For small firms answering the phone with fee earners
What it takes off your fee earners, and the line it must never cross.
A report on your firm's calls, showing how many actually needed a solicitor and how many did not.
By Reece Rainer
spareday, Newcastle NSW
Last updated
13 September 2026
Read time
5 minutes
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A law firm's phone is answered by somebody who is billing when they answer it, which is the most expensive way any business can staff a switchboard.
This is what an AI receptionist does in a small practice, what it must never be allowed to do, and how to work out whether it belongs in a firm like yours.
In most small firms the phone is answered by a paralegal, a junior solicitor or the principal. All three are people whose time has an hourly rate attached, and none of that rate is recoverable while they are taking a message.
This is the part that makes law different from a trade. A plumber who answers the phone loses ten minutes. A solicitor who answers the phone loses a unit of billable time and, more expensively, loses the thread of whatever they were drafting.
The interruption cost is the real number. Returning to a settlement file or an affidavit after a call about parking at the office is not free, and in a firm doing careful work it is the reason evenings get long.
Meanwhile the calls do not stop. New enquiries, existing clients wanting an update, the other side, the court registry, and a steady supply of people who have rung the wrong firm entirely.
A large share of the calls into a small practice are a client asking whether something has been received, somebody asking what area you practise in, or a new enquiry that needs its basic facts taken down before anybody senior should touch it.
None of that requires legal judgement. It requires somebody to answer, listen properly, write it down accurately and put it in front of the right person. That is a receptionist's job, and most small firms cannot justify one full time.
The enquiries are the ones worth being careful about. A person ringing a family lawyer or a criminal lawyer is usually having a bad week, and the first thirty seconds of that call decides whether they ring anybody else.
It takes information and it never gives any. No view on prospects, no indication of cost, nothing that could be read as advice, and nothing that could be construed as accepting a retainer. That boundary is what makes it safe in a practice at all.
This matters more in law than anywhere else this is used. An offhand sentence from somebody answering a phone can create an expectation a firm then has to manage, and a wrong one can create a problem well beyond an unhappy client.
So the wording is drafted with the firm and approved by the principal before anything is switched on. Not adapted from a template afterwards. Written, read, and signed off, in the same way the firm would sign off anything else that goes out under its name.
It answers on the first ring, takes the caller's details and the nature of the matter, and puts a written summary in front of the right person within a minute. Anything that needs a solicitor is escalated rather than handled.
The practical effect in a firm is that the phone stops being an interruption and becomes a queue. A solicitor reads six clear summaries at eleven o'clock instead of taking six calls between nine and eleven.
Existing clients notice a different thing. Somebody picks up, knows who they are, and can tell them their document was received, which is most of what they were ringing to find out.
It runs on the firm's existing number and inside the firm's own accounts. The call records and the client details do not sit inside somebody else's platform, which is a question every practice should ask before it agrees to any of this.
If you do one thing after reading this, take a week of calls and mark which ones actually needed a solicitor. In most small practices the answer is under a third, and the other two thirds are being answered by the most expensive person in the building.
Related reading from us: the phone answered while you work, AI receptionist for accountants, AI For Lawyers, Google reviews for lawyers and the call nobody leaves a message on.
No, and it is built so that it cannot. Any legal question is answered with a solicitor calling back, and that boundary is written into what it is permitted to say.
It collects the names involved and flags them for a person to check before anybody in the firm engages. It never opens a matter and never accepts a retainer.
It does not pretend to be one. It says it is taking details for the firm, which is what a receptionist does, and it says who will be in touch.
Inside accounts in the firm's name. Client information is not handed to a public AI tool, and the handling is agreed in writing before anything is built.