The family petition enquiry
A spouse, a parent, a sibling. Long timelines, high emotional weight, and a caller who usually knows more about the process than they are given credit for, because they have been reading about it for years.
Immigration law
The call ends the moment nobody speaks their language
Megan answers your immigration line naturally in the languages your clients actually call in, captures the details your attorneys need, and books consultations around the clock.
Four seconds. That is how long the call lasted.
Look at your phone log for last month and find the very short calls — the ones that lasted four or five seconds, outside business hours. Most firms have a column of them and have never looked at it, because a four-second call does not register as anything at all.
Here is what each one was. Somebody dialled, heard a greeting in a language they do not speak, and hung up. Not at the beep — before it. They never got as far as voicemail, which means there is no message, no callback number, and no record of what they wanted.
This is the thing that makes immigration different from every other practice area in this library. Everywhere else the loss happens at voicemail. Here it happens at the greeting, which is earlier, quieter and far more complete. And it filters your inbound in a specific direction: the callers most likely to be lost at that first sentence are frequently the ones with the most urgent matters and the least ability to shop around.
There is a second thing, and it is why a lot of immigration attorneys take this personally. The alternative to a real immigration lawyer is often not a different lawyer. It is a notario, a consultant, or a cousin who filed something once — and the damage from a filing done badly in this area of law can be permanent in a way that a mishandled contract dispute never is. A firm that answers, in the caller's language, at the hour they can actually call, is doing something protective before it has taken a dollar.
And the clock is not yours. A notice arrives with a response window printed on it, and that window runs whether or not anybody was in the office on Saturday.
The calls
From a ten-year timeline to a matter of hours
Immigration carries a wider range of urgency than any other practice area, and the same number handles all of it.
The employment case
Frequently the employer's HR contact rather than the beneficiary, with a start date driving everything and a completely different set of details worth capturing — the role, the entity, the timeline, who is paying.
The notice with a date printed on it
A request for evidence, an interview notice, a hearing date. The date is the single most important fact on the call and it determines everything about how fast the firm has to move. A message saying only "called about her case" throws it away.
The detention call
A family member ringing because somebody has been taken. Urgent, frightening, usually at night, and the caller typically has a name and very little else.
"Has anything happened yet?"
The status check. Enormous volume, almost no value per call, and every one of them currently interrupts a paralegal who was doing substantive work. This is the largest single time sink on an immigration line.
The caller who has been to a notario
Something has already been filed or paid for and it has gone wrong. What matters is establishing what was actually submitted and when — without alarming somebody further who is already frightened.
The naturalisation enquiry
Planned, straightforward, unhurried. These are the calls that fill a consultation calendar predictably and they are the easiest thing on this list to lose to a recording, because nothing about them is urgent.
The relative calling from abroad
A consular matter, or a family member overseas ringing at a perfectly reasonable hour where they are and three in the morning where you are. They may get one opportunity to make this call.
Your callers are not in your business day, and some are not on your continent
Immigration is the practice area where after-hours coverage is least optional, for two reasons that compound. The first is work: a large share of clients hold hours that do not permit personal calls — early shifts, restaurant work, construction, care work, night cleaning — so the calls come before seven in the morning and after seven in the evening, and on Sundays.
The second is geography. A meaningful part of an immigration practice involves people who are not in your time zone and sometimes not in your hemisphere. A relative calling their family member's attorney from overseas is calling in the middle of their afternoon, which may be the middle of your night, and depending on their circumstances they may get one chance at it.
Then the calls with a clock on them. A notice with a response deadline, an interview letter, a detention — none of those wait for Monday, and a firm that cannot be reached until then has lost two days from a window that was already tight. Unlike a court date, an agency deadline offers no sympathy for a weekend.
What most firms have today is a bilingual receptionist during business hours and, after them, nothing that speaks the caller's language. That is a very specific hole: the practice covers its languages precisely during the hours its clients are least able to call, and covers nothing during the hours they can.
Megan answers in the languages you enable, at any hour, in your firm's name. Which languages those are is the most consequential setting on the account and it should be a decision rather than a default — and the honest way to find out whether it changes your inbound is to watch the four-second calls stop.
The arithmetic, and the part that is not arithmetic
Start with what you can count. You know your fee for a family petition, an employment case, a removal defence, and roughly what proportion of consultations retain. Take the work you want more of.
Then the missed calls — and here they need measuring differently from any other practice area, because the loss is front-loaded to the greeting. A caller who cannot understand the recording hangs up in seconds, which means these do not look like missed calls in a report. They look like very short connected calls. If your log shows a column of four- and five-second calls outside business hours, that column is the number worth looking at, and most firms have never once looked at it.
Multiply, discount hard for enquiries that were never viable, and what remains is the commercial case. For most firms it comfortably exceeds what answering costs, particularly because Megan is billed by the second and a status-check call is ninety seconds.
