Law Firm Answering Service | After-Hours Intake for Solo & Small Firms
Solo & Small-Firm Intake
The calls that turn into cases do not arrive during business hours. A wreck on the interstate happens at eleven at night, an arrest happens on a Saturday, a termination letter lands at 4:55 on a Friday — and the person holding that problem is on their phone within the hour, working down the same page of search results your firm is on. The pattern in this market is not subtle: they retain one of the first firms that puts a human on the line. An intake call you miss is not a lead you follow up on Monday. It is a case that has already been signed somewhere else.
Global Empire Corporation covers the hours a solo or small firm cannot — evenings, weekends, holidays and the stretch when your one receptionist is at lunch or on leave. Agents are trained on your case criteria and your conflict-screening fields, work inside the practice management system you already run, and are drilled hardest on the thing that matters most in this vertical: what a non-lawyer must never say to a prospective client. Firms that need a staffed daytime intake desk, existing-client status handling and overflow reception as a managed program should start at legal call center services instead — this page is about the hours after your own phone stops being answered.
- Live answer on the calls that actually convert — nights, weekends, holidays, and the hour your receptionist is at lunch
- Conflict-screening parties captured on the first call, before anyone at the firm has engaged with the facts
- Callers screened against your case criteria, so your attorneys are not reading intake forms for matters you do not take
- Consultations booked into the calendar you already use instead of returned to you as a message slip
- 1.1B+
- Transactions Processed
- 11+
- Contact Centers Worldwide
- 27
- Service in 27+ Languages
- 35.5k+
- Over 35000 Happy Employees
- 10M+
- New Customers Acquired
The First Firm That Answers Is Usually the Firm That Gets Retained
Most firms already know the after-hours number goes to voicemail. What they underestimate is how rarely that voicemail is the caller's last stop. Someone who has just been rear-ended, or who has a family member in custody, is not leaving one message and waiting by the phone — they are dialing the next three results, and the firm that answers gets to run intake while the facts are fresh and the caller is still frightened enough to act.
The economics are lopsided in a way almost no other trade's are. A missed plumbing call is one job. A missed personal injury or criminal defense intake is a matter that would have run for months or years. That asymmetry is why an unanswered intake line is the most expensive piece of unmanaged infrastructure in a small firm, and why paying a paralegal to sit beside a phone until midnight has never been a real answer to it.
For solo practitioners and firms under roughly ten attorneys
What an Intake Agent Actually Does on a Legal Call
Conflict Data Before Anything Else
Full legal name of the caller, the opposing party, spouses, insurers, employers and any related parties, taken at the top of the call so your conflict check can run before an attorney engages with the facts of the matter.
Screening Against Your Case Criteria
Jurisdiction, case type, the date of the incident or the event that started the clock, injuries or charges, and whether the caller is already represented — the handful of fields that tell you in thirty seconds whether this is your matter.
Urgency the Clock Actually Cares About
A caller in custody, an emergency protective order, a hearing tomorrow morning, an incident whose limitations period is visibly close — these wake the on-call attorney under rules you write. Everything else books a consultation and sleeps.
The Lines a Non-Lawyer Does Not Cross
No opinion on whether the caller has a case, no estimate of what it is worth, no fee quote, no advice on what to sign or say to an adjuster. Agents are drilled to capture and route, and to say plainly that only your attorney can answer that.
Consultations Booked, Not Messages Left
Where the matter fits your criteria the agent books the consultation into your calendar with the intake record attached, so the attorney opens the meeting already knowing the parties, the dates and the facts as the caller told them.
Declines and Referrals Without a Burned Caller
Matters you do not take are closed out courteously and, where you keep a referral list, pointed at it. People remember how a firm turned them away, and the ones treated well come back later with the matter you do want.
Working Inside Clio, Filevine or Whatever Your Firm Already Runs
The failure mode of a legal answering service is the email. An intake typed into a message and dropped in a shared inbox has to be re-keyed by someone at the firm, which means it is re-keyed late, re-keyed incompletely, or never re-keyed at all — and an intake that never became a matter record is indistinguishable from the call you never got.
So the handoff goes into your system rather than into your inbox. Clio Grow is the most common destination, with the lead created there and the consultation written onto the Clio Manage calendar. Filevine suits volume plaintiff and mass tort work where intake feeds a pipeline rather than a single attorney. Smokeball, MyCase and PracticePanther all accept a structured intake the same way. If your firm honestly runs on a spreadsheet and a shared calendar, say so at discovery — we will build the handoff around that instead of pretending otherwise, and it will still beat voicemail.
