AI receptionist · Law firms
AI Receptionist for Law Firms: Legal Intake, Consultations & Urgent Calls
Your lawyers are in court, in meetings or asleep when the next prospective client calls. An AI receptionist answers the firm's number, asks your intake questions, books the consultation into the right lawyer's calendar, and puts urgent and existing-client calls through to people. You set it up not to give legal advice, and to say so.
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Quick answer
What is an AI receptionist for law firms? It is an AI voice agent that answers the firm's number, asks the new-matter intake questions you configure, including the other party's name for your own conflict check, and books consultations into lawyers' Google or Microsoft 365 calendars. Existing clients and urgent calls, such as an arrest, go to a person. It is set up to give no legal advice. On DialerBee it speaks Arabic dialects and English, at $0.60 per started connected minute plus Professional seats.
The first call
Why do law firms use an AI receptionist?
Because the people who answer the phone in a law firm are usually busy doing something else. The receptionist is greeting a client, the paralegal is filing, the partner is in court. Someone who has just been served papers or dismissed from their job often calls several firms in an afternoon, and the first firm that answers properly is the one that gets the consultation.
An AI receptionist answers that call, collects the facts your lawyers need to decide whether to take a first meeting, and books it. It also takes the calls nobody bills for: directions, office hours, "do you handle employment cases", "can I bring my documents on Thursday". Those calls are real work for a small team and routine work for an agent.
What it must not do is behave like a lawyer. Most pages selling AI receptionists to law firms skip that part. This one covers it: what the agent says when asked for advice, where the conflict check sits, which calls go straight to a person, and how client information is handled.
What it handles
What can a legal AI receptionist do on a call?
New-matter intake, your questions
Practice area, matter type, key dates, the other side's name: the agent asks the intake questions your firm writes, in the order you set, and keeps the answers with the call's recording, transcript and outcome in your CRM.
Consultations booked into lawyers' calendars
The agent checks free-busy on the connected Google Calendar or Microsoft 365 calendar, then books, moves or cancels a consultation on the call. It only tells the caller it is booked once the system has confirmed it.
Existing clients reach the right people
A client chasing their file is not a new enquiry. The agent hands the call to your team, and inbound queues with skills-based routing per queue get it to the practice group that runs the matter.
Firm questions answered from your documents
Office hours, directions, which areas you practise, what to bring to a first meeting, how consultation fees work. Answers come from documents you upload, retrieved by semantic search. Nothing about the caller's own case.
Urgent calls after hours
An arrest, a hearing tomorrow, an injunction served today: you list the urgent situations, and the agent hands those callers to a person rather than taking a message.
Arabic and English
Arabic is handled as dialects, including Gulf, Levantine and Egyptian, plus 10 more languages, 11 in total. Useful for firms in Dubai, Riyadh, Doha or Manama whose callers switch between the two.
You configure all of it in Agent Studio: the persona, the role, the knowledge base, the flow, test calls, and versions you publish and roll back. Kill switches stop one agent or all AI calling from the console.
AI legal intake
Which intake questions should an AI receptionist ask a new client?
The ones your intake lawyer would ask in the first three minutes, and no more. The firm writes them; the agent asks them in your order and records the answers with the call. Every call leaves its recording, transcript and outcome, pushed into your CRM, so the lawyer who calls back starts from the facts.
Keep intake factual. The agent should not ask for the whole story of the case, and it should not react to it with an opinion. Collect what lets a lawyer decide whether to take the meeting, then book it.
