AI receptionist for
law firms.
A 24/7 AI phone + form agent tuned for solo, boutique, and mid- size law firms. Runs the conflict-check on the first question, asks the right practice-area intake questions, books paid consults directly into your PMS calendar, and triages emergency calls to your on-call attorney — without your paralegal ever touching the phone.
$500 deposit to start. $2,500 setup + $750/mo once scope is confirmed. Live in 2 to 3 weeks. Refundable if we can't commit a kickoff date within 7 days.
Published · By Nolola
Firms losing new clients
to the phone.
Solo practitioners, boutique firms, mid-size firms, and multi-location practices where intake is the bottleneck.
- You're losing potential clients to attorneys who pick up after 5pm
- Your paralegal spends 40%+ of their day on the phone instead of on matters
- You're paying an answering service $500-1,500/mo that just takes messages
- New-matter intake takes 3-4 back-and-forth calls before a consult is booked
- You've been conflicted out of a matter your intake staff didn't catch on first call
Not a law firm? See the general AI receptionist page or browse the micro-pages hub for dental, home-services, and real-estate variants.
Not a chatbot.
A working intake agent.
Four workflows tuned for legal intake. Everything else routes to the attorney on call.
Conflict-check gated intake
First question captures caller name + potential adverse party. Runs against your matter database before any privileged detail is collected. If flagged, the caller is politely offered a referral and the intake ends there — you never take a call that could conflict you out.
Matter-scoped questions
Practice-area-aware script (criminal defense, family, PI, estate, real estate, immigration, business, etc.). Asks only what's relevant to that practice area. Captures jurisdiction, opposing counsel, deadlines, and prior representation.
Consultation booking
Books paid consults into your Clio / MyCase / attorney calendar with the correct fee (initial consult vs. flat vs. hourly). Handles “can I pay the retainer now?” via Clio Payments or LawPay.
After-hours criminal + emergency triage
Recognizes urgent legal scenarios (arrest, warrant, DV, restraining order, TRO, emergency custody) and escalates to your on-call attorney immediately. Standard-priority calls booked into next-morning intake queue.
Conflict-check on first question
Enforced at the prompt-template level. No privileged detail captured until the check clears. Flagged callers get a bar- referral link and the intake ends.
Privilege-conscious storage
Matter-scoped access. Encrypted at rest. Retention policy driven by your MSA. NDA + DPA templates ready to extend to your existing engagement letter.
Audit log on every call
Timestamp, transcript, model output, escalation trace, matter assignment. Exportable in your admin dashboard. Designed to survive an ethics review.
Books into your
actual PMS + billing stack.
Native integrations for the case-management, calendar, and payment systems law firms actually use. If yours exposes an API or webhook, we can wire it — custom integrations are scoped and priced in the setup fee.
- Clio Manage
- Clio Grow
- MyCase
- PracticePanther
- CosmoLex
- Rocket Matter
- Filevine
- Smokeball
- Zola Suite (CARET)
- LEAP
- Amicus Attorney
- TimeSolv
- LawPay
- Calendly / Cal.com
- Twilio / RingCentral
- Google / Outlook Calendar
AI receptionist,
answering service, or a hire.
AI receptionist (this)
- Deliverable
- 24/7 conflict-checked intake, PMS-integrated, booked consults
- Right fit
- You want intake that converts, not messages that pile up
Legal answering service
- Deliverable
- Message-taking, sometimes conflict-check, human staff
- Right fit
- You want a message log more than booked consults
Hire an intake paralegal
- Deliverable
- One more human · 40 hrs/week, not after-hours
- Right fit
- You have consistent daytime intake volume beyond your current staff
Most firms recover the $2,500 setup within 30 days from booked-after-hours consults alone.
Booked consults.
Not voicemails.
“First month we booked 47 consults from after-hours calls that used to become voicemails. The conflict-check gate has already caught two matters we would have taken and regretted. Setup fee paid back in three weeks.”
“I'm a solo. I used to lose every after-hours call to whoever answered first. Now I get the transcript by 8am, the consult is on my calendar, and the retainer's already been paid. It's the equivalent of hiring a full-time intake person for <$1k/mo.”
“The matter-scoped questions were the unlock. Callers now show up to the consult with the docs we asked for on the phone. Consult-to-retainer conversion is up 34% in 60 days.”
Common questions
$500 refundable deposit to secure a kickoff slot. Once scope is confirmed at the discovery call: $2,500 one-time setup + $750/month. Most firms recover the setup within 30 days from booked-after-hours consults alone — one converted intake usually covers it.
Answering services take messages and pass them along. They don't book consults, run conflict-checks, or handle retainer payments. Nolola's AI receptionist runs conflict-check gating on the first question, asks matter-scoped intake questions, books paid consults directly into your PMS calendar, and handles retainer collection through LawPay or Clio Payments. Answering services average $500-1,500/mo with human staff who go home at 11pm. This runs 24/7, converts calls into scheduled consults, and never asks a paralegal to update the calendar again.
Before any privileged detail is captured, the AI asks the caller for their name and the name of any potential adverse party. That query runs against your matter database (Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, etc.) in real time. If a match surfaces, the caller is politely told the firm can't take the matter and offered a bar-referral link — nothing further is captured. If clean, the intake proceeds. The rule is enforced in the prompt template, not left to model judgment.
Yes. Intake is matter-scoped and permission-scoped: only attorneys assigned to that practice area see the transcript. No PHI-adjacent details (medical intake specifics, for example) get sent to third-party models without a DPA. Transcripts are stored on your infra (or ours, encrypted at rest with a signed DPA) and purged per your retention policy. NDA + DPA templates ready to extend to your existing MSA.
Native integrations for Clio Manage + Clio Grow, MyCase, PracticePanther, CosmoLex, Rocket Matter, Filevine, Smokeball, Zola Suite (CARET), LEAP, Amicus Attorney, and TimeSolv. Payment: LawPay, Clio Payments, Gravity Legal. Calendars: Google, Outlook, Calendly, Cal.com. Anything with an API or webhook gets scoped and priced up-front in the setup fee.
You define the escalation list in the discovery call — keywords (arrested, warrant, TRO, emergency custody, DV incident), on-call attorney assignments, and time-of-day rules. Flagged calls escalate to the on-call attorney via SMS or push in real time. The AI never gives legal advice — it captures the situation and routes. This is enforced at the prompt-template level.
Natural, professional, human-paced, and — this matters legally — introduced as an AI on pickup. Trying to pass an AI off as a human is illegal in most states (FCC + state laws) and callers pick up on it anyway. The win is that it's a useful AI that gets the intake done in 4 minutes instead of 4 back-and-forth calls. Voice, cadence, and script are tuned for your firm before launch — you hear the full demo before go-live.
2 to 3 weeks. Discovery call within 2 business days of deposit. Voice + script tuning in week 1. PMS integration + conflict-check wiring in week 2. Soft-launch on a limited routing window in week 2-3 with your team shadow-listening. Full go-live once you're happy. 30 days of tuning included after that.
$500 deposit is fully refundable if we can't confirm scope or commit a kickoff date within 7 days. If you cancel post-launch, you own the script, transcripts, and intake history — we export it on request and shut off billing the following month. No multi-year contract, no exit fee.