Why law firms look at ai receptionist.
Small and mid-sized firms lose new matters at the first contact. A prospective client calls during a hearing, gets voicemail and calls the next firm on the list. Website forms are answered the next day by a secretary who also runs three lawyers' diaries.
Intake is also sensitive. A caller may start describing their whole case before anyone has checked for a conflict, which creates professional-secrecy and conflict problems the firm would rather avoid.
What the agent does, step by step.
Call, website form, chat or WhatsApp from someone without an open matter.
Asks only for parties, practice area, deadline and contact details; discourages sharing case facts.
Employment, family, corporate, immigration or real estate mapped to the right lawyer.
Names passed to your conflict-check process before any lawyer reviews the matter.
Slot in the lawyer's calendar, with your fee information for the first consultation.
Systems it works with.
Practice-management systems hold privileged data, so the agent writes new enquiries and reads only calendars.
Where a human decides.
Professional secrecy and the duty to avoid conflicts shape every design choice.
How you know it works.
Measure: share of new enquiries answered within an hour, intake calls booked per week, and enquiries lost because nobody called back.
Example with assumed numbers: a 12-lawyer firm receives 60 new enquiries a month and calls back 70% of them within a day. Raising that to every enquiry within an hour is the target; how many become matters is something only your own numbers can show.
The example uses assumed numbers to show the method. It is not a client result or a promise.
What it costs.
All prices excl. VAT. The fixed quote comes from the AI Blueprint.
When this is not the right build.
If your firm works only for a fixed set of corporate clients and does not take walk-in matters, an intake agent has little to do. Look at internal knowledge search instead.
Common questions.
Is this allowed under lawyers' professional rules?
Using tools for intake is common, but the firm stays responsible for secrecy and conflicts. We design for minimum data and EU or UAE hosting, and your compliance officer approves the scripts before go-live.
Can it handle Dutch and English?
Yes, and Arabic for Gulf firms. It answers in the caller's language and records the enquiry in the language your lawyers use.
Want this in your business?
Tell us how you work today. We'll tell you honestly what AI can take off your team's plate, what it costs, and whether we are the right fit.