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Practicing real estate law is not always as glamorous as people think. Sure, you don’t have to visit your clients in jail, review gory crime scene photos, or endure endless corporate board meetings, but it’s not all handing out keys to dream homes at closings.
Real estate law is actually a fast-paced practice with millions of deadlines and scheduling dilemmas. And the number of documents and amount of research probably rivals any other area of practice. There are a lot of moving parts in real estate law.
Time is Money
It’s trite but true, in real estate law especially. Your income is capped at the number of transactions you can complete in any given month. In order to maximize that, you need to have a steady flow of clients buying and selling properties.
Once you are in business for a while, referrals and repeat clients can probably keep your calendar full. The real problem is your calendar. You could increase your potential monthly income by using your time for its highest value. Time wasted managing your schedule is money wasted, as well.
Outsourcing your calendar to a virtual assistant can help you buy back valuable time in your busy day. How much time do you spend on average calling all the parties to a transaction to schedule the closing? Comparing everyone’s schedule with the availability of your conference space takes time, and then when someone has to make a change, you are back on the phone again.
A virtual assistant could handle all of those time-consuming coordination for you, including sending meeting reminders and confirming with everyone the day before.
The Paper Chase
Well, of course, much of it is not done on paper anymore, but you get the idea. The second biggest time-waster in your real estate practice is calling the lender, the seller, and the buyer to confirm documents are being generated and shared at the appropriate time. You generate a list for the parties to the transaction, so everyone knows what they need to submit, but that isn’t enough to get it all done on time.
A virtual assistant could follow up on documents to be sure everyone is submitting what you need for a speedy closing. That would save you the time of listening to the moving angst of buyers and sellers each time you have to call them, and it would keep the process moving forward. A virtual law assistant would notify you when there is a problem with document exchange that requires your intervention.
Do Your Research
Actually, you don’t have to do your own research when you have a virtual assistant. Property records, tax information, and most other municipal files are all online now. A virtual administrative assistant could pull all the data you need and send it to your inbox while you are settling another transaction.
A virtual assistant could handle any type of research you required in your real estate law practice. In addition, document management and archiving closed case files could also be accomplished by a virtual assistant. Any tasks that take you away from doing the real legal work can be delegated to a virtual law assistant to maximize the efficiency of your time.
Imagine how your real estate law practice could grow with a virtual assistant for law firms handling scheduling, research, and document management. You could definitely increase the number of transactions you close each month, and that would translate into a pretty nice bonus.