We rang 46 small law firms after hours. 3 picked up.
On four weekday evenings in October 2026 we placed one test call each to 46 small solicitor firms in England and Wales, between about 6:45pm and 7:35pm. A person answered 3. The other 43 went to voicemail, rang out or did not connect.
Klyp research. Test calls placed 13 to 16 October 2026. No firm, town or number is identified.What happened to 46 evening calls
calls were answered by a person. That is 6.5%.
went to voicemail, a closed-office recording or a menu with nobody behind it.
rang out with no answer and no voicemail.
did not connect at all, so we cannot say what a caller would have heard.
Put another way: 41 of the 46 firms (89%) sent an evening caller to voicemail or let the phone ring out.
How we ran the test
Who we called
SRA-regulated solicitor firms in England and Wales with one to four offices, doing conveyancing and/or wills and probate, each in a different town. We rang the main landline published on each firm's own website, once.
When
Tuesday 13 to Friday 16 October 2026, between roughly 6:45pm and 7:35pm, after every firm's published or usual closing time.
What the call did
An automated AI voice agent placed the calls. It said "Hello?" and waited. If a person answered, it said it was calling for Klyp (now Klyp) to check whether local firms' phones get answered after hours, that nothing was needed, and said goodbye. If asked, it said it was an AI. It asked no questions and took no details.
Voicemail
If a recording picked up, the agent hung up without leaving a message. Our caller ID was shown on every call. Calls lasted between 4 and 42 seconds.
Voicemail is the default after 6:30pm.
Most firms had a recorded greeting. Some were closed-office recordings giving the opening hours; most were ordinary voicemail greetings. Two lines rang out in silence with no greeting at all. Where a person answered, they heard the short explanation and the call ended within about 20 seconds; we did not test how an enquiry would have been handled from there.
3 firms
A person picked up. All three were on the same evening.
39 firms
Closed-office messages, voicemail greetings and the odd phone menu. To a caller they all mean: try again tomorrow.
4 firms
Two rang out with no answer or voicemail, which we count as missed. Two did not connect, and we draw no conclusion about them.
Evening callers have other firms to try.
We do not know how many 7pm callers leave a message and how many ring the next firm. Two independent studies suggest the second group is not small.
of people who used a legal service shopped around before choosing a provider, the highest level the survey has recorded. Among 25 to 34 year olds it was 61%.
Legal Services Consumer Panel, Tracker Survey 2025: How consumers are choosing legal services, July 2025 (3,750 legal services users).wills practices never called back a mystery shopper who had made a new-client enquiry, and only 40% put the caller through at the first attempt.
First4Lawyers white paper (mystery shopping by insight6, 50 wills practices), reported by Legal Futures, 21 September 2023.Those studies looked at daytime behaviour. Ours adds a small piece of evening evidence: for a small firm living on conveyancing or private client work, the hours after 6:30pm are mostly unguarded. That is the gap out-of-hours answering is meant to close, and why we built Klyp for Solicitors.
What this study does not show
It is a small sample
46 firms is enough to describe what we heard, not enough to put a precise figure on the whole profession. The answer rate ranged from 0% to 23% between evenings; a few calls move the result a long way.
One time window, one week
All calls fell between about 6:45pm and 7:35pm on four weekday evenings in one week. No weekends, lunchtimes or later evenings.
The firms were chosen, not sampled at random
We picked firms that met our criteria across different towns. A few may have had more staff than we intended.
The calls were made by an AI, and asked nothing
The agent only checked whether a person picked up. It did not pose as a client or make an enquiry, so this says nothing about how an enquiry would have been handled, or how quickly a voicemail would have been returned the next day.
Outcomes were classified by software
The system decided whether it had reached a person or a recording. We reviewed the call lengths and notes, but a misclassification is possible.
About this study
Will you say which firms you called?
No. The study is anonymised. We do not publish firm names, towns or numbers, and will not share them with anyone.
Were these marketing calls?
No. The agent made no pitch, asked no questions and took no details. It explained what it was doing, showed our caller ID, left no messages and ended every call within a minute.
What does Klyp for Solicitors do about this?
It answers your firm's calls when nobody can, evenings and weekends included, in your firm's name, and tells your team within 60 seconds. It never gives legal advice and says it is an AI if asked. £99 a month, no contract.
Want to know what your own line does at 7pm? Ring the demo line, or book a call and we will run the same test on your number.