Frequently asked questions

Verantel interviews the people who reach your law firm. A prospective client tells their story in a chat, in plain language and in their own language. Verantel asks one question at a time until it has what your firm needs. Your firm then receives a structured record of the matter and the full conversation.

No. Verantel is not a lawyer and gives no legal advice. It says so when the interview begins. It gathers the facts, and your attorneys decide what they mean.

Your firm gets a record on its dashboard:

• a short summary of the matter
• the facts, grouped by topic in the order things happened
• each legal matter the facts raise, with its practice area and its state
• the people and organizations involved
• a rating of how well the matter fits your firm's practice areas and criteria
• a list of what an attorney would gather next
• the full transcript of the interview

Each fact links to the messages it comes from. A click takes you to the client's own words in the transcript, with the quoted words marked.

You can print the record or save it as a PDF.

A prospective client can start the interview in English or Spanish. If they switch to another language, the interviewer follows them. Your firm reads the record in English. When the conversation was not in English, the transcript shows each message in its original language beside an English translation.

Your firm chooses the practice areas it handles from this list: aviation, bankruptcy, business, civil rights, consumer protection, criminal defense, elder law, employment, environmental, estate planning, family, general litigation, immigration, intellectual property, landlord-tenant, maritime, military, personal injury, real estate, securities, social security, tax, tribal law, and workers' compensation.

The interview covers whatever the prospective client brings. When a matter falls outside your practice areas, the record still describes it, and it rates the matter's fit with your firm as low.

The interviewer ends an interview early when the person is abusive, will not stay on their own matter, gives an account that cannot be reconciled, or brings something that is not a legal matter. It also ends the interview when the whole matter falls outside your practice areas.

When the interviewer ends an interview for abuse, for refusing to stay on topic, or for an account it cannot reconcile, that person's email address and phone number cannot start another interview with your firm.

Each firm's interviews and records sit in a database of their own, apart from every other firm's. Verantel runs the server that holds them, unless your firm runs its own. To run your own, ask us to turn on self-hosting; the dashboard then gives you an install bundle for your own hardware or cloud account. When your firm runs its own server, prospective clients reach the interview on that server, and their conversations stay there.

Courts have only begun to decide whether a chat with an AI stays confidential. One federal court has already held that chats with a consumer AI tool were not privileged, in part because the tool's terms let the provider read them. Verantel is built so that a prospective client talks to your firm, on your firm's terms, from the first message. Ask your own counsel how the rules in your state apply.

Each firm gets its own web address for the interview, and you can use your firm's own domain instead. Link to it from your website or share it directly. Your firm chooses whether a prospective client starts the interview at once or first confirms their email address through a link Verantel sends. A prospective client who returns can pick up their conversation where they left off.

Request an invitation on the home page. During the private beta, you need an invitation code to create an account. With an account, you can run a demo interview yourself, playing the prospective client, and then read the record your firm would receive.

Verantel is in a private beta, and the beta is free.