What does a virtual receptionist cost a law firm?

A law firm pays for reception in one of three ways: wages for an in-house receptionist, a human answering service billed per call or by monthly allowance, or an AI voice agent on a flat monthly plan. Yes AI’s Starter plan is $299 per month plus $499 setup, ex GST, with 500 minutes.

The three options at a glance

Price per month is the obvious number to compare. The more useful number is the cost of each new-matter enquiry that actually reaches a solicitor, and that depends on how many calls the firm misses today. The last two sections of this page show how to work that out.

What does an in-house receptionist cost?

For most private law firms the starting point is the Legal Services Award. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s summary of the award says it covers employers in the legal services industry and their clerical and administrative employees. The classification schedule in the award lists responding to incoming telephone calls among the Level 2 skills. The current minimum hourly and weekly rates are in the Legal Services Award pay guide, which you can download from the Fair Work pay guides page. Plenty of firms pay above the award, so use your own payroll figure if you have one.

The wage is only part of the cost. Add these before comparing:

• Superannuation guarantee contributions and any payroll tax your firm pays.
• Annual leave, personal leave and public holidays, during which somebody else answers the phones.
• Recruitment, and the weeks a new starter spends learning your intake questions, conflict process and confidentiality rules.
• A desk, a computer, a phone handset and software licences.
• Calls before opening, at lunch and after 5pm, which a receptionist on standard hours does not take.

A good receptionist also greets clients, organises signing appointments, runs the meeting rooms and keeps the front office in order. An AI agent replaces none of that. The fair comparison is the part of the role spent on the phone, or the calls that currently go unanswered.

How do legal answering services charge?

Human answering services in Australia usually price in one of two ways: a fee for each call handled, or a monthly package that includes a set number of calls and charges for each call above it. Some add a loading for nights, weekends or public holidays, some charge a setup fee and some ask for a minimum term. Services that specialise in law firms train their operators in legal intake and confidentiality, and you pay for that training in the rate.

Ask every provider the same five questions so the quotes can be compared:

1. Is billing per call, per minute or per package, and does a hang-up, wrong number or sales call count as a billable call?
2. Are evenings, weekends and public holidays included, or priced separately?
3. Where do the operators work, and which of their staff can read your messages?
4. Can an operator put an urgent caller through to a nominated solicitor, and what does the caller hear if that solicitor does not pick up?
5. What confidentiality terms will the provider sign, and will it let you check how messages are stored and deleted?

What Yes AI charges

Yes AI publishes its prices on the Yes AI pricing page. Every plan is quoted in Australian dollars, excludes GST and runs month to month, and cancelling needs 30 days notice.

Yes AI counts a minute as connected talk time on a call its agent handles. Calls that ring out cost nothing, and when the agent passes a caller to your staff the count stops at the transfer. Use beyond the allowance is charged per minute at the rate for your plan.

How many minutes does a small firm use?

Count your calls before you choose a plan. As a worked example, a firm whose AI agent handles 12 calls each business day at an average of 3 minutes uses about 36 minutes a day, or roughly 790 minutes across 22 business days. That is more than the Starter allowance and well inside Professional. A firm that only sends calls to the agent after hours, or when the front desk is busy, will use far fewer.

New-matter enquiries take longer than calls from existing clients, because the agent collects the matter type, the other parties’ names, key dates and contact details. The test calls you make during setup give a realistic average for your own call mix.

What drives the cost up or down?

• Call volume and length. Minutes are the main variable on every Yes AI plan.
• Hours covered. Business hours only, nights and weekends, or 24 hours.
• Where the messages go. An email summary is the simplest. Writing intake data into your practice management or CRM system, through its API where it has one, takes more setup.
• Number of call flows. A firm with separate family law, criminal and conveyancing lines needs its own questions and urgent rules for each.
• Recording and transcripts. These are part of the Custom plan, not Starter or Professional.

What should a firm count before deciding?

Reception costs only make sense next to the cost of the calls you miss. Pull these numbers for the last 4 weeks from your phone system and inbox:

1. Calls that rang out or were abandoned during business hours.
2. Calls that came in after hours, at weekends and on public holidays.
3. Voicemails that were not returned by the end of the next business day.
4. New-matter enquiries that arrived by phone, and how many became engaged clients.
5. Hours that solicitors spent taking general calls instead of doing billable work.

Multiply the missed new-matter calls by your own conversion rate and average fee for that practice area. The result is a monthly figure to set against each of the three options. Yes AI does not publish conversion figures for law firms, so use your firm’s numbers.

Costs that do not appear on any invoice

Whichever option you pick, set aside staff time for four jobs. Someone has to write the call rules, including who is rung about a client in custody and who handles a family violence enquiry. Someone has to read the messages closely for the first few weeks. The privacy policy and the notice callers hear need updating, which is explained in Privacy Act duties when a law firm uses AI. And the change belongs in your firm’s AI policy; the AI use policy checklist lists what to record.

For a comparison of quality as well as price, read AI receptionist vs a legal answering service. To see how the agent treats each kind of call, go to the AI receptionist for law firms page, or book a demo and get a quote built on your own call numbers.