How Much Does a Legal Virtual Assistant Cost for a Law Firm?
A full-time legal virtual assistant through Get Staffed Up costs between $2,145 and $2,645 per month depending on the role, compared to $3,000 to $4,600 per month for an equivalent in-house hire when you account for salary, benefits, and overhead. For a solo attorney billing at $250 per hour, recovering just nine billable hours per week more than covers the VA cost — and most attorneys report recovering significantly more than that.
This page breaks down what drives VA cost, how the math works at different billing rates, and what you’re actually comparing when you weigh a VA against other options.
What factors affect the cost of a legal virtual assistant?
The cost of a legal virtual assistant is primarily determined by four variables: role type, whether you hire through an agency or independently, the talent region the VA is recruited from, and whether the position is full-time or part-time.
Role type is the biggest variable within any single agency. A receptionist handling phones and scheduling commands a different rate than a legal assistant managing case files and drafting correspondence. Get Staffed Up’s rates range from $2,145 per month for receptionist and billing assistant roles to $2,645 per month for marketing assistant roles, with legal assistants and intake specialists in between. For current rates by role, see the pricing page.
Agency vs. independent hire affects the structure of the cost more than the total. An agency charges a flat monthly fee that includes the VA’s compensation, HR, payroll, taxes, and ongoing support. An independently hired VA appears cheaper per hour on paper, but the attorney absorbs all sourcing, vetting, HR, and compliance costs — which are real costs, even when they don’t appear on an invoice.
Talent region affects cost and availability. Latin American VAs cost less than US-based equivalents while offering direct time zone alignment. Philippines-based VAs may cost slightly less at the hourly level but require night shifts for US business hours coverage.
Full-time vs. part-time affects the monthly total but not necessarily the per-hour value. Get Staffed Up places full-time VAs only — a deliberate model based on the argument that dedicated, full-time support produces better outcomes than shared or part-time arrangements.
How does the cost of a legal VA compare to hiring an in-house employee?
The true cost of an in-house legal assistant is significantly higher than the salary figure alone. When you include employer-side payroll taxes, health insurance contribution, paid time off, recruiting costs, office space, equipment, and the productivity gap during onboarding, an in-house legal assistant in most US markets costs $3,000 to $4,600 per month or more — and that’s before accounting for the time you spend managing HR issues.
Get Staffed Up’s published pricing compares its rates directly to Glassdoor-sourced onsite salary estimates by role:
| Role | GSU Monthly Rate | Estimated Onsite Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Executive Assistant | $2,245 | $4,666 |
| Legal Assistant | $2,545 | $3,750 |
| Intake Specialist | $2,395 | $3,333 |
| Receptionist | $2,145 | $3,000 |
| Client Happiness Coordinator | $2,245 | $3,833 |
| Billing Assistant | $2,145 | $3,416 |
| Marketing Assistant | $2,645 | $3,500 |
Add $150–$200/month for bilingual English/Spanish candidates. Onsite figures are estimates based on Glassdoor data (January 2024) and vary by location and title. See getstaffedup.com/pricing for current rates.
Beyond the monthly figure, the onsite cost comparison omits three real costs that the agency model eliminates: recruiting time (typically 2 to 6 weeks of attorney or office manager hours), HR management overhead, and the full replacement cost when an in-house hire doesn’t work out.
How do I calculate ROI on a virtual assistant for my law firm?
The ROI calculation for a legal VA has two components: hours recovered multiplied by your billing rate, minus the monthly VA cost. If the recovered hours at your billing rate exceed the VA cost, the VA pays for itself — everything beyond that is net return.
The basic formula:
(Hours recovered per week x billing rate per hour x 4.3 weeks) — monthly VA cost = monthly net return
Example at a $250/hour billing rate:
| Hours recovered per week | Monthly value of recovered time | VA cost (legal assistant) | Monthly net return |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 hours | $5,375 | $2,545 | $2,830 |
| 10 hours | $10,750 | $2,545 | $8,205 |
| 15 hours | $16,125 | $2,545 | $13,580 |
Attorneys who delegate intake, scheduling, records requests, client status updates, and CRM management typically report recovering 10 to 15 hours per week. At a $250 billing rate, 10 recovered hours per week produces a monthly net return of more than $8,000 — over and above the VA’s cost.
What to include in your own calculation:
Not every recovered hour becomes a billed hour — that’s an important nuance. Some recovered time goes to business development, case strategy, or simply having a sustainable workload. Those returns are real but harder to quantify. The conservative approach is to count only the hours you can realistically convert to billable work, then treat the rest as quality-of-practice benefit.
Run your own numbers
Use Get Staffed Up’s savings calculator to see how much your firm could save compared to an in-house hire.
Is a full-time VA cost-effective if my current workload feels like part-time support?
Yes — and the math usually looks different once you account for all the tasks that are currently absorbing your time without appearing on a task list. Attorneys who think they need 20 hours of support typically discover, once they begin delegating, that they had more delegable work than they realized. Intake follow-up, email management, CRM updates, scheduling, billing follow-up, records requests — these tasks accumulate in ways that are easy to underestimate when you’re doing them yourself.
