The forwarded-three-times enquiry
A web form arrives in info@ on Monday evening: 'My father died last month and my brother is refusing to let me see the will, what can I do?' Reception forwards it to private client on Tuesday. Private client think it might be a contentious probate matter and forward it to litigation. Litigation are in court. By Thursday nobody has called, and the enquirer has booked a meeting with another firm.
It is not laziness. Each person who forwarded it thought they were helping. The problem is that nobody owned it from the moment it arrived.
Why enquiries drift
Most firms run several inboxes and a phone line, and the rules for who handles what live in reception's head. People describing a legal problem do not use your department names. A family break-up might involve the house, the business and the children, and the enquiry form gives no clue which team should start.
There is also no shared view. Once an email is forwarded, the person who forwarded it cannot see whether anyone replied. So an enquiry can sit in a fee earner's inbox under forty other emails, and the only person who knows it exists has moved on to the next call.
| Where enquiries arrive | What typically goes wrong |
|---|---|
| Website contact form | Lands in a general inbox, forwarded without an owner |
| Phone calls to reception | Details written on a pad or retyped into an email |
| Direct email to a fee earner | Handled if they are in, lost if they are away |
| Referrals from other professionals | Treated like any other email, no priority |
What slow callbacks lose
People with a legal problem usually contact more than one firm, and many instruct whoever gets back to them first with a clear next step. A slow response is lost work you never see, because the enquirer does not tell you they went elsewhere.
Referrers notice too. An accountant or estate agent who sends you a client and hears that nobody called back for days will send the next one somewhere else.
How we build an enquiry front door
- One intake: web forms, the enquiries inbox and reception's call notes all feed one queue. Reception use a short form for calls instead of an email.
- Practice area suggestion: a language model such as OpenAI's or Anthropic Claude reads the enquiry and suggests the likely practice area and whether more than one team is involved, with a short reason. It does not give the enquirer any advice.
- Routing with an owner: the enquiry goes to that team's queue and is assigned to a named person using rules your firm sets (rota, specialism, capacity). Referral source is recorded.
- Callback tracking: the owner logs the call outcome in one click. Enquiries without a logged contact are highlighted to the team lead, then to reception, on intervals you set.
- Hand-off when needed: if the owner decides it belongs elsewhere, they reassign it inside the queue, and it keeps its history rather than becoming a forwarded email.
- Conversion to a matter: when the enquiry becomes instructions, its details are pushed into your practice management system so nobody retypes them.
Declined enquiries are logged too, with the reason, which helps with referrals and with spotting work you are regularly turning away.
What reception and the partners see
Reception stop forwarding and start assigning. Every enquiry has a named owner from the first hour, and anyone can see its status. Partners get a simple list each morning of enquiries that have not yet had contact, and a monthly picture of where work comes from and how much of it turns into matters.
The person who wrote in on Monday evening gets a call from the right team, not a chain of forwarded emails.
Is this happening at your firm?
- Enquiries arrive in a shared inbox that several people watch.
- Emails are forwarded between departments before anyone calls.
- Reception writes phone enquiries on paper or retypes them.
- Nobody can say how many enquiries last month were never called back.
- Referrers have mentioned that clients they sent were not contacted promptly.