Law firm answering services in the UK: options and costs

A law firm answering service is an outside team, or increasingly software, that answers your firm's phone when nobody inside can. It takes the caller's details and reason for calling, then passes a message to the firm. In the UK, published prices for human services start around £15 a month and rise with call volume, and the real difference between providers is what happens after the message is taken.

That last point is the one most comparison pages skip, so this guide is built around it. I will cover the four ways UK firms handle calls they cannot answer, what each costs as published by the providers themselves, the questions worth asking before you sign, and a simple method for working out whether you need cover at all. Every price here was read on the provider's own page on 18 September 2026. Pricing in this market changes often, so check before you rely on any figure.

What does a law firm answering service actually do?

At its simplest, calls to your number divert to the service when your own line is busy, unanswered after a set number of rings, or outside office hours. Someone answers in your firm's name, takes a message and emails or texts it to you. Most providers sell the same core with extras on top: warm transfers to a named person, diary booking, a longer list of questions, and evening and weekend cover.

For a solicitors' practice the service is really doing three jobs, and it is worth separating them because providers are very good at the first and variable at the other two:

• Answering. The phone is picked up, promptly, by something that sounds professional. Almost every provider does this well.
• Capturing. The right details are taken so the enquiry can be acted on without a second call: name, number, matter type, any deadline, how they heard of you. This depends entirely on the questions you give the service.
• Handing over. The message reaches the person who should deal with it, and somebody owns the call back. This is where most of the value leaks, and it is mostly the firm's job rather than the provider's.

If you keep only one idea from this guide, keep that one. An answering service converts a missed call into a message. Whether the message converts into a client is decided inside your firm.

What are the options for answering a law firm's phone?

There are four, and most firms end up using two of them at once.

An in-house receptionist. The best option when the phone is busy all day. They know your fee-earners, your matters and your clients' voices. The limits are hours, holidays, lunch and the moment three lines ring at once. The job itself is broader than it looks, which we cover in what a legal receptionist actually does and, for firms deciding whether to hire one, in legal receptionist vs legal secretary.

A human answering service. Outsourced receptionists in a call centre, answering in your name. They pick up reliably and they are polite. They usually know nothing about law, so they take a message rather than qualify the enquiry. We compare the human and software versions in virtual receptionists for law firms.

An AI answering system. Software that takes every call, takes details, asks set questions and sends a summary. The searcher's phrase is "AI receptionist", and our guide to AI receptionists for law firms explains what they do well and where they fall short. If you are already comparing products, how to choose the best AI receptionist for a law firm sets out a scoring method.

Voicemail. Free, always available, and the most expensive option for most firms, because a person with a legal problem tends to ring the next firm on the list rather than leave a message. We have written about what law firm voicemail loses separately.

How much does a law firm answering service cost in the UK?

Prices as published on each provider's own page on 18 September 2026. These are "from" prices, and the plan a working firm needs is usually higher up the list. VAT treatment varies by provider and is noted where the page states it.

• ReceptionHQ (human): message-taking from £15 a month plus VAT, a receptionist plan with warm transfers from £16, and assistant and diary plans from £30. The legal page advertises 24/7 answering with no after-hours surcharge.
• Connect Communications (human): a Classic plan from £14.99 a month, with prices shown excluding VAT. Diary and Pro tiers are priced on request.
• Face For Business (human): a Taster plan from £49 a month, Message Only from £99 and Inclusive Minutes from £115, with per-second billing. Evening and weekend cover sits in the higher plans.
• Posh Virtual Receptionists (human): plans from £50 a month on a 30-day agreement.
• Moneypenny (human): quote-based. Its own guide to answering service costs gives a market range rather than a rate card and recommends understanding your call pattern before requesting a quote.
• Jodie (AI): £49, £99 and £199 a month on its published tiers, with enterprise pricing from £500, excluding tax.

Two cautions on reading that list. First, the headline price is rarely the bill: human services charge by the call or the minute above an allowance, and a busy Monday can double a month. Second, the cheapest plans usually take three to five details and a message, which is often less than a solicitor needs to decide whether to ring back. We go through the pricing models, and how to estimate your own monthly cost, in how much does an answering service cost a UK law firm.

What do answering services miss for solicitors?

None of this is a criticism of the people answering. They are doing the job they are paid for. The gaps are structural.

• Legal context. A general operator cannot tell a routine conveyancing query from a caller whose tribunal deadline is on Friday unless you have scripted exactly that question.
• Qualification. A message saying "Mrs Ahmed called about a family matter, please call back" leaves the fee-earner to do the first consultation on the call back. Your own intake questions, asked on the first call, save that round trip.
• Ownership. The message goes to a shared inbox. Everybody sees it; nobody owns it. Two days later the caller has instructed someone else.
• Existing clients. Most services treat every call as new. A client ringing for an update gets the same script as a stranger, which feels careless to the person paying you.
• Advice drift. An operator trying to be helpful may say something that sounds like advice. Your script should stop that explicitly.

