You cannot even imagine a law office without a phone system. This month we are going to discuss telephones in the law office. We are going to talk about old-fashioned office phone procedures that are perhaps more important now than ever in the days of instantaneous electronic communication. OBA members have our permission to photocopy this article and distribute it to all employees in your office. But perhaps even a more positive step would be to use this article as a springboard to draft your own customized office phone procedures policy for your office.
Many law firms lack office procedure manuals or have manuals that are sadly out of date.
If you do not have a manual, this is a good place to start. If you do have one, here is a good opportunity to review and update it. This section probably will only be one page or two pages at the most, but it will give your staff, your future employees, and perhaps even future temporary employees valuable information about how your law firm should operate. While the lawyer may be the spokesperson in a legal or corporate sense, the person answering the phone is the voice of the law firm to the public. For discussion purposes we will call this person the receptionist, even though we understand not all law firms have dedicated receptionists and often several people share telephone answering duties.