The Tyra Law Firm: Power in personal connections

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Tyra Law is your neighborhood law firm.  Located in Rockville, Maryland, sole practitioner Neil Tyra focuses on providing exemplary, down-to-earth  service while protecting the interests of clients and their families.

Before running his own practice, Neil Tyra was a man of many careers. From his time as a cook to software development to running a karate school, Neil has followed his curiosity to pursue his passions. After setting his sights on law, Neil worked at a boutique firm, primarily handling personal injury cases. As his son inched closer to high school with  soccer-fueled dreams, Neil wanted to make a change to ensure flexibility was built into his day. Keeping family matters close to heart, he opened his own practice with an emphasis on estate planning in 2007. Neil has been serving families in Maryland ever since.

The threat of impersonal service

“Most attorneys are looking to build their business through clients with a significant amount of assets who provide an opportunity for profit,” says Neil. “Personally, I prefer to work with families who are just starting out—families who just bought their first house, recently married—I want to help regular folks who have the foresight to start planning for their future.”

With a strong desire to build lasting relationships with his clients, Neil knew from the get-go that how he handled his calls would be critical to the success of his practice. “Initially, I answered every call that came in. I prided myself on this,” Neil explains. “Once business started to ramp up and I started to get more and more clients, I had to forward calls to my voicemail during working hours to get any work done.”

Neil needed time to dive into his work, uninterrupted, but pushing calls to voicemail didn’t sit well with him. “I didn’t have a process for answering my clients’ calls, and this really started to get to me. I wanted to provide my clients with a personal experience and voicemail isn’t personal, and therefore, certainly not sustainable.

“I thought I would have to hire someone to deliver that level of service. As soon as you start adding people to your payroll, life gets more complicated.” Wanting to keep his practice lean, hiring an in-house receptionist was not an attractive solution for Neil. “My goal was to do away with my physical office space completely. How was I going to have the freedom to do so if I hired a full-time receptionist?”

It wasn’t long after he recognized his need that Neil discovered the key to his quandary in Ruby.

Neil meets Ruby

“The problem I was facing was eloquently and perfectly solved by the service Ruby offers,” Neil says. “Bringing on Ruby’s team of live, remote receptionists was one of the most successful business moves I have made for my practice to date!”

Incorporating Ruby as a part of his practice has allowed Neil to cultivate a more personal connection with callers and clients while he focuses on his work. “The first phone call can be the most significant interaction a potential client has with my firm. Callers want to speak with someone, even if it isn’t me directly. With Ruby, I know my callers are greeted by a warm, friendly voice.”

In addition to offering a pleasant introduction to Neil’s firm, Ruby transfers live calls to Neil when he can take them and gathers intake information or takes messages when he can’t. “A client of mine called in for directions when I wasn’t available once, and Ruby pulled up Google Maps and walked them through getting to the office,” Neil says. “That was incredible! Ruby goes the extra mile. You don’t get that from other services.

Ruby’s offerings do not stop at highly-trained receptionists. “I love the app,” Neil professes. “As a lifelong techie, I knew I wanted to leverage technology to maximize my practice while minimizing my workload. Ruby’s mobile app grants me the ability to work from anywhere, anytime as it places Ruby at my fingertips—literally.”

Through Ruby’s app, Neil is able to set a status indicating whether he is free to take calls or not, and for what duration of time. He can hold calls and use shortcuts to review call history. “I don’t have to be in my office to keep my firm running, and I love this. I can go on vacation knowing that callers are receiving the level of care and quality of customer-service that I would be providing them myself.”

Looking forward

Having the freedom to be mobile and enjoy life while working from anywhere is incredibly valuable to Neil. “I’m fortunate enough to have a place on the coast. I’ve always wanted to be able to work from there, and now I can!” 

“I see my practice evolving and continuing to use virtual support,” Neil says. “When fellow attorneys have asked me about Ruby, I tell them Ruby will be hard-pressed to get rid of me as a customer. They’re a reliable business with a phenomenal culture.”

“Simply put,” Neil explains, “Ruby is top-notch. I sing their praises daily!”

Discover how Ruby grows your practice.