I’ve already had one or two clients ask about this, so I probably should have been on the ball sooner and shared my hours. I’m going to send out an email to all clients as well, but just to make sure potential clients are aware too, I’m posting the holiday “hours” for Halo Secretarial below:

Closed: Dec 24, Dec 25, Dec 26 and  Dec 31, Jan 1

As always, feel free to email questions anytime, but I won’t check my email too often over those two periods.  We’ll be entertaining a semi-large crowd for dinner on Christmas and of course it is just nice to spend time with family over the holidays!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Keeping organized and on top of projects is how I keep up with my growing virtual legal assistant business, three boys, a house, a dog and general life, especially with my husband regularly working out of town for weeks at a time.

I stay organized with a number of tools, each with its own purpose. I use Google Calendar a lot, because not only does it help me stay on top of meetings and appointments, but it also lets me share calendars with some clients, which allows us to plan and work together easily. I can access my Google calendar on any computer and even a mobile version on my phone’s web browser – perfect! If you are a student like, Izzie, 1L Poet or No Reins Girl, you may want to have a shared calendar with your study group even!

For keeping track of personal appointments I use both my Google Calendar and a family wall calendar. I used to only use the wall calendar for this, but learned the necessity of having personal appointments in my work calendar thanks to one incredibly frustrating double-booking experience.

In addition to my calendars, I use task lists to help me stay organized and on my game. I use the task list in my email system for a simple daily to-do list and I use the milestones and tasks within my project management system to stay on top of project deadlines. I also use a wall chalkboard for personal to-dos (yup, I like lists!!)

In general, I personally like cloud applications for organization and business management, but having a physical reminder in front of me (like a to-do list on the back of some scrap paper, or my wall chalkboard) is also very helpful.

I recently decided to order some personal calling cards for my mom blog, as I’m traveling  to BlogHer in July and have heard that having cards there really helps keep track of who you are meeting in the huge crowd.  While making my selections for cards I decided I should maybe update my business cards for Halo Secretarial as well. My first set of cards, while not out of date, are fairly bland looking and a bit too pink! They mostly matched my original website, but since I had my logo and colors updated this winter I realize that I needed a classier looking card to go with it.

My first card also emphasized the title of Virtual Assistant, and my new card uses the term I’ve since used more often to describe myself, Virtual Legal Assistant. I love both parts of what I do (admin and legal assistant work) but for the purposes of my business card I prefer to distinguish myself by adding in the “legal”.

With that said, check out my new cards and tell me what you think!

Virtual Legal Assistant business card

Sorry, I didn’t get them onto the scanner very straight!

Previously I’d mentioned hosting a teleseminar session with Andrea Cannavina (Legal Typist) about locating and working with a Virtual Legal Assistant. I’m thrilled to announce that a new date has been chosen for the seminar and even better, the seminar is now to free to attend!!

If you are a lawyer in need of some expert assistance, but you aren’t sure how to go about working with a virtual legal assistant you definitely should consider joining us on June 9 at 1pm EST, 10am PST.

This session will specifically cover:

* What a virtual legal assistant is and. more importantly, is not
* Which tasks, duties and processes are most easily outsourced
* In house, in country or off shore – does it really matter
* Confidentiality and security
* The right tech for the job

I’m really looking forward to being a part of this event and I hope to “meet” you there!

Are you free on Friday afternoon? If you are, and especially if you have any questions about working with a virtual legal assistant, consider attending an upcoming event which will be hosted by Andrea Cannavina (Legal Typist) – How to Locate and Work With a Virtual Legal Assistant. I’ll be co-presenting with Andrea and it’s an event sure to provide great information!

Event Details: Friday, May 01, 2009 at 4:00 PM (ET)

You know you need help, but the starting salary for an in house legal assistant is $28,000 per year and a good assistant with legal experience can demand upwards of $64,000 per year.  Of course, this is just base salary and does not include taxes, sick/vacation/personal/holiday pay, insurance and other benefits, training, equipment, space and administration.

Did you know there is a way to maximize your firm’s overall productivity; increase morale and literally get more done with less – less time, less resources and less stress?  How?

By locating and hiring a virtual legal assistant.  Virtual legal assistants are contract workers who help lawyers and law firm administrators with common office tasks using technology and the internet to provide their services.

Andrea and I both provide virtual legal assistant services, but I’d definitely point out that Andrea has a great system that will suit some lawyers’ needs and methods over mine. Of course some lawyers will prefer my systems too! There are so many options available to suit everyone’s style, and if you aren’t even sure what your style is or how to get your needs met, then this week’s teleseminar will help you figure it out and get started on the path to being more productive and having more time available to do whatever it is you are best at!

I look forward to speaking with you! Oh and of course you can contact me anytime by email or even Twitter with your questions, about this event or just virtual legal assistance in general!

Now that you’ve read Part 1 of Partnering With a Virtual Legal Assistant, I bet you’ve made a short list of virtual legal assistants to contact but you aren’t exactly sure how to proceed next. How do you decide who is the best choice for you? Do you interview them? Do you telephone, email, instant message? Do you just jump and hope it works out? What questions should you ask?

