3 useful tips to enhance your professional image by acquiring a Virtual Office New York.
If you have the luxury of working from home as a lawyer, why not do it? Just because you work primarily from home does not mean you are any less credible in your legal expertise.
However, practicing law from home does pose some challenges and when one thinks about client interaction and the opinions of colleagues or adversaries, an entirely at-home practice arrangement may give off a less than professional image. This questionable image can directly impact one’s ability to negotiate deals, obtain referrals, and so forth.
1. Do the work from home, but use a permanent commercial address for your practice.
Consider using a permanent, commercial address for business, not your home address. A commercial address is important because it gives the impression as being more professional and more permanent.
A commercial address is necessary for anyone to run a business efficiently. It gives off the impression of being professional and more permanent as opposed to a home address which can have the opposite effect.
Renting a premium commercial office address from a shared office provider like Law Firm Suites is a great way to help bolster one’s image and give more credibility. This gives the appearance that you work from an office building without having to pay the potentially higher fees of a physical office space. Instead of being there all the time, you have packages and mail sent to this address and meet clients at this location.
A good office suite operator will never let on to your guests that you are anything other than a full time office renter.
P.S. If you are an urban apartment dweller, changing your home address from “Apartment 17B” to “Suite 17B” fools no one.
2. Have a permanent business phone number.
Keep a separate landline for your practice, and never use your home phone for business calls. Clients and adversaries often redial from caller ID.
Having an office line and then calling from your home phone heightens the risk of a business call coming through your home line and potentially missing it because your toddler answers it or you are not home. Even worse, a client may call at odd hours thinking they will get a voicemail.
This can ruin the professional image you have worked hard to create for your home-based law firm.
3. Never meet with clients in your home.
Professionalism in business is directly linked to one’s image and this matters when meeting clients face-to-face. Building a connection with a prospective client is key in order to successfully practice law. Meeting a client in your own home should never be done and you may end up regretting it.
A professional space is crucial when meeting clients. It would be wildly inappropriate and colossally confusing for a client to meet in your kitchen or dining room. How embarrassing would that be…for you? It is much more valuable to your image to rent a conference room from your virtual office New York provider or at least have some type of arrangement where you can use office space for your meetings with clients. In urban areas, it is common to have an arrangement starting out at as little as $99 a month, which is great for your wallet.
Just make sure that if you’re using a new space, you know how all the technology works in advance of your meeting, and where to find everything you’ll need before the client’s arrival. For all they know, this space is the office where you work from every day. Don’t blow the illusion by being incapable of dialing the phone.