- Clio Grow for intake, with the consultation written to the Clio Manage calendar
- Filevine for plaintiff and mass tort pipelines where intake volume is the constraint
- Smokeball, MyCase and PracticePanther for structured lead and matter creation
- A defined escalation path to the on-call attorney by phone or text, kept separate from the software
Who Regulates a Non-Lawyer Answering Your Intake Line
Legal intake is the one place in this tier where the answering service sits inside a regulated relationship rather than beside it, and three obligations shape the work. Information a prospective client shares during intake carries duties even where no representation ever follows, which is the subject of the prospective-client rule in every state's professional conduct code. Supervision of non-lawyer assistance is the lawyer's responsibility and not the vendor's — the American Bar Association addressed client intake by non-lawyers directly in Formal Opinion 506. And what a non-lawyer may say in response to a prospective client's question is bounded by what counts as the practice of law in your jurisdiction.
Each state's bar and highest court administers those rules, and they are not uniform — a script that is unremarkable in one state can be a problem in another, which is why the answer-and-route boundary is trained per firm rather than sold as a standard package. Conflict screening itself stays with you; our part is capturing the parties completely enough, and early enough, for your check to run. Confirm current requirements with your own counsel before an outside team takes a single intake call on your behalf.
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Frequently asked questions
Can your agents sign up a client for us?
No, and be wary of anyone who says they can. An intake agent captures the facts, screens against your criteria, and books the consultation. The engagement agreement, the fee discussion and the decision to take the matter belong to your attorney — both because that is where the ethical line sits and because it is the conversation that actually closes a case. What the agent does is carry the caller from the search result to a calendared meeting with no gap in between, which is the exact point where most small firms lose them.
We are a two-attorney family law firm. Do we really need 24/7?
Honestly, often not. Family law intake clusters in the evening and across the weekend rather than at three in the morning, so extended-hours cover — from close of business until late, plus Saturday and Sunday — catches nearly all of it for a fraction of round-the-clock staffing. Criminal defense is the opposite case entirely: arrests happen overnight, and the call comes from a facility that will not call back. Pull the timestamps on your own missed calls for the last three months and buy the hours that data actually justifies.
Is what a caller tells your agent confidential?
Treat it as though it is. The duty a lawyer owes someone who consults them about a matter attaches even when the firm never takes the case, and your state's prospective-client rule sets out what that means in practice. Operationally, agents on your line handle intake information as confidential, records live in access-controlled systems rather than a shared inbox, and the intake is visible to your firm rather than pooled anywhere else. Your own counsel should confirm how your jurisdiction applies those duties to work performed by an outside intake team.
How do you stop an agent from accidentally giving legal advice?
By making it a scripting problem instead of a judgment problem. Agents work from a question set your firm approves, and every predictable question — do I have a case, what is it worth, should I talk to the adjuster, should I sign this — has an approved response that routes rather than answers. Calls are recorded and reviewed against that boundary, and new agents on a legal program are calibrated before they take live intake. Where a caller pushes, the answer is the one your own receptionist would give: only the attorney can answer that.
Can you run our conflict check?
We capture the inputs; the determination stays yours. The agent takes full legal names for the caller, the opposing party, spouses, insurers, employers and anyone else the matter touches, and where we have access to your intake system that record exists before a lawyer at your firm reads the facts. A firm that lets a vendor make the conflict call is outsourcing a judgment the rules place on the lawyer. The value of the outside desk is that the data is complete, structured, and captured at two in the morning rather than reconstructed later.
Is this different from a full legal call center?
Yes, and the distinction is worth getting right before you buy. This is after-hours and overflow answering for a firm that already answers its own phone during the day — you keep your receptionist and we cover the hours they do not work. A full legal call center program is a staffed daytime intake desk that also carries existing-client status calls, routine administrative traffic and reception overflow as an ongoing operation, which is a different scope and a different build; that is covered on our <a href="/legal-call-center-services/">legal call center services</a> page. Small firms almost always want this one first, and some grow into the other.
Do you handle Spanish-language intake?
Yes, and for firms doing personal injury, family work or criminal defense in much of the country it is not really optional — a caller who reaches an English-only line simply calls the next firm on the page. Spanish intake is staffed with agents who take the call in Spanish end to end rather than bridging to an interpreter, because a frightened caller repeating an account through a third party usually gives up partway. Tell us your language mix during discovery so it is staffed from day one rather than bolted on later.
What does a legal answering service cost?