An answering service converts a missed call into a message. Whether the message converts into a client is decided inside your firm.

Do law firms need 24 hour answering?

It depends on your practice areas and on when your callers actually ring. Crime, immigration and family work get calls in the evening and at weekends because that is when people deal with the letter or the argument. Commercial property rarely does. The honest answer is to measure before you buy, which we explain below, and the options for evenings and weekends are compared in after-hours answering for law firms.

For a sense of the daytime baseline: in the 2024 Clio Legal Trends Report secret-shopper study, only 40 per cent of the 500 firms contacted answered the phone. Those were US firms, so treat it as a signal rather than a UK benchmark, but it is a reminder that the gap is often during office hours, not only after them.

How do I work out whether my firm needs an answering service?

A two-week call audit costs nothing and answers the question better than any sales call. Most business phone systems and mobile networks can export a call log. For two ordinary weeks, count:

• Inbound calls that were not answered, by hour of the day and day of the week.
• How many of those numbers rang back on their own, and how many never did.
• How many unanswered numbers were new rather than existing clients or suppliers.
• How long it took, on average, for somebody at the firm to return a missed call.

Then do the arithmetic for your own firm. As a purely hypothetical example: a firm misses 30 calls a fortnight from new numbers, 10 of which never ring back. If one in five of those would have become a matter and the average matter is worth £2,000 in fees, the fortnight's loss is roughly £4,000. Those numbers are invented to show the method, not a benchmark. Put your own in, and compare the result with the published price of the cover that would have caught those calls. Our guide to law firm missed calls goes further on reading the log.

What should an answering service script say?

Whoever answers, the script is yours to write, and it is the single biggest lever on quality. It should state the firm's name, identify who is speaking (and, if it is software, say so), capture the caller's details and the reason for calling, ask two or three qualifying questions that matter to your practice areas, never offer an opinion on the caller's legal position, and set an honest expectation about the call back. We have written a full, adaptable call handling script for law firms, including the lines that stop an operator straying into advice.

Should an answering service record our calls?

Many services record by default, and a recording can settle a dispute about what a caller was told. It is also personal data, often sensitive, and it has to be handled as such. The ICO's guidance on the right to be informed says people must be told about the processing at the time their data is collected. How that applies to your firm is a question for your DPO or COLP, and we set out the published guidance and the operational trade-offs in should law firms record client calls.

What should I ask an answering service before signing?

• Can I see the exact message format you will send, for a call like the ones we get?
• Will your operators ask my own qualifying questions, and how many can I add before the price changes?
• How are calls billed: per call, per minute, rounded or to the second? What happens above the allowance?
• Are evenings, weekends and bank holidays included, or an add-on?
• Do you record calls, how long are recordings kept, and can I change that period?
• How do you handle a caller who is distressed or at risk?
• What is the notice period, and is there a setup fee?

If you are looking at software rather than a staffed service, our existing list of nine questions to ask before buying an AI receptionist goes deeper on disclosure, safety and data.

Where does WasilX fit?

We are not an answering service, and the distinction is explained in a client record vs an answering service. Cam, our AI Engagement Coordinator, takes calls on the firm's line at any hour, says it is AI, asks the firm's own qualifying questions, books the call back and sends the firm a summary. Separately, each fee-earner can have a personal assistant that covers their calls while they are in court and drafts matter updates for the fee-earner to approve. If you want to see whether that fits your firm, we are happy to talk it through.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a legal answering service cost per month in the UK? Published starting prices on providers' own pages on 18 September 2026 ranged from about £15 a month for basic message-taking to over £100 for plans with evening cover and more minutes. Most bills depend on call volume, so estimate your own calls before comparing. Prices change often.

Can an answering service give legal advice? No, and a good script should stop the operator from trying. Operators at a general answering service are not lawyers. Their job is to take details, ask your set questions and pass the enquiry to a fee-earner who can advise.

Is an answering service better than voicemail for a law firm? For most firms, yes. Many callers with a legal problem will not leave a voicemail and will ring another firm. An answering service at least captures their details, although the call back still has to happen promptly.

Do answering services cover evenings and weekends? Most offer it. Some include it in every plan, others charge extra or only include it on higher tiers. Check the provider's own pricing page and ask how bank holidays are handled.

What is the difference between an answering service and an AI receptionist? A human answering service uses people in a call centre to answer in your name. An AI receptionist is software that answers, asks set questions and sends a summary. Many firms judge both on the same test: what the firm receives after the call and who acts on it.