Practice areas

The enquiry that arrives three days after a death

Someone's parent has died. They are holding a hospital letter, a bank card they cannot use, and a vague sense that there is paperwork. They do not know whether there is a will, what probate is, or whether they need a solicitor at all. The standard qualification script - what is your matter, what is your budget, when did this arise - is the wrong instrument for this conversation and most firms use it anyway.

The caller does not know the vocabulary, and should not have to

Probate, grant of representation, intestacy, executor, administrator: these are the words the firm thinks in and the words the enquirer does not have. A first contact that asks "are you the executor" gets a guess. Asking instead whether there is a document saying who should deal with things gets an answer, and the answer is usable. Write the first exchange in the enquirer's vocabulary and translate it internally, not the other way round.

Most of what they need to know is publishable

What documents to gather, roughly how long the process runs, what the firm charges for and what the court charges for, whether a small estate needs a solicitor at all. None of this depends on the particular estate and all of it reduces the number of people who book a consultation to ask a question that has a general answer. Publishing it costs a firm the meetings it did not want and keeps the ones it did.

Which questions can wait, and which cannot

Asking a bereaved person for an inventory of assets in the first exchange is both useless and unkind - they do not know yet. Two things do matter early: whether anything is time-critical, such as a property transaction mid-flight or a business that needs running, and whether anyone disputes the position. Everything else can be gathered at a meeting, and saying so explicitly relieves a person who thinks they are already behind.

Tone is a safety feature here, not a nicety

An assistant optimised for brisk qualification will read as indifferent in exactly the enquiry where that is least forgivable, and the firm will never hear why the person did not come back. The requirement is simple to state and worth testing before signing anything: short sentences, no cheerfulness, no upselling, and an immediate route to a person for anyone who asks for one.

Frequently asked questions

Can an assistant tell someone whether they need probate at all?
It can explain the general position - that small estates held in certain ways often do not require a grant - and it must stop there. Whether this estate needs one depends on what is in it and how it is held, which is a legal assessment. The useful output is a clear general explanation plus a short list of what to bring so the question can be answered properly.
What should it ask first?
Whether there is a will, who is dealing with things, and whether anything is urgent. Three questions, in plain words, answerable by someone holding a folder of post. Anything longer at first contact is a form, and a bereaved person will put a form down.
How do we handle an enquiry where the family disagrees?
Recognise it early and route it to a person without discussing it. A contested estate is a different matter type with conflict implications - the firm may be able to act for one party only, and hearing too much from a second caller creates a problem that did not need to exist. The assistant should note that a dispute was mentioned and stop.
Is it appropriate to use an AI assistant for this at all?
For the administrative half, yes, and arguably more appropriate than the alternative: a bereaved person at ten at night wondering what to do next currently gets a voicemail. What must not happen is the assistant handling the matter itself. The measure is whether it gets a person to them faster than silence would.
Can it answer in the language the family actually speaks?
Yes, and in this area it matters more than most. The documents will be in the official language whatever happens, but the explanation of what to do next does not have to be, and a family navigating a bereavement in a second language is the clearest case for answering in the first.

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