Lorne & Vale
Construction law · Intake

In construction law, the enquiry arrives with a site that will not wait.

Defective work after practical completion, a contractor who has left site, a payment notice dispute heading for adjudication: the employer writes in the evening, after weeks of chasing that led nowhere. Lorne & Vale captures the enquiry, structures it into a triage brief and puts it on the right lawyer’s desk, with a response target. You keep the decision.

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Paul Fletcherpaul.fletcher@example.invalid
Cracking and water ingress since completionHello, practical completion on our house was certified three years ago. Cracks now run across the front elevation and water has been coming through the roof since the last storms. The contractor has stopped answering my letters. Could you call me back?
Direct e-mail · a weekday eveningThe office is closed
  1. Received
  2. Structured
  3. Routed
  4. Acknowledged
  5. On the iPhone
The Lorne & Vale iPhone app, Today screen: two enquiries waiting on the demonstration firm, the first a family-law enquiry from a fictional prospect scored 8 out of 10, high urgency, with its countdown.

Real platform and app, fictional firm and people. The screens show the sample data available, a family law enquiry; the triage grid is the same in construction law.

A week in a construction law firm

Three situations you will recognise.

Every enquiry arrives with a triage brief: summary, urgency, parties to check, missing information, documents to request. Here is what it would surface.

Saturday, 09:20Website form

Defective work after practical completion

“Practical completion was certified three years ago. Cracks run across the front elevation, water comes through the roof, and the contractor has stopped answering.”

What the brief would surface
Urgency
High. Priority P1, first-response target of 4 hours. Watch points: the defects appear to be worsening, and limitation runs from dates fixed by the contract.
Parties to check
The employer, the contractor, the contract administrator and the insurer, for the conflict check.
Missing information
The date of practical completion and whether the certificate was issued. Whether defects were listed at completion or during the rectification period. Whether an insurer or warranty provider has been notified. Which JCT form and edition the parties used.
Documents to request
The contract and its particulars, the practical completion certificate and any schedule of defects, dated photographs of the damage, and any expert report already obtained.
Thursday, 19:05Missed call

A contractor who has left site

“Nobody has been on site for six weeks. The building is open to the weather and we have already paid about 70% of the contract sum.”

What the brief would surface
Urgency
High. Priority P1, first-response target of 4 hours. Watch points: the works are unprotected, and payments appear to run ahead of the work done.
Parties to check
The employer, the contractor and its subcontractors, the contract administrator and the insurer, for the conflict check.
Missing information
The date the contractor last attended. Sums certified and paid against the work actually done. Whether a notice of default or a termination notice has been served, and by whom. Whether the contractor is in any insolvency process.
Documents to request
The contract and its payment schedule, the payment notices and certificates, invoices and proof of payment, the correspondence and any notices served, and dated photographs of the site.
Sunday, 21:30Forwarded e-mail

A payment notice dispute heading for adjudication

“Our contractor has applied for £180,000 for work we do not think is worth it. They now say they will refer the payment to adjudication.”

What the brief would surface
Urgency
Medium. Priority P2, first-response target of 24 hours. Watch point flagged for the lawyer: if a notice of adjudication has already been served, the timetable is far shorter.
Parties to check
The employer, the contractor and any subcontractor named in the application, and the insurer, for the conflict check.
Missing information
The date of the payment application and the final date for payment. Whether a payment notice or a pay less notice was served, and when. What the contract says about the payment mechanism. Whether a notice of adjudication has been served.
Documents to request
The contract and its payment terms, the application and the payment notices, the certificates and correspondence, and any expert or quantum report relied on.

Illustrative examples, fictional people. What a brief contains depends on the enquiry received. The brief summarises, scores and flags; it does not advise and it decides nothing. Someone at the firm assesses the merits and replies.

Demonstration

A demonstration on a real enquiry.

The demonstration enquiry available is a family law one: Charlotte Bennett, a fictional person, writes to the demonstration firm at 22:47. We show it as it is, rather than dressing it up as a construction file. What matters here is the grid: it is the same from one practice area to the next, and only the headings change.

The triage brief

What the lawyer reads before deciding.

The same grid at 2 pm and at 11 pm. Nothing is decided in their place.

