One of the best phone systems for lawyers, or law offices in general, are hosted or IP phone systems.
A hybrid phone system, incorporating VoIP technology would be a viable option, if there is existing infrastructure in place. An advanced phone system is crucial in this line of business, due to the sheer volume of calls with clients and conferences with colleagues.
A VoIP system assists law firms with answering calls professionally, and deal with out of hours calls in a supportive and streamlined manner, regardless of the size of the law office. Reputable VoIP services provide reliable mobile integration, enabling important work calls to be answered when you are out the office - and therefore eliminates the need to leave clients waiting for you to respond to voicemail.
The three phone system options for law firms are Hosted, IP and Hybrid.
- An IP Phone system can be hosted on-premise (or in a data centre) or you can have it hosted on your own private cloud. When you choose an IP Phone System, you purchase the phone system for your own use, and you choose where to host it - IP phone systems again are ideal for larger law firms, or firms which are multi-site orientated.
- A hosted phone system tends to work better for smaller law businesses, who do not have the infrastructure in place already, and want a good solution.
- A hybrid phone system is a mixture of ISDN, analogue, digital and IP in one single flexible phone system. The system would be located in your law offices, and offers flexibility with the choice of cordless and fixed handsets. The hybrid phone system works best for larger law firms with existing infrastructure in place to handle the system.
A benefit of a hybrid phone system is that they offer more reliability than both VOIP and digital phone systems. If one type of line fails, it can automatically route calls in and out from a backup line. Hybrid phone systems offer a range of extremely useful features for your law firm, namely:
- Security: all phone conversations and messages are encrypted to protect sensitive data
- Efficiency: fast call transfers allow for smoother, efficient service
- Quality: High sound quality with good fidelity during calls provides a professional, seamless experience for clients
- Unlimited: phone calls, conference calls, and more
A crucial phone system feature for law offices is time-logging. When looking for an outline of past activities, phone systems with logging features are essential.
Accuracy in time and billing is important to lawyers out of a sense of ethics, a duty to be good financial stewards of client budgets. Most lawyers don’t want to overcharge a client, but they also don’t want to underbill either.
Other key phone system features for law offices:
- Auto-Attendant: Ensures all calls get answered with custom message; or re-directed
- Voicemail-to-email: Receive the transcribed recording via email or text with the original recording
- Call Waiting: Enable calls to be suspended in order to take another call
- Call Recording: Easily refresh memory of cases by referring to the call recordings
- CRM integration, Conferencing and Voicemail
The three hybrid phone systems we recommend are Mitel Collaboration, Horizon Collaborate, and Wildix Collaboration. The main difference being comes down to cost and user compatibility.
We recommend a demo so you can see which is the best fit for your law firm.
A bit about UCC Tools
Digital transformation presents a new way of working where the systems and methods of communication adjust to the way businesses and people want to operate - at the time and place that benefits them. Unified Communications and Collaboration platforms can be utilised to great effect in a business setting.
Moving beyond email, UCC solutions make work super streamlined, for both clients and lawyers. The ability to be able to communicate to all relevant parties via group chats, or individual chats, and project-specific chats, is immensely time-saving, and therefore boosts productivity in law firms.
Unified Communications gives law firms the access they need wherever they are, at whatever time, increasing the efficiency of the business as well as the efficiency of your employees. Information flows freely throughout the organisation, helping workflows to be managed more closely and with the opportunity for staff to pick up messages through different mediums, they can become more efficient and effective at their jobs, in turn, boosting the bottom line of your company.
How does the right phone system for lawyers reduce costs?
Whatever the size of your law business, you’ll be interested to learn how to reduce the costs of communications by choosing the best phone system. Most VoIP providers are able to offer much cheaper calls per minute locally, nationally, and internationally, thanks to the lower cost of internet-based calls when compared to traditional international calls.
The video and audio conferencing call features help lawyers to save on transport costs and conference facilities, since there's no longer a need to bring everyone together physically. The ability to integrate existing business tools with your VoIP service means that there’s no need to buy new tools or get used to using a different system. You can start saving money on communications straight away with a VoIP solution for your law offices.