01A chat box that collects the other side's story
A chat box is a free-text field with a friendly face. A booking form asks for a name and a day, while a chat invites the whole story: who the other side is, what happened, what the visitor did themselves. On a law firm's site that includes people on the wrong side of a dispute. Art. 12(2) of the Romanian lawyer's Code of Ethics says a lawyer cannot plead against a party who consulted them beforehand about concrete litigious aspects, and art. 12(3) tells the lawyer to refrain from taking a new client where another client's confidential information is at risk. Picture the other side typing their version into your chat at midnight. Whether a chat message counts as a consultation is for your bar to say, and nobody at PROOF48 can decide it. But a conflict check is a human job, and it works best when the firm has not already collected the facts.
- The first line says it is an AI assistant for the firm's practical questions and asks visitors not to describe the dispute or name the other side
- The area of law comes from a short list of buttons, not from 'tell us what happened'
- Ask the bar whether a chat message can count as a prior consultation (art. 12(2)) before you collect facts in it
- A person runs the conflict check before anyone replies to a new matter
02Stored transcripts: where they live, who reads them, how long
Every chat leaves a record, and the record is where the profession's secrecy duty meets data protection law. The lawyer must make sure staff and anyone else who collaborates in the practice respect the secret (art. 11(8)), and a vendor that hosts the chat handles what visitors type. Which vendor holds the logs, in which country, who on its side and in the firm can open them, and when they are deleted are questions for the firm, its bar and its data protection adviser. GDPR Art. 5(1)(e) says personal data should not be kept in identifiable form longer than necessary for its purpose, so a transcript with no deletion date is a gap. And if visitors do describe criminal matters, Art. 10 of the GDPR sets its own conditions for data about criminal convictions and offences. The general rules on what a firm's assistant may and may not say are in our post on the AI receptionist for law firms.
- Name who may read transcripts, and ask the vendor where they are stored and who on its side can open them (art. 11(8))
- Set a retention period and name the person who deletes transcripts when it ends (GDPR Art. 5(1)(e))
- Decide with your data protection adviser how criminal-matter data in transcripts is handled (GDPR Art. 10)
03What it does well, and what it costs
Take out the story and a useful chatbot remains. It answers facts the firm already knows: practice areas, languages, address, how the first consultation works, what to bring, and which documents the firm never wants by chat. It books the consultation into a calendar set up with the firm and confirms receipt at 22:00, which a form with an auto-reply also does. Advice, fees and the decision to accept a client stay with the lawyer. PROOF48 sells this inside AUTOMATE at 2,997 EUR a month (29,970 EUR billed annually), and AUTOMATE includes every tier below it, so the chatbot does not have its own price. The chat only answers people who are already on your site. It does not bring cases in. To judge it, divide 2,997 by what one new client is worth to your firm over a year, then ask how many new clients the out-of-hours chat would have to produce. We have not measured that for law firms, so log your own enquiries for four weeks first.
- Practice areas, languages, address, first-consultation steps and what to bring, as the firm wrote them
- A consultation booked into the real calendar, with a confirmation of receipt
- AUTOMATE: 2,997 EUR a month for the whole bundle, every tier below included
- Covered: website chat, DM and email auto-responders, booking automation, CRM. Not covered: WhatsApp and phone calls
04Where PROOF48 is the wrong choice for a law firm
We have not built a chatbot for a law firm, and none of our eight published builds is a law firm. Our AI assistant page lists legal advice among the cases that are not a good fit. We do not decide what your bar permits. We read the Code of Ethics as approved by UNBR Decision 268 of 17 June 2017, and your bar has the current text. AUTOMATE is the wrong purchase for a small firm with a few enquiries a week, where a contact form that confirms receipt and a lawyer who replies the same day cost far less. We do not claim it reads case files or your practice-management software, and WhatsApp and phone sit outside the plan. A client area with documents behind a login is a web app, from 5,000 EUR. If you have no website yet, start there: up to about five pages, 500 to 2,500 EUR, built in 48 hours and paid for only after you see the preview.
- No law firm and no chatbot among our eight published builds
- We state no rule on what your bar allows: your bar has the current Code, and a partner approves every answer
- A few enquiries a week: a confirming form and a same-day reply cost less than AUTOMATE
- A client area behind a login is a web app, from 5,000 EUR; no website yet: the 48-hour site comes first
Not a law firm: fixed questions and approved wording on Korean Cosmetics
None of our eight builds is a law firm, and none is a chatbot. The nearest pattern is the five-question skin quiz on Korean Cosmetics (kcosmetics.ro), which matches a visitor to a product line through fixed questions rather than an open box. The same store sells in a category where the wrong sentence is illegal, so every product claim was rewritten across 12 languages for EU cosmetics rules, and one product was pulled from sale for exceeding an EU ingredient limit. That is the habit we would carry into a law firm's chat: fixed questions and approved wording beat an open box. A quiz is not a chatbot, and the store is in pre-launch, so we have no sales or conversion figures to quote for either.
See the build: Korean CosmeticsQuestions, answered
Should the chat ask visitors to describe their legal problem?
We would not. Ask for the area of law from a short list and a way to call back. A free-text story can arrive from the other side of a dispute, and art. 12(2) of the Code shows why a lawyer may not want the facts before checking for conflicts. Your bar can confirm how it applies to a chat.
How long should a firm keep chat transcripts?
Set a period yourself, with your data protection adviser. GDPR Art. 5(1)(e) asks that personal data not be kept in identifiable form longer than necessary for its purpose, so decide the period, who deletes the transcripts, and ask the vendor how deletion works. We name no number because the right one depends on the firm.
Does a criminal matter in a chat change anything?
It can. Art. 10 of the GDPR sets its own conditions for processing data about criminal convictions and offences. That is one more reason to keep intake to fixed choices, and your data protection adviser can tell you what applies to the firm.
Can PROOF48 connect a chatbot to my firm's WhatsApp or phone line?
Not as part of AUTOMATE, which covers website chat, DM, email, booking and CRM. A standalone WhatsApp or voice assistant is a custom build, priced on request, and for a law firm the first step is to check with your bar what it allows.
Where PROOF48 fits
A law firm can put an AI chatbot on its website if it stays narrow, and the data is the part to design first. Keep intake to fixed choices so the other side's story never lands in the chat, let a person run the conflict check, and decide where transcripts live, who reads them and when they are deleted. The bar has the final word on what a chat may do. PROOF48's AUTOMATE plan, at 2,997 EUR a month, covers website chat, DM, email and booking, not WhatsApp or phone, and we say so plainly when a form and a quick reply fit your firm better.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.