  • A score out of 10, a temperature and a priority, with the score rationale in plain words. On the demonstration screen: 8 out of 10, hot, priority P1, because the situation is described clearly and the request for quick advice is explicit.
  • Practice area, routing and next step. In construction law, the practice area surfaces the kind of defect or dispute and the stage the works have reached; the suggested first contact is the partner on the construction team; the recommended step is a call within one working day.
  • Needs attention and missing information. On a building contract: the date of practical completion, the defects listed at completion, the sums certified against the sums paid, and whether an insurer has already been notified.
  • Documents to request. The contract, the payment notices, the completion certificate, dated photographs and any expert report: the list goes out with the brief, before the first meeting.
  • Counterparties and conflict check. Employer, contractor, insurer: each party is named for your own search, extracted by the model and requiring human verification.

The person’s identifiers are replaced by tokens before any model call. Names are restored only inside your firm’s database.

The triage brief on iPhone: watch points, documents to ask for, missing information and the recommended next step, on the fictional demonstration enquiry, in family law.
Triage brief of a fictional enquiry on the platform: score 8 out of 10, family law, priority P1, recommended next step, score rationale, watch points and parties to check.
On the iPhone

The same brief, in the partner’s pocket.

What is waiting, with its countdown. A suggested reply, marked as a draft. Two buttons: Approve and send, Edit draft.

  • A countdown on the lock screen, if the partner asks for it, and a reminder half an hour before the response target runs out. The reminder names a practice area and a score, never a client.
  • A draft, not a send. The suggested reply only goes out if a lawyer approves or edits it. The only thing that leaves on its own is the acknowledgement, in wording approved at setup.
  • An append-only history: received, triaged and scored, routed to a fee earner, acknowledgement sent. Entries are never edited or removed.
  • Face ID locks the app as soon as it goes to the background.
The triage brief on iPhone: score 8 out of 10, a fictional prospect, family practice area, high urgency, summary, and the Approve and send, Edit draft buttons.
The suggested reply on iPhone, marked as a draft until it is sent, and the append-only timeline of the enquiry: received, triaged and scored, routed to a fee earner, acknowledgement sent.

Real platform and app, fictional firm and people.

What it is worth

A worked example, with its assumptions.

Not a promise: visible arithmetic, to redo with your own numbers.

Assumptions for a firm of 3 to 9 lawyers
£90,000of fees at stake a year, in this example, that is 18 matters
Enquiries received a month, all channels20
Share unanswered, answered too late or never read30%
Conversion of an enquiry handled in time25%
Fees on a construction matter, an assumption to replace with yours£5,000
Annual subscription, Firm tier, list price£11,940
Break-even3 matters a year

20 × 30% × 25% = 1.5 matters a month × 12 = 18 × £5,000 = £90,000 a year

“At stake” means the fees of the matters concerned, not a forecast of instructions or guaranteed revenue. The volume here, and the range this example works from, £3,000 to £10,000 for a construction matter, are assumptions to replace with your own. The setup fee, refundable in full, is left out of the calculation.

What the research measures

67%

of law firms never reply to an enquiry sent by e-mail.

Source: Clio Legal Trends Report, secret-shopper study of 500 law firms, 2024. The figure describes observed response behaviour, not a result to expect from Lorne & Vale.

Security and confidentiality

Enquiries this sensitive, handled as such.

Four controls you can verify, described without superlatives.

Anonymised before any model

Names, e-mails, phone numbers and other identifiers are replaced by tokens before an enquiry reaches a model. The mapping is sealed under the firm’s key.

Isolated per firm

Every client-data table carries a per-firm access rule, checked by automated tests on every change.

Documents sealed in the browser

Every document is encrypted before upload under two key exchanges, X25519 and ML-KEM-1024. Uploads are bounded, type-checked and content-inspected: embedded programs are refused.

Chained, signed audit trail

Sensitive actions are hash-linked and the head of the chain is signed daily with ML-DSA-87. The iPhone app verifies the signature on the device.

What we do not claim: no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, and no external penetration test to date. Hosting on Supabase (EU, Ireland) and Vercel; the model is called through a server-side proxy, with no training on your data under OpenAI’s default policy.

See the security architecture
Pricing

A flat fee for the whole firm.

Construction law is the practice area included. An additional practice area is £250 per month. No per-seat or per-enquiry charge. A one-time setup fee, refundable in full under the No-Miss Guarantee. Prices exclude VAT.

Live in 7 days, a 60-day pilot then month to month, cancel any time, export your data any time. Read the guarantee in full.

Intake audit · 15 minutes

See what this would change in your firm.

Fifteen minutes with a founder. Your channels, your volume, your construction law enquiries. You leave with a costed estimate and a clear answer, including if it is not for you.

Audit my intake · 15 min

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