Your firm runs on client conversations. How many can you account for?
Every instruction starts as a conversation. So does every complaint. We make sure yours are answered, captured and billed.
Instructions are rarely lost on advice. They are lost between conversations.
Enquiry arrives
Rings out at ten past six. The caller instructs someone else by nine.
Answered at any hour with matter type and urgency captured.
Intake and triage
Captured differently by every person who takes it.
One intake pattern. Routed and logged automatically.
Matter progresses
Context sits in an inbox or in someone's head.
Conversation history lands in the case management system.
Client update
Client chases. Fee earner stops work to reply.
Drafted from your templates before the client has to ask.
Time recorded
Written from memory on Friday. Forty of ninety minutes billed.
Prompted at the work event. Complete entries. Fewer write offs.
This is a design problem in how conversations enter the firm and where they end up.
Five systems hold one conversation. None of them holds all of it.
This is why a simple question about a client often takes several people to answer.
Phone system
Who rang, but not why.
Case management
The matter, but not the conversation.
Shared inbox
Commitments made by email.
Client portal
What the client saw online.
Time recording
What was billed.
Most firms arrive with the same question. What can we actually automate here?
It is a hard question to answer internally. The work is spread across five systems and no single person sees the whole journey, so the picture has to be assembled before it can be assessed.
Fortay Connect is an independent CX and communications consultancy. We work across the market leading communications and contact platforms, which is what lets us stay outcome focused and technology neutral. Firms bring us in to find where client conversations are being lost, quantify what that is costing, and design the fix on whatever suits the firm.
Most of the value is in finding it. The technology decision comes after.
The Client Conversation Review
Three weeks. We measure where time and enquiries are being lost and what that costs. You keep the findings.
What the review coversTwo law firms that have already done this
They made complex decisions feel manageable.
We thought we just needed to upgrade our phone system. Fortay helped us see we were thinking way too small. Instead of pushing a solution they helped us understand what was possible. Then stuck around to make sure we got real value from it.
- 62%fewer secretarial roles needed
- 100%of client conversations recorded
- 3 to 1systems consolidated
File notes and billable minutes now captured as the work happens.
Four areas where the work shows up in utilisation
Ordered by how quickly the value arrives. Most firms start with the first and stop there for a quarter.
Client acquisition and intake
Intent and matter type and urgency captured the same way every time, whoever takes the call.
- Receptionist and web chat triage covering every hour
- Qualification and routing by matter type
- Consultation booking and confirmations
- Handover notes written into your system
Client experience and matter updates
Clients stop chasing, which is the single biggest driver of complaints against firms.
- Automatic summaries after calls and meetings
- Update emails drafted from approved templates
- Flags when a matter goes quiet
- One conversation timeline per matter
Fee earner time and recording
Post call admin stops landing at the end of the day and time gets entered while the work is fresh.
- Notes become tasks and follow ups without effort
- Time prompted close to the work event
- First pass drafting with guardrails in place
Case management and operations
Partners can finally see volume and responsiveness across teams rather than by anecdote.
- Call detail captured into the case workflow
- Reporting on volume and responsiveness
- Consistent service standards across teams
Residential conveyancing
The most complained about area of law. Update volume is the pressure point.
Wills and probate
Long matters and quiet periods where clients assume nothing is happening.
Family
Sensitive first contact where the handover has to carry context.
Personal injury
High volume intake and third party delay that needs explaining.
Commercial
Fewer matters, higher value, and referrers who expect a fast answer.
Complaints are rising, and most of them are about communication
Defending a complaint about what was said requires a record of what was said.
Source: Legal Ombudsman annual complaints data and insight, 2025/26. Communication and delay together account for almost half of all complaints received.
