If you’re like most lawyers you spend way too much time on tedious, insignificant problems that are far below your pay grade.
Why not outsource this?
Sounds good, you say, but how would this happen?
By using Fancy Hands, a virtual assistant service that takes care of pesky tasks like adding events to your calendar, making purchases, proofreading documents and more.
What else can they do? Well, check out this page on the FancyHands website where suggest you give them requests like these.
“Can you email my friend Amanda and tell her that we can go on that tour any Saturday at 3pm, and ask her what Saturday works best for her? Then book the tour for the two of us and add it to my calendar.”
“Please make a lunch reservation at Barolo under my name for Friday at 1pm and call Jennifer Wilson’s office and let her know that the meeting is confirmed. Please add it to my schedule as well.”
They can also set up conference calls for up to 40 participants, as they explain here. And they can make purchases if the cost of the item is $200 or less), as in this example:
“Please send my wife flowers to our house – she likes hydrangeas, blues and whites. Spend $70, have them delivered tomorrow, and have the card say, “You carried these down the aisle on our wedding day. I didn’t think I could love you any more then, but five years later and my love for you grows every day. Love, B”
Here’s how you’d request that they help you with proofreading:
“Can you proofread this article that I wrote and send me any edits? Make your edits in red so I know what you’ve done.”
If you travel, there are lots of minor tasks that a FancyHands assistant can help you with, such as these examples (again, listed on this page):
“I want to stay somewhere fun in Ohai next month. I have heard about a tree house there. Can you send me some creative ideas from Airbnb.com?”
“My luggage is lost. Here’s the ticket number from the bag and here’s my flight info. Can you figure out where it is and how soon I can get it back? It should be delivered to my house, there’s a doorman 24 hours a day.”
“Can you call and find out how much it would cost to upgrade my flight, both with money and with miles?”
“I’d like to get rental car quotes from 3 different companies at LAX. I’d be picking up next Saturday morning and keeping the car for 4 days. I’d like a convertible but also might take an SUV. Please find out the prices and brands for both options.”
But what about this potential problem?
Let’s say you have to call your cable company and cancel a premium feature like Showtime. So you ask FancyHands to handle it (to avoid you having to waste time waiting on hold “for the next representative”).
But…what if the representative that your FancyHands VA winds up dealing with insists that you give personal authorization “for security reasons.” No problem.
As FancyHands explains, this is a common scenario. Here’s how you request they handle it:
“Can you call Time Warner cable and cancel Showtime for me? Here’s my account number, but if you need to patch me in to verify my security details, please call me at home.”
Now you understand
Until now, the major barrier between you and having a VA finding one that you could get up and running with easily and quickly.
Well, now you know. The best place for you to start is with FancyHands.
You can learn more about their service here. (by the way, the pricing starts $29/month for 5 requests and you can cancel at anytime)
Oh, and if you decide to check them out, shoot me an email after you’ve had them handle a few requests and let me know what you think.
And, if you want to learn more about outsourcing, check out my Working Smarter course.
P.S. If you want a practice optimized for remote work & virtual collaboration, get this 24-page guide.