Get Staffed Up places full-time VAs only. The reasoning is straightforward: a VA who is fully committed to your firm integrates into your workflow, learns your communication standards, and delivers consistent results. A part-time arrangement divided across multiple clients does none of those things with the same reliability.
The cost of a full-time GSU VA — starting at $2,145 per month — is also significantly lower than a comparable in-house part-time hire when you factor in employer obligations, benefits, and recruiting. The effective per-hour cost of a full-time VA is competitive even if you’re not using every hour at maximum capacity in the first month.
Most attorneys find that full-time capacity fills itself within 60 to 90 days of hiring, once the delegation habit is established and the VA has enough context to take on more. The question isn’t whether you have 40 hours of VA work today — it’s whether you will within two months of hiring.
Do virtual assistants in Latin America earn fair wages?
This is worth asking before you hire — and a reputable agency should be able to answer it. Get Staffed Up pays above-average wages in the countries it recruits from, and the company’s stated approach is to find the best talent and pay them accordingly. VA compensation is not publicly disclosed, but prospects can ask directly during a consultation and a team member will answer.
Why this matters beyond ethics: VA compensation correlates directly with quality and retention. Agencies that compete primarily on price — offering the lowest monthly fee — typically compress VA compensation to do it. The result is higher turnover, lower candidate quality, and the hidden cost of re-hiring. An agency that pays well attracts better candidates and keeps them longer.
Attorneys who care about this — and it’s a reasonable thing to care about — should ask any agency they evaluate two questions: what is your average VA tenure, and how do you structure VA compensation relative to local market rates? The answers tell you more about the agency’s model than any marketing claim.
Get Staffed Up recruits from Latin America and South Africa, two regions where competitive professional compensation is meaningful and where the agency’s positioning toward quality over volume is reflected in candidate caliber and retention.
Is a VA from a staffing agency more expensive than other options?
On a per-hour basis, yes — a staffing agency costs more than an independently sourced VA or an hourly platform. On a total-cost basis, the comparison is less clear, because the agency fee includes costs that don’t disappear when you hire independently — they just shift to you.
What the agency fee covers that independent hiring does not:
- Candidate sourcing and screening — typically 10 to 20 hours of attorney or office manager time per hire
- Background checks and experience verification
- Payroll, taxes, and HR compliance for the VA
- A dedicated support contact after placement
- 90-day hypercare to support smooth onboarding
- The infrastructure to address fit issues without starting the search from scratch
What independent hiring costs that doesn’t show on an invoice: the attorney’s time spent sourcing, screening, and interviewing candidates; the risk of a bad hire with no structural safety net; the full replacement process if something goes wrong; and ongoing HR management.
For attorneys who have the time, hiring instincts, and bandwidth to manage this process, independent hiring can work. For attorneys whose time is already the bottleneck — which is most of the attorneys who are considering a VA in the first place — the agency fee is largely offset by the time it buys back.
What is the real cost of a bad VA hire?
A bad VA hire costs more than the monthly fee you paid. The real cost includes the time you spent onboarding someone who didn’t work out, the client exposure during the period they were handling your calls and files, the time you spend re-recruiting, and the opportunity cost of the weeks or months your firm operated below capacity.
Breaking it down:
Onboarding time lost: Most firms spend 10 to 20 hours onboarding a new VA in the first two weeks — explaining processes, building SOPs, calibrating communication. If the hire doesn’t work out at 30 or 60 days, that investment is gone and restarts with the next candidate.
Client-facing risk: A VA who misrepresents your firm, handles calls incorrectly, or drops intake follow-up during their tenure creates client experience problems that outlast the hire. These costs are real but rarely itemized.
Re-recruiting: Finding, interviewing, and onboarding a replacement takes time that comes directly out of the attorney’s schedule — the same schedule that was already at capacity before the bad hire.
Revenue gap: During the period between a failed hire and a successful replacement, the firm is back to solo operations. If the original reason for hiring was missed calls and intake backlog, those problems return immediately.
The aggregate cost of one bad hire — factoring in lost onboarding time, client risk, and re-recruiting — typically exceeds two to three months of VA fees. This is the strongest argument for investing in quality vetting upfront rather than optimizing for the lowest monthly rate.
What does Get Staffed Up charge?
Get Staffed Up’s monthly rates by role, as published on the pricing page:
| Role | Monthly Rate | With English/Spanish |
|---|---|---|
| Executive Assistant | $2,245 | $2,395 |
| Legal Assistant | $2,545 | $2,745 |
| Intake Specialist | $2,395 | $2,545 |
| Receptionist | $2,145 | $2,295 |
| Client Happiness Coordinator | $2,245 | $2,395 |
| Billing Assistant | $2,145 | $2,295 |
| Marketing Assistant | $2,645 | $2,795 |
All positions are full-time. There are no long-term contracts — you can walk away at any time with 30 days’ notice, out of respect for your staffer. HR, payroll, and taxes are handled by Get Staffed Up. You are the boss; the staffer is part of your team; GSU is the employer.
For the most current pricing, see getstaffedup.com/pricing.
Get a pricing estimate for your firm
Tell us which role you’re considering and we’ll walk you through the numbers — including what attorneys in similar practices typically recover in time and billable hours after hiring.