Phone systems for law firms, staged like a matter.
Every matter moves through the same three phases on the phone: the intake call that wins or loses the retainer, months of active-matter communication where responsiveness is the client experience, and the recording question that is really a state-law question. SIPNEX builds phone systems for law firms around that lifecycle — from an FCC-licensed carrier, priced per extension with everything included.
The retainer is decided on the first ring.
A prospective client with a legal problem calls down a list, and the first firm that answers like it wants the work usually gets it. Intake is also where the firm's gatekeeping starts: the call should land with trained staff who capture the caller, the adverse parties, and the matter type — so a conflict check happens before an attorney ever gets on the line, not after. The phone system's job is to make that sequence automatic.
First-ring answering, every business hour
An attendant that answers instantly and offers callers a path — new matter, existing matter, billing — so intake never competes with a busy signal or a sixth ring.
Routing by practice area
Family, injury, estate, business: intake prompts route the caller to the right team's ring group the first time, instead of a receptionist relaying half a story.
Intake before attorneys, by design
New-matter calls land with intake staff who log parties and matter type for the conflict check — a routing rule, so the discipline holds even on the busiest afternoon.
Overflow that fails toward a human
When intake is on another call, overflow rings a second group or an answering service — because a voicemail greeting is where prospective clients hang up and dial the next firm.
For the life of the matter, the phone is the client experience.
Once retained, clients judge the firm by one metric: can I reach my lawyer, and do they call me back? Direct extensions give every attorney and paralegal a number clients can actually dial — and because an extension is an identity rather than a desk, the same extension rings whether counsel is at the office, at home, or waiting on a docket call, always presenting the firm's number instead of a personal cell. Voicemail-to-email turns missed calls into a queue that gets worked instead of a light that blinks, and two-way texting on the firm's own number handles the scheduling logistics that never needed a call. It runs on the SIPNEX cloud PBX — every feature included per extension, so callback discipline is a management habit, not a licensing tier.
Recording is a state-law question before it is a feature.
Call recording earns its keep in a firm — fee agreements confirmed, instructions documented — but consent to record is governed by state law, and several states require every party's consent rather than one party's. Our guide to two-party consent states for call recording maps which rule applies where. On a SIPNEX system, recording is a deployment choice you make deliberately — enabled per line or per call type, or not at all — never a default someone discovers later. And because recorded calls are stored client communications, where they live and who can retrieve them belongs in the same conversation. How recording interacts with your jurisdiction's rules of professional conduct is a question for the firm's ethics counsel; we build the configuration you decide on.
What the carrier layer can promise about privileged calls.
No phone company should hand-wave about privilege, so here is the honest version. In transit, SIPNEX supports TLS encryption for SIP signaling and SRTP for the voice media itself, and trunk access is locked to authenticated sources — the measures in our VoIP security guide, applied by default rather than sold as an add-on. Structurally, a carrier's role in a plain phone call is carriage: we connect it, we do not store or mine its content. And on identity, SIPNEX is an FCC-licensed carrier signing its own calls at A-level attestation under STIR/SHAKEN — so when the firm's number appears on a client's phone, the carrier vouching for it is the one that actually carries your calls.
Firm phone questions, answered.
What makes phone systems for law firms different from generic business phones?
Can attorneys keep their direct extension in court or working from home?
Does call recording on attorney calls create consent problems?
Can clients text the firm's main office number?
How is client confidentiality protected on VoIP calls?
What do phone systems for law firms cost per user?
One conversation, from intake to closed file.
Tell us your attorney and staff headcount, your offices, and how intake should route. You get a per-extension quote the same day, and your existing numbers port without clients noticing the cutover.