Lorne & Vale
Employment law · Intake

In employment law, the enquiry arrives with a clock already running.

A contested dismissal, a settlement agreement handed over at a meeting, bullying reported while signed off sick: people write the evening the letter lands, or on a Sunday. 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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Thomas Walkerthomas.walker@example.invalid
Dismissed after raising a grievance about unpaid overtimeHello, I received my dismissal letter today, a few weeks after I raised a grievance about unpaid overtime. I do not know how long I have to do something about it. 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 fictional firm, the first a family-law enquiry from a fictional prospect scored 8 out of 10, high urgency, past its response target.

Real platform and app, fictional firm and people. The iPhone screen shows the sample data available, a family law enquiry; the enquiry above is a further example and the reading grid is the same in employment law.

A week in an employment 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.

Thursday, 20:25Website form

Unfair dismissal, letter received the same morning

“My dismissal letter arrived this morning and I do not accept the reasons given. How long do I have to bring a tribunal claim?”

What the brief would surface
Urgency
High. Priority P1, first-response target of 4 hours. Watch point: a tribunal time limit is already running. Unfair dismissal claims in England and Wales are normally brought within three months less one day of the effective date of termination, and ACAS early conciliation has to be started before a claim can be issued.
Parties to check
The employer, its registered name and its group, for the conflict check.
Missing information
The effective date of termination, which sets the clock running. Length of continuous service, and whether ACAS early conciliation has been started.
Documents to request
The dismissal letter, the invitation to the disciplinary meeting and its outcome, the contract of employment and any variations, recent payslips.
Tuesday, 12:40Forwarded e-mail

A settlement agreement offered on the day

“I was called into a meeting this morning and handed a settlement agreement. They would like it signed by Friday and I have not read anything like it before.”

What the brief would surface
Urgency
Medium. Priority P2, first-response target of 24 hours. Watch point: the employer has named a signing date, and the agreement needs advice from an independent adviser before it binds.
Parties to check
The employer, for the conflict check. Watch point: does the firm already act for this company?
Missing information
Length of service, salary and notice terms, the sum offered and whether the employer will pay a contribution towards the adviser’s fees, and whether a grievance or a disciplinary process is already under way.
Documents to request
The draft agreement and any covering letter, the contract of employment, the three most recent payslips, correspondence about the meeting.
Sunday, 22:15Missed call

Bullying reported to occupational health, signed off sick

“I reported what has been happening to occupational health. I have been signed off for three weeks and I no longer know who to turn to.”

What the brief would surface
Urgency
High. Priority P1, first-response target of 4 hours. Watch points: the person’s health, a current period of sickness absence.
Parties to check
The employer and the person complained about, for the conflict check. Watch point: the report went to occupational health, which may sit outside the employer’s own grievance procedure.
Missing information
Was the report put in writing? Has a formal grievance been raised under the employer’s procedure? Is a return-to-work or occupational health review already arranged?
Documents to request
The fit notes, the occupational health reports and letters, written exchanges with the employer and with HR, statements from colleagues.

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, confirms the dates and replies.

Demonstration

A demonstration on a real enquiry.

The demonstration runs on the sample firm’s dataset: a fictional family law enquiry received at 22:47 and structured within the minute. The screens are real, and the grid is the same for an unfair dismissal claim; only what sits under each heading changes from one practice area to the next.

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 rationale in plain words. On screen: 8 out of 10, hot, priority P1, that is a first response targeted within 4 hours. In the same dataset, the enquiry from Thomas Walker, dismissed after raising a grievance about unpaid overtime, is scored 9 out of 10.
  • Practice area, routing and next step. In employment: unfair dismissal; suggested first contact, the partner on the employment team; recommended step, a call within one working day.
  • Needs attention. The watch points depend on the enquiry: a tribunal time limit already running, a current period of sickness absence, a grievance raised shortly before the dismissal.
  • Missing information and documents to request. The effective date of termination, length of continuous service, whether ACAS early conciliation has been started; the dismissal letter, the invitation to the disciplinary meeting, the contract of employment, recent payslips.
  • Counterparty and conflict check. The employer is named for your own search, extracted by the model and requiring human verification. Useful when the firm also acts for businesses.

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 a fictional family-law enquiry.
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
£135,000of fees at stake a year, in this example, that is 27 matters
Enquiries received a month, all channels30
Share unanswered, answered too late or never read30%
Conversion of an enquiry handled in time25%
Fees on an employment matter, a cautious figure from a range of £3,000 to £8,000£5,000
Annual subscription, Firm tier, list price£11,940
Break-even3 matters a year

30 × 30% × 25% = 2.25 matters a month × 12 = 27 × £5,000 = £135,000 a year

“At stake” means the fees of the matters concerned, not a forecast of instructions or guaranteed revenue. The fee range is a working assumption; put your own figure in its place. 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 personal, 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.

Employment 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.

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