What the AI never does
- Give legal advice or assess the merits of a matter
- Confirm the firm can act or accept instructions
- Calculate or confirm a limitation date or court deadline
- Quote beyond your published rates or give an undertaking
- Decide a conflict. It captures what your conflict check needs and stops there
What we put in place
- Call recording consent and retention set to your SRA and UK GDPR position
- A written answer on whether your data trains the provider's models
- UK data residency and the certifications checked before shortlist
- Minimal capture before the enquiry reaches a person, to protect privilege
- A timestamped record of every client conversation, so a complaint can be answered with evidence
From discovery to embedded change
We work across the market leading platforms, so the design follows the outcome you need rather than a single product set.
Map the client journey
Your current intake and communication flow and the admin burden across teams.
Find the quick wins
Usually routing and time capture and post call admin.
Design the architecture
Technology neutral and outcome led, so adoption sticks.
Implement and optimise
We do not stop at go live. We embed the behaviours that drive value.
Three ways in, depending on how far along you are
The conversation scorecard
Ten questions on how enquiries reach your firm, what gets recorded, and when time is entered. You get a score, a benchmark against firms of similar size, and the two areas where your firm is losing the most.
- What happens to a call that arrives at seven in the evening
- Where an enquiry is written down before it becomes a matter
- How long after a call a fee earner records the time
- Who can see the full history of a client conversation
The Client Conversation Review
We measure it rather than asking you to describe it. Week one is discovery across your call data and your systems and the people doing intake. Week two is analysis. Week three is the readout to your board.
- Recoverable fee earner time and unrecorded chargeable work quantified in pounds
- A baseline cost for your current communications estate
- A shortlist of routes with indicative costs and what each would change
- A 90 day plan you can execute with us or with anyone else
The fee is credited in full against the first implementation phase if you proceed within 90 days. The findings are yours outright and portable to any provider.
Book a scoping callLegal executive briefing
An afternoon with senior people from other firms working through the same problem. No platform pitch and no obligation to do anything afterwards.
- Where the revenue actually leaks in a mid size firm
- What firms have tried and what failed
- The governance questions that stall these projects
Frequently asked questions
How does this help us win more instructions?
Every enquiry gets a response at any hour with consistent information and a clear next step. Triage captures intent and routes it to the right team without a person needing to be available at the moment of contact.
How do you keep the experience human?
AI handles repeatable admin: capture and triage and summaries and routing. People handle judgement and advice. Escalation rules mean sensitive or high value interactions reach a qualified person quickly with the context already attached.
Will this integrate with our case management software?
In most cases yes. Conversation data can be written into the system your firm already runs. That covers Peppermint CX365, LexisNexis Visualfiles, Access Legal including Proclaim and CaseMatters Evo, Aderant, Thomson Reuters 3E, LEAP and Clio, alongside Microsoft Dynamics 365 and HubSpot.
What varies is the method rather than whether it is possible. Peppermint is built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, so that route runs through Dataverse and Power Automate rather than a separate bridge. Clio and LEAP both expose an API. Older estates sometimes expose nothing usable, in which case we say so early rather than discovering it during a build.
If your system is not on that list the question we ask is what it exposes rather than whose name is on it. Establishing that is part of the review.
Do we need to replace our current tools?
Not always. Many firms improve outcomes by optimising what they already have through better routing and workflow design. A short discovery usually reveals the fastest return without a replacement.
What can a law firm actually automate?
The repeatable work around a conversation rather than the legal work itself. First response and enquiry triage outside office hours. Routing by matter type and urgency. Summaries and file notes after a call. Client update emails drafted from approved templates. Prompts to record time close to the work event. Judgement, advice and anything touching the merits of a matter stay with the fee earner. It is a hard question to answer internally, because the work is spread across several systems, which is what a review establishes.
How is this different from an outsourced answering service?
An answering service takes a message. Intake runs a structured conversation, qualifies it, books the next step and writes the record into your systems. The two are often used together, and which is right depends on your volume and your hours. We compare them properly rather than selling you one.
Your firm runs on client conversations. Come and hear what other firms found.
An afternoon with senior people from mid size firms working through the same problem. Holborn, London on 8 October 2026. No platform pitch.