Answering services for solicitors: capture the enquiry clearly.

An answering service for solicitors picks up your firm's calls when nobody's free, takes the enquiry and either passes it on as a message or puts the caller through. On published prices, 60 calls a month costs £49 with AI and from £59.40 to £145 with people answering, and the specialist legal teams quote separately.

When a potential client rings, two things matter. They need to know their enquiry has reached the firm. And you need enough to call them back: a name, a number, a line about the matter and any timing they mention. What they shouldn't hear is anything suggesting the firm has already taken the matter on.

Sayora is worth trying for that job: £49 a month for AI answering, unlimited minutes, and a summary for your team by text, email or both after the call. What Sayora can't do is put a caller through to a solicitor mid-call. If some of your calls need that, start with a service that can.

In this guide I'll show you what a useful enquiry looks like, what the human services add and what a month of calls would cost with each. Some providers call their service an answering service for lawyers, which is the same job. Everything here is for UK law firms, with British providers and prices in pounds.

Quick disclosure before we start: we make Sayora, so we're not neutral. Provider details come from their own websites, checked on 2 November 2026. This compares what each service says it does, not how well it handles a call, and the calls and bills below are examples.

Which legal answering service fits your firm's calls?

Here's the short version:

• Sayora, for enquiries your team will call back. One fixed monthly bill, and Sayora takes the details you've asked for. Advice, conflict checks and accepting the work all stay with your firm.
• Pocket Receptionist, for people answering at a published price. Its legal offer includes intake and priority transfers. The published plans cover extended hours, and 24/7 is a separate service.
• The Answer Centre, for a person answering, paid by the call. It's 99p a call with no monthly fee, so it suits a firm with few calls. Ask about VAT and which hours people cover.
• Face For Business, for people only, on plans from £49 a month. It says no AI answers your calls. The starting plan covers core hours and is charged by the second, so price your own month and ask about the 90-day minimum term.
• Answer4u, for a defined on-call escalation route. It describes putting urgent calls through to the right solicitor. Get the whole procedure priced and tested.
• Moneypenny, for a specialist legal reception team. Worth a look when sector experience and connections to your practice systems matter most. Its legal service is priced by quote.

The key is to decide what needs to happen on the call before you compare prices. Taking a message, putting someone through and booking an appointment are three different services, so compare like with like.

How Sayora handles a new enquiry

Sayora answers general questions using the information and instructions you provide, then captures the enquiry. So give Sayora the services your firm offers, your opening hours and the details you'd like each caller to leave. If you include published prices, keep what they cover and any conditions right alongside them.

Let's take an example. Say someone rings about a conveyancing matter. A useful handover tells your fee earner whether they're buying or selling, how to reach them and any timing they mentioned. Your fee earner then assesses it and follows your normal intake process.

Meanwhile, the caller should hear that someone will get back to them in line with your arrangements. They shouldn't hear a promise that you'll act for them, and they shouldn't get advice.

If it works for you, Sayora is £49 a month after the free week, with no setup fee, and you can cancel at any time. Without a card the week includes 100 minutes of calls, so plan the calls you want to try. You keep your existing number, too: you forward calls to Sayora's dedicated UK number using your phone provider's diversion settings.

Now for the important limit. Sayora has no live transfer or staffed fallback, so if a duty or urgent-response line has to reach a solicitor immediately, don't divert it to Sayora. That goes for evenings as well. An after-hours call can be every bit as urgent as a daytime one, and the time on the clock doesn't make a callback good enough.

What the human services add

Pocket Receptionist: a visible price for human intake

Pocket Receptionist's legal service describes qualifying enquiries, booking appointments, priority transfers and connections to Clio, Rocket Matter and LEAP.

Its pricing page lists £75 for 30 calls and £145 for 60, with £2.99 for each extra call, on monthly terms. The plans cover 8am to 8pm. Before you sign, ask about VAT, any transfer charges and the price of the separate 24/7 service. And trial the exact practice-system action you want, rather than assuming the integration covers it.

The Answer Centre: pay per call

The Answer Centre says it has handled calls for legal firms for over 20 years. It answers in your firm's name, then puts the caller through to your mobile or landline or sends a message by email or text.

