. They have professionals with years of experience in:
- Paralegal support
- Legal research
- Legal or public administration
- Case management
- Intake or reception tasks
It can be intimidating to hire people outside of the United States. There’s no harm in trying. I know you don’t want to hire people who deliver low quality results. Consider giving them a chance and make sure to provide any available training resources.
Increased work productivity
Outsourcing virtual legal assistants allows you to provide tasks for each staff depending on their expertise, increasing productivity. For example, I can focus on reviewing client cases so I can provide better solutions, while my virtual assistants answer inquiries from our website. After years of working in the legal industry, I’ve realized that it’s impossible to do everything on your own. Your law firm won’t grow if you don’t ask for help.
Having a team of virtual legal assistants with specialized skills makes it easier to:
- Complete administrative tasks
- Organize or categorize legal documents
- Schedule client or partner appointments
- Do legal research in solving cases
- Provide paralegal support
Strong time zone difference advantage
Your law firm only operates on a 9 to 5 work day? That’s totally fine. Outsourcing talent outside the United States is a huge advantage for time zone changes. If you aim to provide 24/7 support to clients, your offshore legal employees are there to respond. This makes it easier to delegate administrative tasks for stateside and offshore employees.
79% of clients expect a response in 24 hours, while 82% believe that timeliness was crucial. If you want to show your empathy to clients, you need to have the mindset that they will expect your firm to respond fast. Your remote staff can divide the time availability of each assistant depending on their average work hours. This means that a stateside employee does not need to file for overtime pay because an offshore employee will take turns with them in answering client concerns.
Long-term employee retention
I’ve never underestimated my offshore employees in terms of their diverse roles, because they have good work ethics. Aside from consistency, I admire when an employee shows loyalty to the company while also being open to career growth. I’ve witnessed team members stay in the company for years and became the best version of themselves.
When you provide a healthy remote work environment where employees are motivated to finish tasks given while acknowledging that they can provide good results, retention is always possible. I don’t normalize workers staying in toxic companies that refuse to recognize their worth. At Ethen Ostroff Law, we make sure to keep our staff engaged and happy.
As cliche as it may sound, but I like to coordinate with the HR department in terms of planning fun activities for our stateside and offshore staff. We usually do virtual anniversary celebrations, yearly Christmas parties, and donation drives to give back to the community.
Challenges of Law Firms Working Remotely
Remote work is the dream for many corporate employees, but it’s not always glamorous. Based on what I’ve researched and experienced, here are possible challenges law firms can encounter when working remotely:
- Lack of initiative between employees – One thing I’ve observed from other staff is that they are too shy to click a simple message to co-workers. Being too shy or the refusal to ask for clarifications can lead to misunderstandings. As an owner, how do you manage to solve this?
Collaborative dynamics can be a challenge when done online, even though virtual tools are already available. Without consistent socialization, collaboration can be a challenge for employees who don’t take initiative.
- Depending too much on technology – Law firms are already experimenting the use of AI in terms of writing content, managing code, using prompts for emails, and other marketing-related tasks. But I firmly believe that relying too much on ChatGPT can lessen the authenticity of a firm. Which is why I prefer to have a few copywriters in my team to humanize our blogs not only to rank on Google, but to deliver content that tells the story of human experiences.
- Onboarding difficulties – Before you hire offshore staff, assess how your training library looks like. Multiple training resources with long descriptions can be overwhelming for new hires. So, it’s crucial to provide clear documentation, video walkthroughs, and a structured onboarding process to avoid information overload.
Ways for Law Firms to Keep Virtual Staff Productive
Despite the challenges in maintaining a successful remote law firm management, here are ways to keep your virtual staff productive:
- Apply SMART goals – Using SMART goals for virtual assistants help them focus on their responsibilities and give tangible results.
- Normalize doing regular check-ins – The heart of a law firm is the employees’ well-being. Be sure to schedule weekly or monthly check-ins to know how every team member is doing. They can share experiences regarding their role, while you suggest ways for improvement.
- Prioritize a good output – Instead of employees always relying on the deadline, avoid putting a deadline that’s not enough for them in creating a good output. Remember, a slow process is better than cramming a task and delivering low-quality results.
- Set clear expectations – As an owner, I know what I want with my employees and the role that they should execute. I make sure to communicate my expectations to them in a straightforward manner. Mistakes may occur along the way, but what’s important for me is seeing them learn from their mistakes and doing better every time.
Executing Work-Life Balance at Ethen Ostroff Law
At Ethen Ostroff Law, we strongly believe that virtual legal assistants continue to be the backbone of our firm. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to retain clients and close successful deals. If you’re a law firm owner, consider if a potential candidate aligns with your firm’s goals before hiring them. Don’t only focus on potential or experience, but also focus on their strong desire to learn the skills you want them to do.
A growing law firm with remote staff must focus on proper task delegation and normalize team collaboration. Your team may not see each other in person everyday, but they are creating a virtual environment that would reflect how your virtual law firm operates. As an owner, you must not only provide an easy-to-access training library, but also be a strong advocate of empathy among your team.
So far, stateside employees working with offshore legal employees produce the best client success results at Ethen Ostroff Law. We don’t only treat each other as co-workers, but as a family. I am looking forward to more law firms to create safe spaces for employees to grow while also being accountable.