Where the conflict check sits
The agent collects the other party's name and any related people or companies. Your firm runs the conflict check in its own system. DialerBee does not run conflict checks. If your process needs a clear check before a consultation is confirmed, script the agent to take the details and say the firm will call back to confirm, instead of booking on the call.
| Question | Why the firm asks it |
|---|---|
| Which area of law is this about? | Sends the enquiry to the right practice group: family, employment, criminal, property, commercial, immigration, or the areas you list. |
| What kind of matter is it? | A divorce or a custody question, an unfair dismissal or a contract dispute. Your list, your words. |
| Are there any dates we should know about? | Incident date, hearing date, a letter with a deadline. The agent records the date; it does not say what the date means for the case. |
| Who is the other party? | The name of the person or company on the other side, collected for your own conflict check. The firm runs the check; the agent only writes the name down. |
| Is anyone in custody, or is something happening in the next 48 hours? | Your urgency trigger. A yes goes to a person, not into a callback list. |
| Name, number and preferred language | So the lawyer who calls back can do it in Arabic or English without asking again. |
No legal advice
What does the AI say when a caller asks for legal advice?
It says it is not a lawyer, declines, and offers something useful instead. Write the line yourself, put it in the agent's role, and test it with the questions callers really ask: "Will I win?", "Do I have a case?", "Should I sign this?", "How long do I have to file?"
Sample line · English
"I'm the firm's AI assistant, not a lawyer, so I can't give you legal advice or tell you how your case might go. What I can do is take a few details and book you a consultation with one of our lawyers. If it's urgent, I can put you through to someone now."
Sample line · Arabic
«أنا المساعدة الذكية للمكتب، ولست محامية، لذلك لا أستطيع تقديم استشارة قانونية أو توقّع نتيجة قضيتك. أستطيع أخذ بعض التفاصيل وحجز استشارة لك مع أحد محامينا، وإذا كان الأمر عاجلاً أحوّلك الآن إلى أحد الزملاء.»
Sample wording written for this page, not a recording. Every candidate reply the agent generates passes guardrails before it is spoken, but no guardrail replaces your own testing: ask it for advice ten different ways before launch, and listen to the recordings in the first weeks. Saying in the greeting that the caller is speaking to an AI assistant is also good practice.
Routing
How does it route existing clients and urgent after-hours calls?
Existing clients
A client asking about their matter needs their team, not intake. The agent hands the call off into your inbound queues, which route by FIFO, round-robin or longest-idle, with skills-based routing available per queue, so a family-law client reaches the family team.
Two more options sit in front of the agent. An IVR flow can ask "existing client or new enquiry?" first, and its CRM lookup node can recognise a caller from your records and route on that. And any number can be routed straight to a user, so a client with their lawyer's direct line never reaches the AI at all.
An arrest at two in the morning
Write the urgent list before launch: someone in custody, a hearing within 48 hours, a deadline today, a caller in danger. On those words the agent stops intake and hands the caller to a person. Where life is at risk, script the agent to tell the caller to contact the emergency services first.
Point that handoff at an on-call queue your duty lawyer works from the browser-based agent desktop. If nobody answers within your ring timeout, missed-call recovery plays your own announcement and texts the alert recipient you set the caller's number, so the call is not lost in a voicemail box until Monday.
More on designing transfers: AI voice agent human handoff.
Confidentiality
How is client information protected?
A prospective client's first call can carry sensitive facts. These are the controls DialerBee has in place, as listed on the trust center.
Encryption
TLS 1.2+ for data in transit and AES-256 for data at rest, including PostgreSQL, recording storage and backups.
Tenant isolation
PostgreSQL row-level security enabled and forced on tenant tables, default-deny where tenant context is missing. Recordings, knowledge and retrieval are tenant-scoped.
Retention you set
Recording retention, audit log retention and data lifecycle policies are configurable per tenant, with automatic enforcement of retention windows.
Signed recording links
Recordings are never exposed via raw paths. Links are signed and expire after one hour; an expired link returns 403, not audio.
Customer call data is not used to train shared cross-tenant models by default. Access runs through a per-tenant role matrix and append-only audit logs, with single sign-on, two-factor sign-in and an IP allow-list available. A DPA is available, and SOC 2 Type II is planned, not held.
These are compliance-supporting controls, not a statement that using them meets your professional rules. Your obligations are your own, so check them with your bar or regulator. As one example, the State Bar of California's 2026 practical guidance on generative AI in the practice of law names client intake as an example of agentic AI and says that protecting client confidences takes reasonable efforts, which "require more than reliance on generalized marketing assurances". We agree: ask us for a security review before you route a single call.
