Melissa Rhodes is the Chief Operations Officer at Richards & Richards Law Firm in Ogden, Utah. She works with her dad and her brother. Kevin Richards founded the firm and has practiced for more than three decades. Her brother Jaime joined in 2014, which is when the Richards & Richards name went up. Four attorneys now cover immigration, criminal defense, family law, and estate planning.
Challenge
During business hours the firm had the phones covered. About six people could pick up. Nights and weekends were another matter.
“For the longest time, we just had multiple lines for our office, and they would just roll over,” Melissa says. “So whoever was in staff there that day would just answer the calls, and then weekends and after-hours everything just went to voicemail, and we’d have to follow up the following day.”
Following up meant someone had to remember to check the messages. That step slipped. “We’d forget, right?” Melissa says.
Just over a year ago the firm brought in Smith.ai to handle missed and after-hours calls. The coverage worked. The price kept climbing.
“It worked pretty well. It was just really expensive, and anything extra we wanted them to do was an additional cost,” Melissa says.
Getting the full setup the firm wanted would have pushed the bill to roughly $1,500 a month. “For us to do everything we wanted to do was gonna cost us, like, $1,500 a month, and for them to maybe answer a phone call,” she says.
With six people answering during the day, paying for live humans was hard to justify. “I don’t think we need a live person answering if we are all on the phone or if it’s after hours,” Melissa says.
Solution
Melissa went looking for an alternative inside Clio, the firm’s client software, and found Upfirst in the list of virtual assistants.
“So I got on Clio and just started to look up some virtual assistants, and I found Upfirst,” she says. One detail caught her attention. “From what I remember, your founder was an attorney, and that was kind of how he started it all, was just find a better way.”
What she valued was being able to change things herself.
“If I have a change, I just go in and make the change,” Melissa says. “I don’t have to request a company to make a change on my behalf.”
She set up texts that fire based on what a caller asks for. “I can have a text for a payment link. I can have a text to schedule. It can schedule for me if people want a consult,” she says.
Language handling mattered most. The firm’s immigration practice brings in a large Spanish-speaking clientele.
“I love that it automatically will know to translate into Spanish,” Melissa says. “If they start talking in Spanish, then it knows to just start speaking in Spanish back.”
Their previous service could not do that on the spot. “Whereas with Smith.ai, because it was live people, if that person themselves didn’t speak Spanish, they had to find somebody else to talk to them or call them back, and so you lose that connection right there if you have to call somebody back,” she says.
Results
The firm spends less on answering and kept the coverage it needed. “So we were able to lower our cost, but I feel like it’s just as good, if not a better service with Upfirst,” Melissa says.
After-hours calls now turn into scheduled consultations. “Sometimes you do get people who call after-hours to schedule an appointment, and so we have been able to be pretty successful in getting appointments scheduled for our attorneys after-hours when we are not there,” Melissa says.
Legal callers rarely wait around. “If they call and they’re not able to get someone, they’re gonna move on to the next person,” she says. “So for us to be able to capture them and at least get information, if they don’t wanna schedule on the phone right then, it can send a link for us, and then they can schedule it.”
She names that as the main return. “I think that is probably one of the biggest ways that Upfirst helps is to not lose leads that come in,” Melissa says.
She also reads the transcripts. “I love that I get a transcript of a call,” she says. “They’re really entertaining to read sometimes. People call with great, great stories.”
When Melissa recommends Upfirst to other attorneys, she talks about speed of change. “As knowledge changes, it’s right there at your fingertips to go change it and to tell it what’s new,” she says. “You don’t have to wait for somebody else to put in the request and not know how long it’s gonna take for them to put it in. It’s as fast as me going in to type.”
The setup did not require a technical background. “I don’t think the learning curve is that high. It’s really simple to figure it out,” Melissa says. “It’s pretty straightforward of where you can lay out your knowledge, where it can send out links, and all of that information.”