AI phone assistant for criminal defence solicitors
The call that matters most comes from a custody suite at night. Tel-Agent asks whether somebody is detained and reaches a duty solicitor.
- In custody now
- Which station
- Duty solicitor
Why a criminal defence phone must be answered at night
The calls that matter most on a defence line come from a custody suite or from a relative who has just heard, and they come at three in the morning. There is a clock running from the moment of arrest, and a phone that rings out is a client who ends up with whoever the station rings next.
How the AI receptionist handles a custody call
It answers immediately and takes a callback number before anything else.
It asks whether somebody is in custody right now.
On a yes, it takes the station, the name and the date of birth - and reaches a person. Nothing else is collected.
If an interview time is already known, it takes that too.
For anything that is not a custody call, it takes the matter type and a callback and stops.
What the agent is told to ask
Written by you, in your own words, as the assistant’s instructions.
What a criminal defence phone assistant must never do
What it does
- Answers at any hour, within seconds
- Establishes custody status as the first question
- Takes the station, the name and the date of birth
- Reaches the duty solicitor rather than taking a message
- Keeps everything on the firm's own machine
What it never does
- Ask what happened or what somebody is accused of
- Advise anybody to answer or not answer questions
- Say what will happen at interview or in court
- Take an account from a detained person
- Send anything a caller said to a third-party server
Questions
What is the first question on a defence line?
Whether somebody is in custody right now. On a yes the assistant collects only the station, the name and the date of birth, and reaches a person - the clock is running and nothing else is worth the seconds.
Should it ask what happened?
Never. An account given to an assistant is an account given to a machine and stored, and it is precisely what a defence solicitor does not want said before they are in the room.
Can it advise on whether to answer questions?
Absolutely not. That is the single most consequential piece of advice in the whole area of law, and it belongs to a solicitor who is present.
Does it work for calls from the police station itself?
Who is calling is asked, because a station ringing to arrange representation is a different call from a frightened relative. Both reach a person; the note differs.
What about non-urgent criminal enquiries?
They are taken as a matter type and a callback, and nothing more. They wait; custody does not.
Does the EU AI Act allow an AI to answer a call from custody?
Yes, under Article 50 of Regulation 2024/1689, which asks that the caller be told they are speaking to a machine - that line belongs in the greeting you configure. Nothing about this work falls under Annex III, the list of high-risk uses. The distinction the Act draws is between assisting and deciding, and this agent assists: it never gives legal advice or runs a conflict check. Austria's KI-Servicestelle at RTR publishes the same reading of the transparency duty.
Who is the data controller for what a caller to a criminal defence firm says on the phone?
You are. A call from custody is material that is usually privileged from the first sentence of the call, and Tel-Agent is self-hosted with your own model keys, so the recording, the transcript and the record it writes stay on your server and never reach Dpro GmbH. There is no processor agreement to sign with us because we never receive the data, and the source is AGPL-3.0, so you can check that rather than take our word for it.
Can a criminal defence firm run this in the United States?
There is no single federal AI statute to comply with, but a phone line carries older rules. US state bar rules on confidentiality reach any vendor that can hear a client call, which is an argument for having no vendor at all. Consent to record is set state by state, and California and Illinois among others want every party to agree. Running the software yourself makes you the caller of record, so the disclosure and the recording switch are yours to set.
Not usable yet. The day it answers a real call will be a release, not a newsletter.
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