Virtual receptionists and remote legal admin for Australian law firms, honestly compared
12 answering services, AI receptionists and legal secretarial providers for small Australian law firms compared on published price, location and terms.
We run one of the services on this list. DotVA places offshore VAs, and if all you need is overflow calls answered, a per-call service costs a fraction of what we do. That is the most useful thing we can tell you, so it comes first.
The method is the same as our comparison of Australian VA agencies. Every claim about another provider comes from its own website, checked on 11 November 2026 and linked in the table. Where a figure is not published we write “not stated publicly” rather than guess. The dedicated, one-person options below are all offshore. The Australian-based alternative we found is a secretarial bureau that bills by the hour.
The services at a glance
| Service | What it is | Published price | Where the team is | Legal software named | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DotVA legal virtual receptionist (that’s us) | One dedicated VA for reception, dictation typing and matter admin | $12-17/hr admin, $18-25/hr specialist, AUD ex GST, from 10 hrs/week | Philippines, working Australian business hours | LEAP, Smokeball, Actionstep, Clio, PracticeEvolve | No lock-in contract; stop any time in the first 14 days, then 30 days’ notice; free replacement any time |
| OfficeHQ | Per-call answering | $25 a month plus $2.65 a call for messages; $35 a month plus $3.40 a call on its MyReceptionist plan, ex GST | Majority in Australia, with overseas overflow | Clio shown among its integrations | No minimum term; three days’ notice before the renewal date; 7-day free trial |
| Your Phones Covered | Per-call answering, untimed calls | Per week ex GST on its Australian-team Essential tier: 25 calls a month $23; 55 calls a month $49; extra calls $4.90 | Essential in Australia during standard hours; Value plan and after-hours calls in the Philippines | Not stated publicly | Pricing page: “no lock-in contracts”. Terms: minimum engagement two months; notice to the end of the plan period or 28 days, whichever is longer |
| Staff Domain | Dedicated offshore legal secretary or paralegal; it describes its staff as full-time, dedicated employees; it says it serves mid-market companies and is not the right fit if “You need fewer than three people” | Legal secretary $2,279-4,312 a month AUD by seniority; paralegal $2,400-4,400 (GST basis not stated); its offshore staffing page also advertises “from $799 per person per month (WFH) or $1,099 per month (office-based)” and does not explain how the two relate | Philippines | LEAP, Smokeball, Actionstep, FilePro, Affinity, LawMaster, SILQ | Notice not stated on the pages we read |
| Outsourced | Dedicated offshore legal staff, full-time | Not stated publicly: salary plus a fixed monthly service fee, with a setup fee and one-month deposit | Philippines | Not stated publicly | Month to month; 12-month replacement guarantee; 30 days’ notice |
| Kinetic Staff | Dedicated offshore legal support staff | Indicative only: legal assistants AUD 26,700-38,400 a year | Philippines; Brisbane office | Clio, LEAP, Actionstep, Practice Evolve, Smokeball, SILQ | Not stated publicly |
| Pacific Legal Solutions | Paralegals, virtual assistants and admin staff for law firms | Not stated publicly | Gold Coast company; team in Fiji, India and the Philippines | Not stated publicly | ”No long term contracts” |
| OutScribe | Australian legal secretarial bureau, by the hour | $60/hr + GST for correspondence and document preparation; $66/hr + GST for filing into LEAP or Affinity | South Australia; “All work is completed by Australian residents” | LEAP, Affinity | Not stated on the pages we read |
| Waboom AI | AI receptionist with a law firm intake product | A$500 starting credit plus A$130 a month, then 95c down to 71c a minute, ex GST | AI, 24/7; Auckland company | Actionstep, LEAP, Smokeball, Clio, MyCase | 30-day money-back guarantee |
Checked on each provider’s own pages on 11 November 2026. “Not stated publicly” means we could not find the figure on the provider’s public pages; it is an observation, not a criticism.
Three more are worth knowing about. OracleCMS answers 24 hours a day and quotes case by case; its legal answering page says all its receptionists are based in Australia. Cloudstaff places offshore staff at a monthly rate per person and quotes through its online tool. Trillet sells an AI receptionist app called Juney, with a lawyers page, priced in US dollars from US$49 a month.
Our row in full is on pricing. If a 30-minute call beats ten tabs, book a discovery call, and if another row fits your firm better we will tell you on the call.
Four products, one search term
- A per-call answering service (OfficeHQ, Your Phones Covered, OracleCMS). A shared team answers in your firm’s name, takes the caller’s details and sends a message or transfers the call. Cheap and fast to start. The entry plans take a message or transfer; OfficeHQ and Your Phones Covered also sell appointment booking at a higher price. Our comparison of virtual receptionist services covers the plans in detail.