First, I’d recommend you carefully review the potential virtual legal assistant’s web site and/or blog. A lot is revealed about someone in their website and if they have a blog it will likely be a fabulous source of information on their practices and opinions. For example, one of my clients had questions about how information would be protected, but before she asked me she read my blog post about using a project management system with SSL security and realized I had it fully under control!

I also definitely recommend going through some sort of interview process or discussion to see if the virtual legal assistant is a good match for you. Here are some questions you may want to address:

How much experience does the VLA have (in legal in general and as a virtual legal assistant specifically)?

Does the VLA have any certifications – paralegal diploma, virtual assistant certifications, ethics check?

What kind of hardware/software set-up does the VLA use? Does she use a PC or a Mac?

How does she charge fees – hourly, by the project, retainer? Is there a monthly minimum? Does she like to be paid by paypal or other?

How do you get instructions and documents to the VLA?

Does she truly understand about confidentiality and protecting both your and your clients’ information?

The answers to these questions will definitely help you determine if the particular virtual legal assistant has the capability to meet your needs. There is more to the decision though. At least in my opinion, one part of equation is going to be chemistry. That’s why an initial phone call may be helpful to see if you think your personal style will mesh will with the assistant’s. Our gut instincts are often very accurate in helping us decide if a relationship, business or otherwise, is going to be successful.

Another, possibly controversial, step you may want to take is doing a quick google search of the prospective virtual legal assistant.  Now, a virtual assistant is a contractor, not an employee, but still you may want to read Donna Seale’s series about using social networking sites as part of the hiring process while you’re at it.

Any other questions about the actual choosing of a virtual legal assistant? I’d love to answer them! And stay tuned, next week’s installment of this series will address contracting the VLA and establishing a good working relationship!

This post from Kevin (Lexblog) at Real Lawyers Have Blogs is a great read about how Twitter can improve customer reaction to business.  And using Twitter for customer service as discussed by Kevin is exactly the kind of thing a virtual legal assistant can help you with. And let me tell you, fixing customer service issues quickly is key in the fast-paced world of the internet.  If you make a mistake, it can be tweeted, blogged and commented on before an hour is even up.  If you respond quickly, you may not only keep your customer but gain some new ones who appreciate your attention to their needs and see you as keeping up with current technology.

Want an example of poor customer service hitting the internet and spreading?  Read this post over at Mommy Needs a Cocktail – and be assured that the hotel not only lost her business, but the word is being spread out all over.  Her fellow Tweeters know about the problems she experienced, then it was blogged and then that blog was Stumbled.  Guess how many people have heard about the poor experience?

I used to hear the saying “Give a customer a good experience and they’ll tell a friend.  Give poor service and they’ll tell 10″.  Well those numbers have multiplied now – by a LOT.  So keep your customers happy whenever you can, and stay tuned in to the social networks for word being spread about your company.

Get a twitter account and follow people who mention your company. Interact with them, ask them what they want to see happening with your business.  What do they need or want?  If you know the answer you can provide it before they jump ship.  Show you appreciate them just by saying hello and letting them know you are there for them.

Another suggestion is to make sure you have several good google alerts in place that you monitor regularly.  It’s a great way to pick up on mentions of your company, your twitter name, keywords that are important in your business, and even mentions of clients or colleagues that you want to monitor.

Of course the monitoring of twitter and google alerts could arguably take up a good chunk of your time, and you still have a business to run don’t you?  That’s where a virtual assistant comes in – they can easily monitor everything and contact you when urgent things appear, and otherwise give you a summary of everything that’s going on on a regular basis. Depending on the issues you need to stay current on this may take 1-5 hours per week, but the peace of mind you are going to have is worth it, isn’t it? Not to mention the financial costs relating to negative publicity.

Take care (and hey if you are on Twitter – feel free to follow me @halosecretarial)!

I’ve been working on these off and on for a long while. I waited until my website/blog design was completed though, so that I could coordinate the colors and look. I’d love to know what you think of my final design – any suggestions for changes would be appreciated as I haven’t had them printed yet, but will be doing so very soon!

I was so excited to read this wonderful article from The Lawyers Weekly about how virtual assistance is catching on in Canada, and how it is expected that it will be a growing field!  I was also happy to notice a quote from Kate Kerans, who is a fellow Albertan VA whose name I recognize from the VANA forums.

Positive articles like this one can only help those of us who are working to make a name for ourselves in the Canadian virtual assistant industry.  And as someone who is specifically planning to work as a virtual legal assistant/virtual paralegal I was really pleased to see it in a legal publication – the more we get the word out the more likely we all are to benefit!

I just read Tina Marie Hilton’s post over on Home Office Virtual Assistance regarding trying to come to agreement about what a Virtual Assistant really is.

My preferred definition is this one, but really they all do a reasonable job of defining what a va is, I think. And I’m pretty much in the “Factor B” group as defined by Tina – I think a professional va should have some real world admin experience and behave as a business owner, not an employee.

I don’t think the entire industry will ever wholeheartedly agree though, and even if they do their will always be people providing similar services for lower rates (just maybe not on a truly professional level).