Playbook, law firm
Out of hours on a law firm site means something has happened
Nobody visits a solicitor's website late at night to check the opening times. They are there because somebody has been arrested, because papers were served this evening, because a hearing is listed for the morning and there is no one representing them, or because a deadline has just occurred to them. The material for this pair is not an hours page. It is a routing decision for four situations that cannot wait until somebody reads an inbox.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for out of hours holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Detention at a police station has a right to legal advice attached to it that operates at any hour, so the correct answer to that message is a number rather than an explanation of office hours.
- Orders and applications can be made urgently and out of hours in most court systems, so a visitor served with something tonight is not being unreasonable in expecting a response before Monday.
- A limitation date has no relationship to a working week, and the one thing the assistant must not do is offer a calming view of how much time is left.
- An enquiry form is a reasonable overnight answer for most trades and an inadequate one here, because the person may be in custody or due in court in twelve hours.
How it arrives
- my son has been arrested who do i ring now
- i have a hearing tomorrow morning and no solicitor
- is there an emergency number out of hours
- i have been served with an injunction this evening
- is the duty solicitor free
- can someone call me before nine tomorrow
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your urgent route, with the hours it is actually staffed | The number, who answers it, what it covers and what it does not. A number nobody picks up at midnight is worse than no number, so publish only the one that is genuinely covered and say what happens outside even that. |
|---|---|
| Police station attendance, written for a relative | That a person in custody has a right to legal advice at any hour, how your firm is contacted for it, and what the free duty arrangement in your jurisdiction covers. The person typing is usually a parent or a partner rather than the detained person. |
| Which urgent work the firm takes, and which it does not | Urgent injunctions, emergency applications, out of hours criminal work, and the areas you do not cover at all. Somebody in trouble at midnight needs to be sent elsewhere in one reply, not kept waiting until morning to be turned down. |
| What happens to an enquiry left overnight | When it is read, when somebody responds, and what to do instead if it cannot wait for that. Only promise what your process delivers, because a promise broken at this moment is the one that turns into a complaint. |
The reply
If someone has been taken into custody, they are entitled to legal advice at any hour, and the quickest route is to ask the custody staff for a solicitor to be called or to ring the number on our urgent contact page [1]. Do not wait for this form. I cannot arrange attendance or tell you what will happen, and this is not a confidential legal channel, so please keep the details for the solicitor. If you would also like us to call you first thing, leave your name and a number and it will be with the team overnight.
The first sentence is the only one that matters at that moment, so it carries the right and the action and nothing else. Telling somebody not to wait for the form contradicts the widget's own instinct, which is exactly right here. The privilege warning is kept to one clause because a long caution at midnight will not be read.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor mentions custody, a police station, a hearing or a deadline within days, or describes documents served on them today.
This should not wait for a message to be read in the morning. Use our urgent contact number, and if you leave your name and a number here as well I will make sure the team has it first thing.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never estimate, confirm or reassure about how long somebody has to act, at any hour and in any wording.
- Never advise anybody in custody or facing questioning about what to say or whether to answer.
- Never promise attendance, a call back time or that a solicitor will be at a hearing, since none of that is within reach of a chat window.
- Never leave an enquiry form as the only route when the message describes custody, a hearing tomorrow or an order served today.
Questions
- Should it publish a number if ours is not staffed all night?
- Publish the truth about your own cover and, where your jurisdiction provides a route to a solicitor at any hour for somebody detained, say that instead of implying you answer at three in the morning. An unanswered number at that moment does real damage.
- Can it tell a caller what to do about a hearing tomorrow?
- No. Whether to attend, what to say and what to file are all advice, and given at midnight by something that cannot see a listing notice they would be dangerous. It gives the urgent route and takes a name and a number.
- Does the overnight enquiry actually reach anybody?
- It goes to the address you nominate and is stored as well, so it survives a failed email. That matters more here than anywhere else on the site, because the message left at midnight is the one with a clock running against it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a law firmFee structures, consultation terms and onboarding checks are answerable. Anything applied to a caller's own facts is legal advice.
- Handling out of hours in generalThe difference between an emergency route and a message form, and why an honest wait time beats a promise you cannot keep.
- Locked out of the client portal, with a document waitingThe assistant cannot reset a login, confirm anybody is a client or say what is waiting inside. It can describe the route and take a name.
- What happens between sending an enquiry and having a solicitorConflict check, identity, the client care letter and money on account. The sequence that has to finish before any work happens on a matter.
- What a law firm can say about cost before anybody is a clientHourly grades, fixed fee ranges and conditional fee terms are publishable. A figure for somebody's own matter is not, and here is the wording.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.