- An AI intake receptionist (Waboom AI, Trillet). Software that answers calls around the clock and asks your intake questions; Waboom also books an intake meeting. Waboom’s law firm page says its AI tells callers it cannot give legal advice.
- A secretarial bureau, billed by the hour (OutScribe). Australian residents who type correspondence and documents and file into LEAP or Affinity under a login you assign. You are charged only for the time used, with no weekly hours to carry. Its pages do not say whether the same secretary handles your work each time.
- A dedicated remote legal secretary or VA (DotVA, Staff Domain, Outsourced, Kinetic Staff, Pacific Legal Solutions). One person who answers the phone and also does the work around the legal work: dictation typed into letters and file notes, documents formatted to your precedents, briefs assembled, time entries chased, bills prepared, debtors followed up, all inside your practice management system.
What the options cost
Where we have multiplied, that is our arithmetic, not the provider’s figure.
| Option | Published price | What that buys |
|---|---|---|
| DotVA, part-time | $12-25/hr ex GST | 15 hours a week for about $780-1,625 a month |
| DotVA, full-time | $12-25/hr ex GST | 40 hours a week for about $2,078-4,330 a month |
| Staff Domain | $2,279-4,312 a month | A dedicated legal secretary, by seniority |
| OutScribe | $60-66/hr + GST | Billed by the timer for time worked; 15 billed hours a week would be about $3,900-4,290 a month + GST |
| Kinetic Staff | AUD 26,700-38,400 a year, indicative | A legal assistant, about $2,225-3,200 a month on its indicative annual rates (hours and inclusions not stated) |
| OfficeHQ MyReceptionist 100, for comparison | $370 a month ex GST | 100 answered calls with messages; call transfers are listed as an add-on |
For a full-time role our price sits in the same band as the offshore staffing providers. Where we differ is part-time: we place from 10 hours a week, with a $500 deposit that is credited to your first invoice.
Confidentiality, supervision and the conduct rules
Start here rather than with price. This is general information, not legal advice.
Confidentiality. Rule 9 of the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules prohibits disclosing a client’s confidential information except to people within the rule, which include a person engaged by the law practice for the purposes of delivering or administering legal services in relation to the client, or as the client expressly or impliedly authorises. Whether an outsourced assistant falls within the first category is for you to judge. The Law Council’s commentary on technology and outsourcing notes that law societies and regulators publish guidance on these risks, covering issues such as: the inability to contract out of or delegate professional obligations to a third party; the importance of informed client consent to outsourced services that handle confidential information; due diligence on the provider’s competence and security; and understanding the laws that apply where services are provided outside Australia. The rules apply as adopted in your state or territory.
Supervision. Rule 37 requires a solicitor with designated responsibility for a matter to “exercise reasonable supervision over solicitors and all other employees engaged in the provision of the legal services for that matter”. The rule speaks of employees; we suggest supervising an outsourced assistant to the same standard, since your professional obligations stay with you: clear instructions, checked work, and access limited to what the task needs.
Privacy. Giving an overseas assistant access to client information is, in most cases, a cross-border disclosure under APP 8 of the Australian Privacy Principles, where the Privacy Act applies to your practice. Our guide to hiring an offshore VA legally covers the obligations.
Trust money. We do not place VAs into trust accounting. Receipting, payments, transfers and reconciliations stay with the practice.
In practice this means matter-level access in your practice management system, a signed confidentiality agreement before day one, and a decision about how you tell clients you use outsourced support. The setup we use is on our data security page.
Who should pick whom
- Overflow and after-hours calls: OfficeHQ by the call, or Your Phones Covered if you want untimed calls answered by its Australian team in business hours (its after-hours calls are answered in the Philippines).
- Every new enquiry screened and booked around the clock: Waboom AI, particularly if you run Smokeball, LEAP or Actionstep.
- Typing and filing by Australian residents, a few hours at a time: OutScribe.
- A dedicated offshore legal secretary or paralegal with published pricing: Staff Domain. Staff Domain says it is not the right fit if you need fewer than three people.
- A larger offshore legal team quoted per role: Outsourced, Kinetic Staff or Pacific Legal Solutions.
- 10 to 30 hours a week from one dedicated person who answers the phone and does the dictation, documents, time entries and debtor follow-up: that is the firm we built DotVA for. See what the work looks like on our law firms and law firm receptionist pages, or by software: LEAP, Smokeball, Actionstep and Clio.
Run your own numbers
Run the admin hours against your charge-out rate on the VA cost calculator and check our tiers on pricing. Conveyancers have their own page. If the right answer for your firm is one of the other names in the table, we would rather you find that out now than in month two.