Gulf law firms
Does it work for bilingual Arabic and English law firms?
A firm in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha or Manama takes calls from Emirati and Saudi clients in Gulf Arabic, from Arabic speakers raised in Amman or Cairo, and from expatriates who want English, Hindi or Urdu. The agent handles Arabic as dialects, including Gulf, Levantine and Egyptian, and works in 10 more languages, 11 in total.
Record the caller's preferred language as an intake answer so the lawyer who calls back starts in it. Legal vocabulary is often mixed: a caller may describe a labour dispute in Arabic and name the contract clause in English. How well any agent copes with your callers' mix is something to test, not to take on trust; on a demo we run it with your own phrases. See the Arabic AI voice agent.
Hear it
What does the AI receptionist sound like on a call?
AI voice agent demo — simulated caller. Layla's replies come from the production model; the callers are synthetic voices and the businesses are fictional. These recordings are a salon and a clinic, not a law firm: listen for how the agent answers questions from its documents, takes a callback request and books in Arabic.
Questions, then a callback request
English · 70 seconds
AI voice agent demo — simulated caller
A booking in Arabic
Jordanian Arabic · 49 seconds
AI voice agent demo — simulated caller
Worked example
How much does an AI receptionist for a law firm cost?
On DialerBee the AI voice agent is $0.60 per started connected minute on managed AI, a usage-billed add-on on the Professional plan ($129 per agent per month) or Enterprise. The seats are for the people who take handoffs.
A small firm, 400 calls a month
Intake calls run longer than "what time do you open?", so price them separately.
| 160 new-matter intake calls × 5 min | 800 min |
| 240 routine calls (hours, directions, rebooking) × 2 min | 480 min |
| 1,280 min × $0.60 | $768 |
| 2 Professional seats × $129 (intake lawyer and office manager) | $258 |
| Total a month | $1,026 |
| Per answered call ($1,026 ÷ 400) | ≈ $2.57 |
| Firm | Calls × length | AI minutes at $0.60 | Professional seats | Total a month | Per answered call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo practice | 120 × 3 min = 360 min | $216 | 1 × $129 | $345 | ≈ $2.88 |
| Small firm, mixed calls (worked below) | 160 × 5 min + 240 × 2 min = 1,280 min | $768 | 2 × $129 | $1,026 | ≈ $2.57 |
| Mid-size firm, several practice groups | 1,000 × 3 min = 3,000 min | $1,800 | 5 × $129 | $2,445 | ≈ $2.45 |
Minutes are billed per started connected minute, so an intake call of 4 minutes 10 seconds counts as 5. Measure your average in started minutes. A long intake script costs money on every call, which is one more reason to keep it to the questions a lawyer needs.
Examples, not quotes: carrier minutes are billed by your carrier, taxes are excluded and seats are at monthly prices (annual billing saves 20% on plans). With your own model keys, a flat monthly fee replaces the per-minute AI rate. See pricing and what an AI receptionist costs.
Comparison
AI receptionist vs legal answering service vs front desk
Three ways to answer a law firm's phone, and what changes with each.
| AI receptionist (DialerBee) | Legal answering service | In-house front desk | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who answers | The AI voice agent, on the number you route to it | A human operator at a third-party service, often shared across many firms | Your receptionist or legal secretary, in office hours |
| New-matter intake | Asks your configured intake questions and records the answers with the call | Takes a message or follows your script, depending on the plan | Full intake, with judgement and local knowledge |
| Consultation booking | Books, moves or cancels after a free-busy check on the lawyer's calendar | Often a message for the firm to call back; some services book | Yes, with access to the diaries |
| Legal advice | None. Says so, and offers a consultation or a person | None | None (a receptionist should not either) |
| Urgent call at 02:00 | Handed to a person you designate; missed-call alert if nobody answers | Depends on the service's escalation rules | Usually voicemail |
| Arabic and English | Arabic dialects, including Gulf, plus 10 more languages | Depends on the service | Whatever your staff speak |
| Record of the call | Recording, transcript and outcome pushed to your CRM | A message or email summary | Notes, if somebody writes them |
| Cost model on DialerBee | $0.60 per started connected minute on managed AI, plus Professional seats for the people who take handoffs | Varies: per call, per minute or monthly bundles | A salary, and the calls that ring out while they are on the other line |
| Best for | Routine calls, intake, booking and out-of-hours coverage | Firms that want a human voice on every call | Clients who need a familiar person, and walk-ins |
A qualitative comparison of operating models. Answering services differ widely; check what a specific provider includes. For a longer comparison read AI receptionist vs IVR vs answering service.
