AI receptionist · Law firms
An AI receptionist for law firms that answers before the next firm does.
An AI receptionist for a law firm is a voice agent that answers the calls your team cannot reach, takes a structured intake including the conflict question, and hands a lawyer a complete record without giving the caller any advice.
It answers at 9pm on a Thursday, takes the names, the dates and the other side, says plainly that nobody is their lawyer yet, and puts the intake in front of you while the caller is still deciding who to ring next.
Consulting first
A receptionist is the most common place a firm starts, not the only one. The audit comes first: where your revenue is created and where it is lost. For most firms that is the intake that never happened and the matter that sat two weeks without a follow-up, and those are two different systems.
What the audit is →The problem
The client you lose is the one who called four firms.
Somebody who has just been in a collision, or whose spouse has just filed, does not call one firm. They call until somebody picks up, and then they mostly stop calling. Your firm was not rejected. It was never in the running, because the phone rang out at twenty to seven on a Thursday.
The calls that decide instructions arrive at the worst times by definition. Accidents, arrests and emergencies keep no office hours, and neither does the moment somebody finally decides to do something about a problem they have been sitting on for a month.
The script
The intake a lawyer would want, taken while the caller is still on the phone.
- 01
Who is calling, and about what
Name, number, and the matter in their own words. Practice area first, because a family matter and a collision need different questions after that.
- 02
The other side
The adverse party, named and captured so a person can run the conflict check before the callback. The agent asks the question. It does not answer it.
- 03
The facts, with dates on them
What happened, when, where, and whether anything has been filed or served. Dates are the first thing the lawyer asks for and the first thing a caller forgets.
- 04
Your urgency list
You write down what cannot wait until morning: someone in custody, a child at risk, a deadline this week. The agent matches your list and puts a person on.
- 05
How they found you
Referral, search, a former client, an advert. The one intake field most firms never capture, and the one that tells you where your matters actually come from.
- 06
Anything you ask today
The script is yours. What your intake already asks goes in, and anything that should never be asked on a first call comes out.
Conflicts and confidentiality
The intake is the risk, not the phone.
A call from a prospective client is not a neutral event. It can create duties before anyone has decided whether to take the matter, and it can hand you information you were not free to receive. The agent is built around that rather than having it bolted on afterwards.
It never clears a conflict
It captures the other side's name and the matter, and stops there. The check is run by a person before anyone at the firm says anything substantive. An agent that cleared its own conflicts would be the single worst thing we could build for a firm, and we will not build it.
It does not create a relationship
It says plainly that it is taking details for the firm and that nobody is their lawyer yet. What it may and may not say is written down and approved by you before it answers a single call.
It takes the facts, it does not assess them
Dates, parties, jurisdiction, what happened and when. Whether any of that is a case is a question for the person who calls back.
Where the intake actually sits
Your Clio, your practice management system, your accounts. Recordings and transcripts carry a retention rule you set, and the people who can hear them are the people you name.
None of this is configuration we do quietly on your behalf. The wording, the conflict question and the escalation list are approved by the firm before the agent answers a single call.
The recording
Hear one.
A real inbound call, recorded with consent, from the one industry where we have permission to publish one. Listen to how the agent handles a caller, not to what it is booking.
There is no published law firm call and there will not be one. A real intake call is confidential from its first sentence, whether or not the firm ends up taking the matter, and no client should ever be asked to waive that so we can market with it. The recording above is a detailing client, the one industry where we have written permission. The agent is the same, only the questions change.
The limits
What it will and will not do.
It does not give legal advice, ever, and there is no setting that turns that on. It does not tell a caller whether they have a case, what it might be worth, or when a deadline falls. It does not clear conflicts. It can take an intake, say which practice areas you handle, answer hours, location and parking, book a consultation into your calendar, and put a person on immediately when a call matches the list you wrote. Everything it is allowed to say is approved before it answers a call, and widened only after you have listened to real ones.
The full processWhat changes
What is different once it runs.
You are in the running at 9pm.
The calls that decide instructions arrive outside office hours, and the firm that answers one of them is usually the firm that gets it.
The callback starts from facts.
You open an intake with names, dates and the other side already in it, so the first real conversation is about the matter rather than about spelling.
The conflict check happens before the conversation.
The adverse party is captured on the first call, so the check runs before anyone says something they cannot take back.
You learn where matters come from.
Every call records how the caller found you, which is the number most firms are guessing at.
FAQ
Questions firms ask.
01How is this different from other AI agencies?
Most agencies sell from a fixed list of AI services, so the answer is decided before anyone looks at your business. JDAI.Solutions starts with an audit: where revenue is created, where it is lost, and which of those gaps a system can close. We then build only what can be justified on return, which is why this is consulting rather than a catalogue.
02Can it run a conflict check?
No, and it should not. It captures the other side's name and the matter so a person can run the check before anyone at the firm speaks to the caller substantively. An agent that cleared its own conflicts would be the worst thing we could build for a firm, and it is not on the table at any price.
03Will it give legal advice?
No, and there is no setting that enables it. It takes details, says which practice areas you handle, and tells the caller a person will follow up. If somebody pushes for an answer it says it cannot give one and puts the question in the record for the lawyer.
04Does it work with Clio?
Clio has an open API and a separate intake product in Clio Grow, so an intake lands in your matters rather than in an inbox. Filevine is where most personal injury shops are and integrates on the same basis. MyCase is more restrictive, and that is the sort of thing we establish before quoting you rather than halfway through a build.
05What do callers hear?
A short introduction saying it is taking details for the firm, and a recording notice where your state requires one. Somebody who has just been in a collision at 9pm cares about one thing, which is that a firm finally picked up.
06How long until it is answering our phone?
A single line pilots on real calls within a week of the audit. The intake wording and the conflict question are approved by you before it answers anything, because that is the part with risk in it, not the technology.
Cost
What drives the quote.
Pricing is not published. Every engagement gets a fixed quote after the audit. These are the things that move it.
- Call volume, and whether the agent answers overflow only, after hours, or every call.
- How many practice areas it covers, since each one is a different intake.
- Whether it writes into your practice management system, and what that system's API allows.
- Whether it books consultations, and whether recordings and transcripts need a retention rule.
Where else it runs
Law firms are one of many. Medical and dental practices, home services and auto detailing run the same pattern, and so do niches too small to register a search volume, from veterinary clinics to mobile carpet cleaning. What changes is the questions, what the agent is forbidden to say, and who has to approve it. The missed calls are the constant.
Next step
Your next system starts with twenty minutes.
A complimentary audit, run by an engineer. A fixed quote before anything is built. The audit is yours to keep, whichever way you decide.
- Reply within one business day
- You talk to an engineer, not a sales team
- Code and accounts stay yours