The part that does not reduce to arithmetic is the one many immigration attorneys weigh most heavily, and it would be dishonest to leave it out of a page about money. A caller who cannot reach a real firm becomes available to somebody who is not a lawyer. Being reachable is, in this practice area specifically, a form of client protection — and what that is worth to you is a judgment to make independently of the fee it produces.
One piece of published research is worth knowing and worth handling carefully. Harvard Business Review's audit of 2,241 U.S. companies found that 23% never responded to an inbound enquiry at all, and that among those which did respond within 30 days the average took 42 hours; a separate study of 1.25 million leads found that contact within an hour was nearly seven times as likely to reach a decision maker as contact an hour later. That work is about web enquiries and outbound follow-up at ordinary businesses. It is not about immigration practices, not about phone answering, and it says nothing at all about callers lost at a greeting — which is your actual problem. Take it as general evidence that responsiveness decides outcomes, and nothing more.
- 23% of 2,241 audited U.S. companies never responded to an inbound enquiry; average response time among those that did was 42 hours; contact within an hour was nearly 7x as likely to reach a decision maker as contact an hour later. Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads,” Harvard Business Review, March 2011
Pay As You Go is $29 a month plus $0.88 for each minute Megan spends on calls, with no included minutes. Professional is $199 a month and includes 500 minutes, then $0.45 a minute. Growth is $499 a month and includes 1,500 minutes, then $0.38 a minute. Enterprise is priced by conversation. Every plan includes the entire product — the plans differ by included minutes only — and calls are billed in real seconds, never rounded up to the next minute.
Example call
An example call
Sunday, 8:10pm. A caller has received a notice and cannot read the deadline on it.
Example call8:10 PM · Sunday
MeganThank you for calling Alcaraz Immigration Law, this is Megan, an AI assistant. How can I help you?
- Caller
I got a letter about my case, I think from immigration. It says something about evidence. I don't want to do the wrong thing.
- Megan
You did the right thing calling. I can't tell you what the letter means, but I can get you to an attorney quickly. Does the letter have a date printed on it, near the top or the bottom — a date you have to respond by?
- Caller
There's one that says the 3rd of next month.
- Megan
That's the important one, thank you. That gives us time, but not a lot. I have Tuesday morning at nine — shall I put you in, and bring the letter with you exactly as it came?
- Caller
Tuesday is good. Yes, I'll bring everything.
Consultation booked for Tuesday 9am, with "notice received, response deadline the 3rd, bringing original documents" in the email — so the deadline is on the attorney's desk Monday morning, not Tuesday.
An illustration of how Megan handles this kind of call, not a recording of one. Her opening line is the disclosure she actually speaks.
How it fits
How it fits an immigration practice
1
The languages are a decision, not a default
Megan speaks naturally in several languages and which ones are enabled is set during onboarding based on the community your firm actually serves — including the second and third languages you might not think to mention. This is the single highest-leverage setting on the account and leaving it to a default wastes most of the reason you would use her.
2
Deadlines get captured as deadlines
When a caller mentions a notice, an interview or a hearing, the date is what Megan is after, and it goes at the top of the summary rather than into the body of a note. A message reading "client called about their case" loses the one fact that determines whether this is urgent, and that is how days disappear from a response window.
3
Status checks stop consuming your paralegals
The routine "has anything happened" call is a large share of an immigration line's volume and almost none of its value. Megan takes those, records who called about which matter, and it reaches the file without interrupting anybody. Clients still get a person who listens rather than a recording — which for a client who has been waiting two years is not a small thing.
4
Detention calls follow the rule you set
For most firms these transfer at any hour, because the caller is a frightened family member with incomplete information and a genuine emergency, and a booking for Thursday is not a response. You define it once rather than deciding at two in the morning.
5
Everything arrives written up in English
Transcript and summary reach your inbox after every call regardless of the language it was conducted in, so an attorney who does not speak it can still read the intake and act on it.
The limits, and why they matter especially here
Megan does not give immigration advice. Not on eligibility, not on what a notice means, not on whether to attend an appointment, not on the consequences of a filing, and not on anything touching status. In a practice area where bad advice from unqualified people is a documented and serious harm, a receptionist who guesses would be part of the problem rather than a defence against it. She says clearly that she cannot advise, and gets the caller to an attorney.
She does not quote fees, evaluate cases, or tell anyone whether they qualify for anything. She does not run conflicts checks, though she collects the names one needs.
And we make no representation that a call handled by Megan is privileged or confidential in the professional sense. Whether this arrangement fits your obligations — around confidentiality, communications with prospective clients, recording, retention, and where data is held — is your firm's judgment, made against your jurisdiction's rules and your carrier's requirements. Immigration firms often have particular concerns about what is recorded and retained given who their clients are, and those concerns are entirely reasonable. We will explain in detail how calls are handled so you can evaluate it, and many firms choose to limit what she collects on a first call to identification, the deadline if there is one, and a consultation slot.
Where a caller describes an emergency — a detention in progress, somebody in danger — Megan's job is not intake. It is to get them to emergency services or to an attorney immediately, according to the rule your firm sets.
