First there was the phone tree
Press one for new matters. Press two for existing matters. Press three if you have forgotten what one was. The phone tree was designed by someone who had never been in a crash, and it shows.
Then there was the voicemail at 5:01
Law offices closed at five. Crashes did not get the memo. They kept happening at night, on weekends and on holidays, and the people in them got a recording that thanked them for calling and asked them to try again during business hours.
Nobody was being unkind. The office was simply empty, and an empty office cannot write anything down.
And always, the saxophone
Hold music is forty seconds of saxophone that loops. Every so often a voice breaks in to say that your call is important. Then the saxophone comes back, which tells you roughly how important.
What we did about it
At The Ledger Law Firm the phone is answered at any hour. It may be a person on the intake team or our SI phone agent. Either way, what you say gets written down and reaches the legal team.
The phone agent does not give legal advice and does not decide anything about your case. It listens, it takes down what happened, and it does not need to find a pen first.
What still takes a lawyer
- Deciding whether the firm can take a case.
- Deciding what to do about it.
- Signing every demand before it leaves the office.
A note about notes: these are lighthearted pieces about how our office works. They are not legal advice, and they say nothing about what any case is worth or how it will turn out.