It is driven by variables rather than a rate card: the hours you want covered, your call volume and how spiky it is, whether agents run full screened intake or take messages, how deep the training on your case criteria has to go, whether we work inside your practice management system, and whether you need Spanish. Full intake trained on your criteria is a heavier program to run than message-taking, and for firms whose matters are worth pursuing it is usually the part that pays for itself. We quote per firm once those are known.
TESTIMONIALS
Our trusted clients
Global Empire provides reliable 24/7 coverage with live support when it matters most. Their breadth of service, professionalism, and ability to answer calls quickly has made a major difference for our organization. We’re very happy with the partnership and would recommend them confidently.
Wait times no longer exist with the service Global Empire provides. We have cut labor costs dramatically, eliminated overhead from dispatch staffing, and our clients are getting picked up quicker. Spending less while improving service has become the backbone of our business.
We are not only meeting but exceeding our service level objectives. Global Empire resolves many calls without needing a live agent, and the calls that require support are answered quickly and handled faster than before. Their reporting gives us visibility anytime we need it.
We set very challenging service level objectives and insist on those standards being met. At first we were unsure if Global Empire could consistently deliver at that level, but they proved they could. Based on performance and reliability, we know we made the right decision.
Service matters greatly for customer loyalty and experience, and Global Empire provides exactly the professional support required. We’re confident we achieve more value in our contact center because of the strategic partnership and the consistency of their service.
During our recent flood disaster, Global Empire provided messaging services vital to our communications management. Their quick, efficient, and professional response stood out throughout the crisis. In situations like this, service quality is not taken for granted — it’s recognized.
Excellent service — we consistently receive comments about how professional and friendly their agents are. To our customers, it feels seamless and they assume the people answering are part of our in-office team. It has worked out far better than we thought possible.
Global Empire has provided essential call center services for over a decade, responding to medical and non-medical emergencies with accuracy and professionalism. Their commitment to quality and continuous learning is clearly reflected in the service they deliver.
I never realized how much overtime we were paying until we started using Global Empire. We were able to eliminate overtime completely while improving how calls are handled. Now our staff can focus on other important tasks that keep our customers happy.
I wasn’t using all the options Global Empire offered until one of their representatives noticed and reached out. Based on their recommendations, we made several changes that saved money and improved response time. Customers now comment on how efficiently our business runs.
We believe excellent customer service provides the sharpest competitive edge. Global Empire shares that same vision and works closely with us to deliver the best possible service quality. Their partnership supports our ongoing commitment to excellence.
The main reason we work with Global Empire is the ‘red carpet’ treatment. They have the best group of agents I’ve worked with in over 20 years, and they consistently maintain high standards for compliance and customer interactions. They lead by example.
Efficient, professional service with a personal touch. It’s rare to find a provider that consistently delivers both quality and responsiveness at this level.
Over the years I’ve been impressed with the professionally trained staff at Global Empire. Our customers are often anxious or angry, and their team consistently puts them at ease. In two decades, we have never had a customer complaint — which says everything.
As we expanded from Europe into North America, we knew customer service and technical support would be critical to success. We were impressed to learn Global Empire was handling support for a market leader. After working with them, it’s clear why — their service sets the standard.
One of our members struggled with registration and called our toll-free number. The Global Empire agent remained calm, extremely helpful, and professional throughout a long troubleshooting process. Because of that call, the customer remained loyal — and that is a huge asset.
Global Empire is over-delivering on SPH and sales targets. Their performance has helped us reduce acquisition costs significantly, and they have proven to be the missing link in our growth strategy.
I can’t believe we didn’t use Global Empire sooner. Since joining, our order accuracy improved, wait time is virtually gone, and customers receive their orders correctly and on time. This partnership has had a major impact on our national pizza business.
Because of their experience in the energy industry, Global Empire has become a valued marketing partner. Their call center solutions help us acquire customers, retain them, and provide quality service after the sale — 24 hours a day.
Our business relationship with Global Empire has been long and very satisfying. Their employees deserve full credit for the professionalism and consistency they bring to every interaction. I know firsthand how stressful frontline work can be, and their team delivers every time.
Global Empire has been an integral part of our business for years. Our customers expect to speak with someone who can assist immediately, and their team consistently delivers. They maintain professionalism, empathy, and flexibility, making it easy to work together.
With so much outsourcing in the answering services space, it was a relief to find a provider that is truly efficient. The pricing is excellent, onboarding was smooth, and our clients were far happier speaking to a live operator instead of voicemail.
We have partnered with Global Empire for over 15 years and they remain a crucial part of our 24/7 operations. They support multiple sites across states, and we couldn’t be happier with their service, reliability, and long-term consistency.