Questions
Immigration Law Firms: the questions we get asked
Won't our clients be uncomfortable talking to an AI?
It is a fair concern and the answer has to account for who is calling. Megan says she is an AI assistant in her opening sentence, in the caller's own language, so nobody is deceived — which matters more with a client base that has good reason to be cautious about who they are speaking to and what is being recorded. Then the comparison. For a caller who does not speak English, the alternative at eight on a Sunday evening is not a bilingual receptionist; it is a greeting they cannot understand and a call that ends in four seconds. Being asked, in their own language, what the letter says and when the date is — and being given a Tuesday appointment — is a substantially better experience than the one they are currently having. Where these systems fail people is when they cannot understand a caller and will not hand off, which is why the languages you enable and the transfer rules you set are the settings that actually matter.
Which languages can Megan actually handle?
She speaks naturally in several, and the ones enabled on your account are configured during setup rather than left to a default — because for an immigration practice this is the most consequential setting there is. The right approach is to tell us which languages your community actually calls in, including the second and third ones you might not think to mention because they are a smaller share of your caseload. A caller who reaches a greeting in their own language at nine on a Sunday evening has had a completely different experience of your firm from the one an English-only recording would have given them, and that difference happens before anybody has discussed a case.
Can she tell a caller what their notice means?
No, and this is a limit we take more seriously in immigration than almost anywhere. She does not interpret notices, explain what a request for evidence is asking for, advise on eligibility, or say what happens if someone does or does not respond. What she does is get the one fact that determines urgency — the date printed on the document — and book the caller with an attorney, asking them to bring the paperwork exactly as it arrived rather than a photograph of part of it. Guessing at what a notice means is precisely how serious and sometimes irreversible harm gets done to people in this position.
What happens with a detention call in the middle of the night?
You set the rule, and most firms have these transfer to an attorney at any hour. A family member calling because somebody has been detained usually has incomplete information, is frightened, and is facing a situation where the first day matters a great deal. Booking them for Thursday is not a response to that. Megan takes what details the caller does have — who, when, where if they know it, and a callback number — and gets a person on the line according to whatever your firm has specified.
Will she reduce the status-check calls our paralegals field?
That is usually the first thing firms notice, and it often justifies the whole arrangement on its own. "Has anything happened on my case" is a large share of an immigration line's volume and almost none of its value, and every one of those calls currently interrupts somebody doing substantive work on a different file. Megan takes them, identifies the caller and the matter, and the record reaches the file. The client still gets a person who listens rather than a recording, and your paralegals get their afternoons back.
Is a call handled by Megan confidential?
We make no representation that it is privileged or confidential in the professional sense, and we would be cautious of any vendor who tells you otherwise. Megan answers the line, takes what you have asked her to take and books consultations. Whether that arrangement satisfies your professional obligations — including around what is recorded, what is retained and where it is stored — is a judgment for your firm against your jurisdiction's rules and your carrier's requirements. Immigration practices often have specific and well-founded concerns here given their client base, and we will describe exactly how the system works so the assessment can be a real one rather than a reassurance.
Our clients call from other countries at odd hours. Does that work?
Yes, and it is one of the more practical reasons immigration firms use this. A relative calling from abroad is calling at a sensible hour where they are, which may be three in the morning where you are, and depending on their circumstances they may get one opportunity to make the call. Megan answers it exactly as she answers a two-in-the-afternoon call, takes the details, and books a consultation at a time that works for the person who will actually attend it.
What if a caller has already used a notario or a consultant?
Megan captures what happened without alarming them further: what was filed or paid for, roughly when, and whether they have any paperwork from it. She does not tell them they have been defrauded or characterise what was done — that is an attorney's assessment, and getting it wrong in either direction on a first call is unhelpful and sometimes harmful. What matters is that the facts reach your attorney before the consultation, because what was previously submitted usually determines what can be done next.
Does she text or message clients?
No. Megan works over the phone, and the transcript and summary of every call reach your firm by email. Text messaging is not part of the product yet. Since messaging apps are how a great deal of immigration client communication actually happens, that is a real gap worth weighing before you sign up.
Related
Megan answers for these businesses too
Law Firms
The caller who reaches voicemail does not leave one. They call the next firm on the list.
Read more →Personal Injury
You paid for that click. The caller is on hold for nobody, and the next ad is one tap away.
Read more →Family Law
Your caller is often ringing from a car, on their lunch break, because it is the only place they can talk.
Read more →Estate Planning
They have been meaning to call for four years. Today they finally did.
Read more →Criminal Defense
The call comes at 3am, and it is almost never from the person who needs you.
Read more →Somebody is holding a notice they cannot read tonight.
Pay As You Go is $29 a month plus $0.88 for each minute Megan spends on calls, with no included minutes. Professional is $199 a month and includes 500 minutes, then $0.45 a minute. Growth is $499 a month and includes 1,500 minutes, then $0.38 a minute. Enterprise is priced by conversation. Every plan includes the entire product — the plans differ by included minutes only — and calls are billed in real seconds, never rounded up to the next minute.
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