AI receptionist for solicitors and law firms

What is an AI receptionist for a law firm?

An AI receptionist for a law firm answers the phone, the website chat and the inbox when nobody at the firm can. It takes new enquiries down properly, books appointments, answers everyday questions about the firm, and takes a message for the right person when a caller asks for someone by name. In most firms the people who could answer a call are the people least able to take one. Fee earners are in meetings, at court or on the phone to the other side, and a small reception team cannot hold four lines at once. Kalvo answers at the first ring, on the number already on your letterhead. What it can talk about is deliberately narrow. It answers from notes your team writes in plain English: the areas you practise in, how your fees are structured in general terms, office hours, parking, what to bring to a first appointment. Anything that edges towards advice on a caller's own situation becomes a message for a solicitor instead. That line matters more in law than anywhere else. Kalvo never gives legal advice or an opinion on a caller's matter. It takes the details, answers questions about the firm, and gets the right person to call back.

What happens when a new enquiry calls?

A first-time caller describing a matter is the most valuable call a firm takes, and the easiest to lose. If the line rings out or drops to a voicemail box, most callers do not leave a message. They try the next firm on the list. Kalvo takes the enquiry down in full: what the matter is about in the caller's own words, the type of work it sounds like, how urgent it is, how they found the firm, and the name, number and best time to call back. The enquiry reaches your team as a complete record, not a name on a sticky note. Some of these callers are having the worst week of their year. Somebody ringing about a separation, a dispute or a death in the family may be upset, hesitant, or halfway through the story before they have given a name. Kalvo does not hurry them. It asks one clear question at a time, lets the caller finish, and reads the key details back. Every enquiry then lands in the same place with the same fields filled in, so whoever runs your new business list can see at a glance what came in overnight and who needs calling first.

80% of callers sent to voicemail do not leave a message. Source: Forbes, 2014

Can it route calls to the right department?

Yes. A caller asking about a house purchase should not land with the family team, and a firm's departments rarely keep identical hours. Kalvo works from a routing plan you set: conveyancing, family, litigation and private client can each have their own destination, their own hours, and their own person or team to take a transfer. A caller who asks for a department, a person or a matter reference is put through if that line answers. If it does not, Kalvo takes a message tied to the right team and tells the caller when to expect a callback, so nobody is left wondering. Urgency has its own rules, and you write them. You decide what counts as genuinely urgent at your firm, perhaps a completion at risk today or a hearing listed tomorrow, and those callers go straight through to a person you have named rather than into a message queue. Everything else waits politely. A routine question about progress on a file becomes a message for the fee earner handling it, with the caller's name and reference attached, instead of an interruption in the middle of a meeting.

How does it speak to callers, and where does it stop?

Callers to a law firm are often stressed, and some are upset. Kalvo speaks plainly and calmly, does not talk over people, and does not push a distressed caller through a script. It takes the conversation at the caller's pace and keeps its questions short. Where it stops is fixed. Kalvo never gives legal advice, never offers an opinion on the merits of a matter, and never guesses at what a solicitor would say. If a caller asks whether they have a case, what a document means, or what they should do next, it says honestly that a solicitor needs to answer that, and takes the details so one can. What it can answer is what the firm itself would put in writing: the areas you practise in, how your fees are structured in general terms, where the office is and when it is open, and what happens at a first appointment. After every call your team gets a summary and a full transcript, so what the caller said goes on the file in their own words rather than from memory. Call records are handled under UK GDPR.