Lorne & Vale
Immigration law · Intake

In immigration, the enquiry arrives with a deadline already running.

A visa weeks from expiry, an application that has had no decision for months, a hire waiting on work permission: people write in the evening and at the weekend, usually with a date in mind. 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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Nadia Hussainnadia.hussain@example.invalid
Spouse visa expiring in six weeksHello, my visa expires in six weeks and I have not applied for anything yet. I am working, and my employer keeps asking where things stand. Could you call me back?
Website form · 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 immigration law.

A week in an immigration 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, 22:47Website form

A spouse visa expiring in six weeks

Nadia Hussain, a fictional person: “My visa expires in six weeks and I have not applied for anything yet. I am working and I do not want to lose my job.”

What the brief would surface
Urgency
High. Scored 9 out of 10, priority P1, first-response target of 4 hours. Watch point: the expiry date is close.
Parties to check
The spouse named in the message and the employer, for the conflict check. The Home Office is the decision-maker, not an opposing party.
Missing information
The exact expiry date, the route the current permission was granted on, whether an application has already been started online, and whether any dependants are included.
Documents to request
The current visa or eVisa share code and the passport, the marriage certificate and evidence of the relationship, recent payslips and the employment contract, proof of address.
Tuesday, 12:15Forwarded e-mail

A family reunion application with no decision for five months

Amara Okonjo, a fictional person: “We applied for family reunion five months ago for my husband and our two children. We have heard nothing since.”

What the brief would surface
Urgency
Medium. Priority P2, first-response target of 24 hours. The application has been running for months, so the date it was submitted goes to the top of the brief.
Parties to check
The sponsor and the named family members, for the conflict check.
Missing information
The date the application was submitted and its reference, where and when biometrics were given, and whether the Home Office has asked for anything further since.
Documents to request
The application confirmation and reference, the sponsor’s own status document, the family members’ passports and their birth and marriage certificates, and any correspondence received from the Home Office.
Wednesday, 08:05Missed call

A sponsor licence and work permission for an overseas hire

Paul Fletcher, a fictional person, writing for a company: “We are hiring an engineer who lives outside the UK. The start date is January. Where do we begin?”

What the brief would surface
Urgency
Medium. Priority P2, first-response target of 24 hours. Value signal recorded: the enquiry comes from an employer.
Parties to check
The hiring company and the named candidate, for the conflict check.
Missing information
Whether the company already holds a sponsor licence, the candidate’s nationality and country of residence, the job title and salary, and the intended start date.
Documents to request
The offer letter or contract, the candidate’s passport, their qualifications and evidence of experience, and the company’s incorporation and PAYE details.

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 screens below are the product itself, on the demonstration firm’s sample data: a family law enquiry received at 22:47. We do not swap in an arranged screenshot. The reading grid is the same one a spouse visa six weeks from expiry would be read against.

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 enquiry shown: 8 out of 10, hot, priority P1.
  • Practice area, routing and next step. In immigration: the practice area identified, a suggested first contact on the immigration team, and a recommended step such as offering an appointment before the expiry date picked out of the message.
  • Needs attention. On the demonstration screen: children involved, safeguarding. In immigration, an enquiry mentioning a refusal or a removal notice is flagged the same way, with the date on the decision letter picked out, since any challenge is timed from it, and surfaced for your verification.
  • Missing information and documents to request. The expiry date, the route the permission was granted on, the application reference; the current visa or share code, the application confirmation, the evidence of income.
  • Parties and conflict check. The employer, the sponsoring company or the family member concerned are 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 a fictional enquiry from the demonstration data.
Triage brief of a fictional enquiry on the platform: score 8 out of 10, 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, the practice area, high urgency, the 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 36 matters
Enquiries received a month, all channels40
Share unanswered, answered too late or never read30%
Conversion of an enquiry handled in time25%
Fees on an immigration matter, an assumption inside a range of £1,500 to £4,000£2,500
Annual subscription, Firm tier, list price£11,940
Break-even5 matters a year

40 × 30% × 25% = 3 matters a month × 12 = 36 × £2,500 = £90,000 a year

Assumed figures, to replace with your own: the fee range and the volume are examples, not averages measured across firms. “At stake” means the fees of the matters concerned, not a forecast of instructions or guaranteed revenue. 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.

Immigration 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 immigration enquiries. You leave with a costed estimate and a clear answer, including if it is not for you.

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