Choose a legal answering service if every caller must hear a person. Keep the front desk for clients who know your staff by name. Many firms put the AI receptionist on the main number and after hours, and keep people for the rest.
Handoff
Which law firm calls should go straight to a person?
Anything where a wrong word could harm the client or the firm. Handoff is a designed branch of the call, not a failure. Supervisors can listen live to an AI call and take it over, and on staffed queues they can listen, whisper or barge in.
If a number mostly receives these calls, such as a criminal-defence emergency line, route it straight to a person and keep the AI for the main number.
- Any question about the caller's own case, rights, chances or deadlines
- Fees for a specific matter, retainers and engagement terms
- Someone arrested, detained or due in court within hours
- A caller who is frightened, grieving or at risk, including domestic abuse
- Opposing parties, other lawyers, courts and the press
- An existing client who asks for their own lawyer
- Any caller who asks for a person, and certainly any caller who asks twice
Setup
How do you set up an AI receptionist for a law firm?
Sort your calls
Take two weeks of calls and label them: new enquiries by practice area, existing clients, court and opposing counsel, urgent. Mark which ones a person must take.
Write the intake
Four to six questions per practice area, the dates that matter, and the other-party name for your conflict check. Leave out anything you would not want collected before engagement.
Write the no-advice line
Put it in the agent's role in Agent Studio, in English and Arabic, and decide what it offers instead: a consultation, a callback or a person.
Connect calendars and routes
Connect Google Calendar or Microsoft 365, set consultation types and durations, and point handoffs at the right queues, including the one your duty lawyer works after hours.
Test it like a client would
Ask it whether you will win. Say your brother was arrested an hour ago. Ask in Gulf Arabic, then in English. Ask for a person twice. Listen to every recording.
The full walkthrough, with a 15-call test script: how to set up an AI receptionist. For outbound work such as consultation reminders and case updates, see the legal services dialer.
Questions
Law firm AI receptionist FAQ
What is an AI receptionist for a law firm?
Can an AI receptionist give legal advice?
Does the AI receptionist run conflict checks?
How does it handle urgent calls after hours, such as an arrest?
Is client information kept confidential?
Does it speak Arabic for law firms in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Bahrain?
How much does an AI receptionist for a law firm cost?
Can I keep the firm's existing phone number?
Hear it take a new-matter call for your firm
Send us your intake questions and your urgent-call list. On the demo we show intake, a consultation booked into a calendar, a refused request for legal advice and a handoff to a person, in English or Arabic.
Explore further
AI receptionist
The full product page: what it handles and what it hands to people.
Legal services dialer
The outbound side: intake callbacks, consultation scheduling and case updates.
How to set up an AI receptionist
Seven steps, a knowledge template and a 15-call test script.
AI voice agent human handoff
Transfer triggers, warm vs cold transfer and what to do when nobody is free.
AI voice agent
Everything Layla can do, inbound and outbound.
Arabic AI voice agent
Gulf, Levantine and Egyptian Arabic, and how to test it.
Trust and security
Encryption, tenant isolation, retention and AI data practices.
Pricing
Plans, the AI voice agent rate and worked examples.
AI receptionist by industry
How the AI receptionist handles calls in your type of business, with worked prices and honest limits.