How to Increase Profits for Your Law Firm
The first question VirtualPetitions.Com receives from an attorney is: “How can you increase profits for my law firm?” We answer this question by introducing them to the concept of utilizing virtual bankruptcy assistants (VBAs.) However, when attorneys find out that VBAs charge more than $8 or $10 per hour, the next question is: “Why can’t I hire someone to work in my office at a lower cost than hiring a VBA.” The answer to this question follows:
The difference between an employee and VirtualPetitions.Com
An employee working in your law firm preparing bankruptcy petitions may do part of the work but you (or someone else) will always invest time in verifying and correcting their work; or work on the case in one form or another. However, VirtualPetitions.Com are trained Bankruptcy Specialist. You simply have the clients fill out the Bankruptcy Intake Forms and everything is done for you. You receive a complete petition ready to review along with an Attorney Case Summary sheet that details any potential problems before you approve the case to be filed. Your time per case is reduced to approximately 1 hour and this includes the 341 Meeting. Unless the employee you hire is a specialist with many years of experience in bankruptcy, you will not receive the same efficiency from an employee working in your law firm compared to the services provided by VirtualPetitions.Com.
Example: Your attorney fee is $2,500 for a Chapter 7. Let’s suppose VirtualPetitions.Com charges you $500. The time you invest in the average case is approximately 1 hour including 341 Meeting attendances. You profit $2,000 per hour. No employee can net you this high of an hourly rate.
What do other employees do in the law firm if they are not preparing petitions?
As you know, there are many more duties associated with debtor bankruptcy than the pre-petition workload. If you have an established law firm already, the addition of VirtualPetitions.Com will ease the tremendous workload on your present employees, prevent you from hiring additional employees and allow you time to concentrate on growing your law firm and increasing your profits.
Isn’t bankruptcy petition work simply filling out forms?
A common misconception that attorneys have is that preparing a bankruptcy petition is simply filling out a set of forms. This may have been true in 1942 but this line of thinking is now so far from reality that I invite you to prove it to yourself. Call up any debtor bankruptcy attorney you know and ask them how many deficiency notices they receive from the bankruptcy court when a petition is filed. Also ask them how many Amendments they normally file to correct problems with forms and schedules after they are filed. Finally, ask them how many Chapter 13 Plans are confirmed without several recommendations by the Trustee. If you perform this exercise, you will hear many stories of frustration and despair. However, most of these problems could have been avoided if the petition had been well-detailed, prepared and all the research performed before the petition was filed.
Back in 1999, a very intelligent attorney in Columbus, Ohio encountered this same frustration. He looked for a way to improve the consistency and quality of his bankruptcy petitions; so he tried an experiment. By taking the bankruptcy petition work out of the law firm, the virtual bankruptcy assistant was able to work without interruptions, conduct client intake interviews with clients when they were more relaxed at home and the preparation remained consistent throughout the process. The attorney soon discovered that when he implemented this method, his profits increased, the paperwork was reduced in the office, clients were happier and more cooperative and the amount of phone calls diminished; plus the attorney had time to grow his business.
You should now start to understand the difference between utilizing the services of VirtualPetitions.Com versus an employee preparing petitions. On the surface, it may appear that you are paying more in the beginning but the huge benefits that VirtualPetitions.Com will make to your law firm BOTTOM LINE cannot be compared to an employee who is simply filling out forms in your office.
What are some additional benefits to hiring VirtualPetitions.Com?
Attorneys do not pay the standard overhead costs associated with hiring a full time or part-time employee. VirtualPetitions.Com charges one flat fee just like the bankruptcy attorney does.
Attorneys do not pay for services until they are satisfied with the quality of work produced by VirtualPetitions.Com. There are no financial risks for the law firm and the attorney.
Paralegals and other law firm personnel are freed up to work on more complex cases. It is a known fact that the typical employee preparing petitions in a law firm is interrupted several times. This makes the information on the bankruptcy petition to not be consistent and precise, resulting in errors, lost time and money.
Attorneys eliminate the need to train new employees. VirtualPetitions.Com prefers to stay with the same attorney for many years. Not only does this increase efficiency with bankruptcy petitions, but VirtualPetitions.Com get to know the clients on a more personal level, are able to build a better relationship with the local bankruptcy court and the attorney which helps the attorney to build a more solid and reliable reputation.
There are no standard overhead expenditures for the attorney (i.e., desk, chair, office supplies, software and employee downtime costs). VBAs already have established their office and use their own software programs because they are independent business owners.
No office politics. Normally, the majority of time the only contact the attorney will have with VirtualPetitions.Com is by email and phone. This eliminates staff and employee conflicts which wastes time and costs the average law firm a great deal of money every year. However, if VirtualPetitions.Com is within driving distance of the attorney’s office, we provide client intake interview services. By going to the office, meeting the client in person and reviewing the client intake forms they filled out, we can gain more knowledge of the case and can normally reduce the amount of time spent on each petition. That is why no additional charge is made for an onsite client intake interview since it makes the job easier for VirtualPetitions.Com.
CLICK HERE to Contact VirtualPetitions.Com