Answering service for UK family law firms

The call that took weeks to make

People do not ring a family solicitor on impulse. The call follows weeks or months of deliberation, and it is frequently made in a narrow window when the caller has privacy, time and the resolve to go through with it.

If nobody answers, that window closes. Around 85% of callers who reach voicemail never call back, and roughly 80% will not leave a message at all. In family work the reason is not impatience. It is that leaving a recorded message about a marriage, a child arrangement or an allegation is something many callers will simply not do, and being asked to try again tomorrow is enough to stop them altogether.

The commercial consequence is one thing. The other is that a person who needed advice did not get it.

First contact, handled properly

Voco answers in your firm's name, in a voice you choose, and works from information you configure rather than improvising. On a typical call it will:

• Establish whether the caller is an existing client or a new enquiry
• Take full contact details, spelled back and confirmed, including how and when it is safe to make contact
• Identify what the matter concerns, whether that is divorce, separation, child arrangements, financial remedy or something else
• Take a factual account of the situation, without asking the caller to justify or explain it
• Capture the details your intake process needs, including other parties, so a conflict check can be run
• Answer the questions you have configured, such as whether you offer a fixed-fee first appointment, whether you do legal aid work, and what happens after an enquiry
• Follow your escalation rules for anything time-critical
• Send your team a structured summary by SMS and email within seconds

How and when it is safe to make contact

This is a detail that matters more in family work than anywhere else, and it is the one most often missed when an enquiry is taken as a message.

A caller may not be able to take a return call at home, or on a shared phone, or at certain times. They may not want a voicemail left, or an email sent to an address somebody else can see. Voco can be configured to ask about this on every new enquiry and record the answer, so the person calling back knows before they dial.

It is a small piece of information and getting it wrong can matter a great deal.

Urgent matters and safeguarding

Family work generates genuinely urgent matters. Applications about the removal of a child from the jurisdiction, occupation and non-molestation orders, and situations where somebody needs advice within hours rather than days.

You set the escalation rules and Voco follows them. Where a caller describes circumstances matching what you have defined as urgent, the enquiry is flagged and routed to whoever you have nominated rather than waiting in a queue.

Separately, and importantly, the assistant can be configured to give clear signposting where a caller indicates they are in immediate danger. That means directing them to call 999, and giving the National Domestic Abuse Helpline number, 0808 2000 247. It does this because you have configured that wording, not because it assesses risk. It does not judge whether somebody is safe, and it should never be presented as though it does. Nothing here replaces a person, and firms should treat the signposting as a floor rather than a safeguard.

It gathers facts and never advises on them

Voco will not tell a caller what they are entitled to, how a court is likely to view their situation, what they should do about the children, whether they should leave, or what any of it is likely to cost.

Where a caller presses for a view, it says plainly that it cannot advise and that somebody from the firm will come back to them. It works only from what you have configured and, where it does not know something, says so and takes details for a callback. In family work a confident wrong answer is not a service failure. It is advice given to somebody at the worst point of their life by something that is not a solicitor.

Callers can be told they are speaking to an AI assistant, and that is a setting you control. Most family firms switch it on.

Intake ready for a conflict check

Conflict is a live risk in family work, particularly in smaller practices and smaller towns where both parties may approach the same firm.

Voco can capture the names of other parties at first contact, before anybody at the firm speaks substantively to a prospective client, so the check happens at the right point. It does not run the check or make any judgement about the result.

Confidentiality and the record

Family matters generate some of the most sensitive information a firm handles, and callers are often reluctant to give any of it to somebody they have not met.

Call data is stored in UK and EU data centres. Voco Digitals Ltd is registered with the ICO. A data processing agreement is available covering your firm as controller and Voco as processor. Recordings and transcripts are encrypted in transit and at rest, retention periods are configurable, and deletion requests can be actioned against an individual caller.

Retention deserves a deliberate decision here rather than a default. Being able to tell a caller how long a recording of that conversation is kept is worth having an answer to.

Getting started

You can be live in minutes. Signing up walks you through a short setup flow covering your firm's details, the work you do, your hours and the questions your team answers most often.

Getting it right for family work takes longer than an hour and is worth every minute. Write the wording for urgent situations and for safeguarding signposting yourself rather than accepting anything generic, decide your retention position, and test it on your own line before you divert a single call.

There is no setup fee, no contract, and a 30 day money-back guarantee. Voco costs 29p a minute with no monthly fee, or a monthly plan if your call volume is steady.

Related: answering service for UK law firms, solicitors, how call handling works.