Its price page lists 99p a call however long the call takes, with no monthly subscription or setup fee, and there's a two-week free trial. That page doesn't mention VAT or answering hours, and it includes an out-of-hours voicemail. So ask which hours a person answers, and what happens to an urgent call outside them.

Face For Business: people only, priced by usage

Face For Business's legal service says UK-based PAs answer in your firm's name, with no AI, and that call handling, appointment booking and escalation can follow your procedures. There's a seven-day free trial.

Its pricing page starts at £49 a month for a Taster plan in core hours, charged by the second. Evening and weekend support starts with Inclusive Minutes, from £115 a month. Those are starting prices, so ask what your actual call length would cost. The page also sets out a 90-day minimum term, then 30 days' notice, so check whether that applies to the plan you want.

Answer4u: a route to the on-call solicitor

Answer4u's legal service describes round-the-clock answering, call scripts and escalation to the right solicitor or on-call contact. It also lists messages by email or SMS and call patching. Pricing is by quote.

Here's a good test for the demonstration: ask what happens when the transfer fails. If the first contact doesn't pick up, who's tried next, and what's the caller told? You're paying for a complete escalation procedure, and dialling a second number is only the start of it.

Moneypenny: a specialist legal team

Moneypenny offers specialist legal receptionists and practice integrations, with standard weekday hours and extended or 24-hour options. You'll need a quote for the legal service, so tell them your hours and which calls need transferring.

One gotcha: its published terms change with the size of the scheme. Schemes of 150 minutes or below have a three-month minimum, then a month's notice, and larger ones need six or twelve months, with three months' notice. So ask for the commitment and notice period alongside the monthly estimate, and check that both your quiet month and your busiest month fit the proposal. For the bigger picture, the Moneypenny comparison explains how its service model differs from Sayora's.

What a month would cost

Let's put some numbers on it. Say your firm takes an illustrative 60 answered calls a month. On Pocket's plans, Growth covers that for £145. Starter looks cheaper at £75, but add 30 extra calls at £2.99 and it comes to £164.70. So the lowest starting fee would actually cost you more. The Answer Centre's 99p comes to £59.40, and below about 50 calls a month it costs less than Sayora's £49.

Sayora's £49 covers unlimited minutes. The pricing pages for Pocket, The Answer Centre and Face For Business don't state their VAT treatment explicitly, so check. Face For Business's £49 is a starting price, so ask what 60 calls of your length would cost. For the two quoted services, give each the same call count, call length, hours and transfer needs so the quotes compare fairly. And ask your own phone provider whether forwarding calls costs anything.

The cost calculator will price selected published human plans at your own volume. Compare specialist legal quotes on the work they include, though, because a cheaper message-taking plan won't do the job of an urgent transfer.

Keep the intake brief small on purpose

If the SRA regulates your firm, you'll know this one already. Paragraph 6.3 of the SRA Code of Conduct requires client affairs to stay confidential unless disclosure is permitted or required. That responsibility doesn't go away when someone else answers your phone.

So ask each provider for its processing agreement, who can see messages and recordings, where they're stored and what happens when the relationship ends. Then keep the intake to what your firm needs to assess the enquiry and call back. Nobody should be encouraging a caller to dictate the full story of a dispute.

For Sayora, the data page sets out the recording position. Every caller hears that the call is recorded, in Sayora's opening words or at the start of Sayora's first reply, and callers can't switch recording off. Recordings are removed from the account automatically after 90 days. Transcripts and summaries follow your account's retention, and backup copies expire separately. Automatic redaction is a safeguard, not a guarantee that nothing sensitive is kept.

Test the easy call and the awkward one

Once you've got a shortlist, give each finalist the same four calls: a new enquiry, an existing client chasing an update, someone asking for advice right now and a question about work you don't do. Pay as much attention to what the caller is told as to the message you receive. No service should turn “please ask someone to call” into a deadline or promise nobody agreed to.

If you need an urgent-response route, test that on-call procedure separately, including a transfer nobody answers. The trial sheet is a handy way to record what happened and who owns the next step.