How Virtual Law Firms Can Enhance Connections With Clients

When clients seek out the services of an attorney, it is because they are looking for someone to entrust with matters of often vital importance to themselves or the people they love. This means that the relationship between a client and their attorney is paramount.

In recent years, however, the ways that attorney/client relationships are cultivated and maintained have dramatically changed, principally due to the pervasive and enduring impacts of the COVID lockdowns. With millions of businesses forced to transition to virtual operations, remote work has become the norm rather than the exception across diverse industries.

The legal profession is no exception and, today, a significant number of law practices are choosing to remain largely, if not wholly, virtual. For all the benefits of the virtual law office, though, doing business at a distance can make it difficult to foster the kind of empathic and trusting relationships clients need. However, there are effective strategies that legal professionals in virtual firms can use to enhance their connections with their clients.

Unleash the Power of Video Conferencing

If you’re looking to build a strong connection with your client, then it’s imperative that your relationship not be dominated by text, email, or print correspondence alone. Your clients need to know that there is a living, breathing, feeling human being on the other side of the digital screen, a real person ready and able to advocate for them.

For this reason, when you’re serving clients in the virtual space, you need to make video conferencing a cornerstone of your law practice. Not only will this enhance your clients’ trust in and engagement with you, but it will also provide you with an invaluable opportunity to better assess and respond to your client’s individual needs.

Additionally, company culture and values are just as important to your clients’ experiences as to your employees. It’s essential not to take shortcuts with expressing and reinforcing culture, and with more flat methods of communication like text, email, and print, it’s difficult to get company culture across. Something as simple as a video chat can help impart your culture and values not only to your clients, but also to your company as a whole.

Optimizing the power of video conferencing, however, also means remaining cognizant of the security threats that can accompany this medium. The stratagems of cybercriminals, after all, are ever-evolving, and exploiting vulnerabilities in laptop, tablet, and smartphone cameras is an increasingly ubiquitous form of cybercrime today.

For this reason, it is incumbent upon your firm to maintain a robust security system, such as the use of a virtual private network (VPN), firewalls, and related technologies, to ensure your clients are safe and your firm’s data are secure from camera hacks.

Capitalize on Cloud Computing

Another important tool for providing an exceptional client experience in the virtual office is that of cloud computing. You can use the cloud to securely store, share, and send documents to clients and stakeholders. Cloud services can even be used for electronic signatures, which are legally binding in most states.

What this means is that, thanks to the cloud, legal services can be provided with greater efficiency and convenience than ever before. Your clients no longer have to travel to a physical office to review or sign documents, nor do they have to wait for a courier to receive them.

This also means that clients no longer have to endure the frustration and uncertainty of using impersonal online legal services. They get to enjoy the convenience of on-demand virtual access to services while also benefiting from the personalized attention of a legal representative they know and trust.

Enhancing Engagement Through Email Marketing

In addition to the use of video conferencing and cloud computing, attorneys and staff working in virtual law offices can enhance their connections with their clients through the use of email marketing. Indeed, law office leadership and decision-makers would do well to support the use of email marketing institution-wide, and not only by marketing teams per se.

Enrolling staff in email marketing courses, for example, is an ideal way to equip personnel with tools and strategies they need to maximize the engagement potential of email.

Email marketing and promotional content, for instance, can be automated to generate personalized correspondence on a timed schedule for designated client segments. This way, you can be sure not to send customers a barrage of marketing material for services they aren’t interested in or that don’t apply to them.

For instance, clients who have requested the drafting of a will may receive annual reminders to review and update their estate plans. Through the use of tools such as these, client relationships never really have to end after a service has been provided. Indeed, with the appropriate tools and strategies, connections with clients may well be deeper and longer lasting in the virtual law office than in the physical one.

The Takeaway

There are myriad benefits to operating a virtual law office. Remote operations provide convenience and accessibility for employees and clients alike. However, building strong connections with clients in the digital space often requires a bit of strategy and some additional effort. With commitment and planning, though, you can foster truly successful and enduring relationships with your clients.