Answering service for UK solicitors

Where new work is won and lost

Somebody ringing a solicitors' practice about a live matter has usually reached a point where they cannot put it off any longer. They ring two or three firms, and they instruct whichever one makes them feel their situation has been understood.

That call lands while fee earners are in court, in a meeting or with a client, and reception is dealing with the post, a walk-in and a completion chase at the same time. Around 85% of callers who reach voicemail never call back, and roughly 80% will not leave a message. The enquiry does not come back later. It becomes somebody else's file.

What an answering service for solicitors covers

Voco answers in your firm's name, in a voice you choose, and works only from information you configure. 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
• Identify the area of law and route the enquiry to the right department
• Take the matter reference where the caller has one
• Take a factual account of what has happened, without offering any view on it
• Gather the details your intake process needs, including other parties, so a conflict check can be run
• Follow your escalation rules for anything time-critical
• Send your team a structured summary by SMS and email within seconds

It gathers facts and never advises on them

This is the requirement that rules out most general answering arrangements, and it is not a matter of degree.

Voco will not tell a caller whether they have a claim, what their prospects are, how long they have to act, what a matter is likely to cost, or what they should do next. 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 does not improvise. Where it does not know something it says so and takes details for a callback. A confident wrong answer about a limitation period is not a service failure, it is a professional exposure, and it is the reason a general answering service is the wrong tool for a solicitors' practice.

Intake that arrives ready for a conflict check

The step most often skipped when an enquiry arrives as a scribbled note is the one that matters most. Voco can capture the names of other parties involved before anybody at the firm speaks substantively to a prospective client, so the check can be run at the right point rather than after somebody has already taken instructions.

It does not run the check and it makes no judgement about the result. It gathers what your team needs in order to make that decision properly.

Call handling for solicitors, department by department

A practice with three departments does not want every enquiry landing in one place. Calls can be routed by area of law, so a personal injury enquiry, a probate question and a commercial dispute each reach the right fee earner with the right details captured.

Existing clients ringing for reassurance partway through a matter can follow their own route, which keeps them out of the new enquiry queue and stops them being the reason a new instruction goes unanswered. Those calls are a large share of any practice's volume and almost none of them need a fee earner.

Client care and the record

Every call is stored with a transcript and a recording, timestamped and attached to the caller. Where a client later says they told you something, or asks why nobody came back to them, the answer is a log rather than a recollection.

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, and retention periods are configurable, which matters more here than in most sectors. Set retention deliberately so it aligns with your file retention and confidentiality policies rather than defaulting to something designed for a different business.

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

Getting started

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

Getting it to the standard you would put in front of a client takes around an hour, and in a regulated practice it is worth the time. Work through your FAQs, set your escalation rules, agree your retention position, and test it on your own line before diverting anything.

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, conveyancers, family law, how call handling works.