24/7 legal intake services: what "answered" should mean for a law firm

Firms searching for 24/7 legal intake services usually have the same story: a call came in after hours, voicemail took it, and by the morning the caller had signed with someone else. Round-the-clock coverage fixes the first half of that story. Whether it fixes the second half depends on what "answered" means.

Three levels of answered

The first level is a message. An operator takes a name and a number and your team calls back in the morning. The caller is not lost, but the intake has not started, and the first thing your team does is the work they were hoping to skip.

The second level is a script. The operator asks a fixed set of questions and emails the answers. Better, but a script cannot follow up: it asks the date of injury and never asks whether the employer was told.

The third level is an intake. The agent asks your questions in your order, follows up on the answers, applies your acceptance criteria, verifies the contact details, and sends your team a finished file with a summary on top. That is what Workup Agent, Micronetbd's AI receptionist for law firms, does on the phone and on the website, at 2am as at 2pm.

What the intake team should receive

Within seconds of the call: the caller's name, number and email, the reason, the answers in your order, the questions they asked, and the transcript. Then a daily call log every evening listing every call and who still needs a person. Where your case management or CRM is connected, the file lands there as well: Lead Docket, Litify, Salesforce and others.

What it must never do

A legal intake service never gives legal advice, never evaluates the case, never tells a claimant what their deadline is and never promises an outcome. It collects what your team needs and flags the file when the clock is the problem, for your team, not for the caller. The limits are written into Workup Agent and they hold.

Questions to ask any vendor

Does it answer the phone, or only the website? What happens after four rings on our existing line? Can it run our questionnaire, with branching, or only a fixed script? Does it verify the email before routing? Is it priced per minute, per call, per seat or as a flat plan? And can we hear it before we sign? For Workup Agent the last answer is a phone number: (609) 834-3127.