5 Complicated Tasks to Pass on to a Freelancer

In my last post I talked about some easy tasks to hand off. Some of you may need something more significant to hand off and you may not be certain that a virtual assistant can pull it off.

Claim Charts

If you’re in patent practice, you will need claim charts. They can be complicated, tedious, and time consuming and they are a crucial part of every patent case. Have your freelance Virtual Legal Assistant draft up the charts and save your more expensive billables to make sure your claims are properly supported.

Save your billable tasks for your in house staff

Drafting Discovery responses

Templating responses to all discovery requests is a common and repetitive project in any legal case. Requests for Production, Interrogatories, Subpoenas — they all require responses and you would rather spend your time gathering substantive materials and having your staff find the actual Bates references. Task a freelancer to template your responses, and for less expense than your in house staff.

Vendor arrangements

A freelancer is an ideal person to review vendor proposal submissions and make all those pesky deposition, car service, catering, court technology, and interpreter arrangements. While your in house staff is buried in exhibit assembly and pleadings, they often shift such arrangements to a lower priority position. Sometimes they are the last thing to happen. Make it even easier and let your freelancer handle them.

Book keeping

A small practice or solo firm often finds itself busy with substantive work and invoicing and expense reports frequently fall by the wayside. This happens even in larger firms with significant staff. A freelancer is the ideal person to invoice clients, reconcile statements and invoices, track your accounts payable/receivables, renew bar association dues, and send reminders.

Document Production Log

There are never enough eyes to get all the documents in document production logged in the database. Never. Eventually, you have recruited every secretary and every paralegal in the office to open a file, record the data in the log, and flag it for privilege. And if there is paper instead of electronic review, and there are places that still do that, there are boxes covering every cube for days. Give this task to a freelancer instead.

There you have it, 5 complicated tasks to hand off to your virtual legal assistant.

===========

Alison Pacuska is the president of Pacuska Professional Services, a boutique consulting firm focused on top-tier administrative and legal assistant services with a focus in Intellectual Property. http://www.pacuska.com/