Lawyers Turning To Virtual Assistants/Paralegals

Lawyers are turning to hiring Virtual Assistants and Paralegals to reduce overhead expenses such as payroll taxes and the cost of having employees sit around “on the clock” when there’s not real work to be done.

This is likely a problem for attorneys who are just starting in practice and don’t have a regular caseload but established attorneys can have stacks of files that accumulate that need to be cleaned up too.

From Lawyer’s Weekly (Australia)

Moving to the Bar can be a costly proposition…That was Cameron Dick’s quandary until he met Kristen Edwards, his virtual assistant. Dick now records his client interviews onto a dictaphone, and straightaway emails the digital voice files to Edwards, who does the typing, usually overnight, from her home in the outlying Brisbane suburb of Rochdale. “It’s quite unique. She provides great flexibility,â€? says the Brisbane-based junior barrister. Edwards, head of her own company, First Legal Solutions, is happy too. “I like the flexibility and the fact that you’re your own boss,â€? she says.

Legal ‘virtual’ assistants (VAs) like Edwards belong to a growing community of clerical workers who take advantage of constant advances in technology to offer on-demand services at a distance.

You post the work; they do it at your convenience and you pay only for the hours they spend on it. They work from home, so you don’t pay for the office space. They fill in the hours between jobs servicing other clients, so you don’t pay them to have coffee.

Many virtual assistants in Australia charge below $30 an hour, making it a significant saving over hiring a full or even part-time assistant. Even when there are surcharges for weekend work, they often amount to far less than paying secretaries to come in at double time-and-a-half.

For similar reasons, VAs based in Australia are attractive to overseas clients. With the time difference, secretarial tasks can be completed on the same date they are received. Kathie Thomas, who runs A Clayton’s Secretary, received the network’s first legal client, who was based in Picardy, France, in 1997. He’s still with them.

The client, an American lawyer, used to courier his dictation tapes to Paris to have them typed into accurate English, but tapes often went missing or got damaged. After sending them back to Los Angeles electronically for a while, the lawyer began thinking that perhaps he should send them to the cheapest place in the world. He compared prices and found the Melbourne-based Clayton’s.

“He has now referred us to new clients in France, South Africa, and back to Sydney,� says Thomas. “One of the best things for him is that because of the time difference he can send his work at the end of the day, and we complete it while he sleeps.�

Expect home based, palalegals like the one who referred this article to me,StarProServices.com, to be on the increase.