Remote Law Firm

Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. This week's post and video are about the tools you need and the equipment you need to have successful business meeting at home. That I've been working remotely for many, many years. And over the years, I've purchased equipment to equip my office to be able to do these meetings. My business is 100% virtual. I can finally say that I have given away my last client that was desktop. So I'm 100% virtual. Everybody's on QuickBooks Online. Most of them are on QuickBooks Online Advanced. So my ability to work with clients across the country— I don't just work in Florida, I work across the country— the ability to do that is because of this technology that we have. But if you're a law firm and you've been accustomed to having clients come into your office, they work with you. and they, you know, they do all the paperwork in the office. A lot of these law firms we work with, they're very paper-centric. How do you get around not having the client meeting? And you have to do it now from home because we're all home. My county just shut down. They said you should not leave at all. And we've been— I've been home for 2 weeks now. So, but they don't want you to leave. So it's important to note that you want to have a professional appearance. You want to bring that professionalism that you have in your office with your beautiful conference room into this setting. It's important to buy good tools for that. I have a good camera, a Logitech camera. I'm not using the camera that came with my computer, although I could. I'm using Zoom because Zoom is my favorite product for doing these meetings. It's reliable. It's very simple to use. I have a very nice microphone, a Yeti. It wasn't that expensive, but it definitely makes the quality of my voice much richer. I have a ring light behind my desk. I have, I just have a lot of equipment here. I've got a green screen here on the floor that I haven't really used much because of the window. I can show you why you need to have good lighting. So if I pull this up, it's a very sunny day in Florida, I become a silhouette. You don't want to be a silhouette in front of your clients, especially if you're an attorney. So important for that. So you want to make sure that the lighting is down. You want to have the lighting in front of you. So my ring light is behind me, I mean in front of me, and my window obviously is behind me. A window is not a great place, but in my office it's the the only place that the setup works, the smaller office. But those are just some of the tips. I go into a little bit more detail inside the blog post with a lot of the links. My virtual assistant this week, she's doing a free one-on-one and she's pretty good with technology. She knows all this stuff. She'll just answer questions live on Tuesday. So if you want to join her, I'll put a link for her webinar. Her name's Audrey, and it's AVA Power Up. She's doing a webinar. So if you want to join her, you can just ask any questions you want, even about remote, remote work and how a remote assistant can help you. You might need that now if you were a single person office. And now you've got to do all this scrambling and you're, you know, maybe your staff is not in your office and you need some of those assistance with the tools and the technology. She's here to help and answer the questions, which is really cool and generous of her time. I think that's probably about it. Of course, you can always reach out to me if you need help from me. I will definitely help you. I've helped a few of the law firms we've been working with that realized how much fun— they would always join the meeting off camera because they didn't have cameras in their office, and now they all have cameras so we can see each other. It just makes the meeting a little bit— it's not perfect, it's not like in person, but it just adds a personal touch. And as attorneys, you want to be able to see your client. And see the body language, see if they're open or if they're, you know, if you've got this happening, you know that maybe they're not being truthful or whatever. You want to be able to see the body language to understand what your client is trying to express or convey to you. We can't really— we're working with our staff, doing team meetings this way is a wonderful way to stay connected when— because it's better than the phone where you can't see people. So these are just things. It's actually really nice to be able to reach out to people. And just to do this, just maybe with your friends and family, there's plenty of tools out there besides Zoom. There's Google Hangouts, there's UberConference, there is— you can do it on Slack. If you communicate with your staff on Slack, you can turn the video on in there or add an app that'll turn the video on so you can do team meetings right through Slack like you were doing in your office. You can use Teams. Microsoft Teams also has that. Ability. So those are all things built right into the system. You don't have to buy the program. Just realize what you're going to need. I think that this is a pivotal time in our life that we're going to find that the life when it does return to normal is going to be a new normal, a little bit different than what we had before. There'll be more of this happening in the world, more of this remote, because you realize there's a lot of cost savings to not traveling to work or being able to do this. Remotely is always an alternate. So if you live up north and there's a snowstorm, work doesn't have to stop anymore. You can keep working using these tools. It's important, important, important to have a good location when you do set up your video equipment. As you can see, I've got the camera and the light and everything in a good place. I'm standing up at my desk. But I've seen some videos with people, and I've had a few meetings where somebody's laying in their bed. Not optimal. And you certainly don't want to, as a professional, show that. Or in their kitchen with like dirty dishes up behind them. You don't want that either. So those are just some of my tips this week. Kind of a short video, but hopefully I can get a lot of information in. There's a lot of information on the blog that I wrote this morning. But I want you to understand, if you have any questions, comments, or anything you want to share and ask me about this, I'm more than happy to help as much as I can from my office to yours. Reach out. Join our Facebook group. We've got a wonderful Facebook group with a lot of really bright people in it. I'd love to have you in our Facebook group. You wanna ask questions there, feel free to ask questions there. If I'm not available to answer, there's plenty other geniuses in there that will help. And the Facebook group is called QB Community Live. So on that note, I hope you all have a wonderful week. We are gonna get through this together. Keep thinking positively, keep thinking about the good things in life, and I will see you all next week. Bye now. Bye.