The phone has long been the most important tool in the law office. If your main office number is a Google Voice number, you can forward that number with the flip of a switch to your cell phone, home phone or even have calls routed directly to your desktop if you’re using Gmail. You can even schedule the time of day during which calls should be forwarded to various numbers based on where you will be. Driving home after 6pm? Have Google Voice automatically forward calls to your cell. At home after 7pm, forward the calls automatically to your home number. The ability to forward calls to multiple numbers means you will never miss a live call… unless you want to. That’s where Google Voice’s excellent voicemail system takes over.

Google Voice has the ability to transcribe voicemail message and deliver them to your email inbox or Google Messaging account. Voicemail transcription can increase your law office productivity and efficiency because it is easier to scan voicemail messages in your email inbox than it is to listen to every message by phone.

You can also set most cell phones to dial through Google Voice to show your office phone number on the caller ID of the phone you are calling. That means you can call from your cell phone, but your client will see your office number. That’s a great way to keep your cell phone number private and only present one number to the world.

Google Voice is great for small law firms or solo practitioners looking for a voicemail system or a call forwarding system and the best part is that it’s free. You will need to have phone service for the service to which you are forwarding from Google Voice. Learn more about Google Voice and how it can help your law practice.

All you need to call landlines and mobile numbers from GoMatters is a Skype account. When you click your GoMatters’ contact phone numbers, GoMatters will automatically launch a Skype call from your Skype account. Skype calls are also a great way for your law firm to track time on calls. Skype keeps a running log of time spent on calls and with one or two more clicks, you can convert your Skype calls to billable tasks in GoMatters.

Don’t have a Skype account? Skype is very easy to use and free to download. Skype can help the large firm or the solo practitioner in so many ways. Need voice mail? Skype has it. Need to make and take calls from anywhere? Skype can do it. And it can probably do it for a lot less than your current business phone system. Learn more about how Skype can help your law office.

To use GoMatters Skype integrated contact phone numbers, single click any contact phone number in GoMatters. As always, double clicking the contact phone number cell will open the GoMatters cell editor so you can quickly edit and update your contact information. If you don’t have Skype, don’t worry, the Skype integration feature doesn’t affect you.

With GoMatters Skype integration for your law office, you can also add Skype names for contacts. The difference between calling a Skype name and calling any phone number via Skype is that you pay no Skype connection charge when calling a Skype name.

Enjoy!