Booking on your website

A visitor to the firm's website can book a meeting with a lawyer themselves. Each booking arrives as an enquiry with its consultation already in the lawyer's diary, and the visitor is sent the meeting to add to their own calendar.

Your booking hours

Nobody is booked who has not chosen to be. Under your account, Booking hours, Edit, switch on Take bookings, give the hours you may be booked each weekday (in the firm's time zone, as many spans a day as you need), the most bookings you take in a day, and your own video link if you meet by video.

Times are only offered when you are free in the firm's diary: a meeting or hearing you attend, approved leave, a public holiday or a day the office is closed takes the time away. Nothing is read from your Google or Outlook calendar; the firm's diary is the one that counts.

Booking types

Under Settings, Intake settings, Booking types, New booking type sets out a kind of meeting:

• its name, what the visitor reads, and how long it lasts;
• where it happens: in an office (whose address the visitor is given), by phone, or by video (the type's link, or each lawyer's own);
• the time kept free before and after it, how much notice is needed, and how far ahead it may be booked;
• who is booked: One named person, Round robin (whoever was booked longest ago, of those free), or The first free, in order;
• the questions asked first, from a published intake form that asks for no files;
• a fee paid when booking, if any.

The type's record shows the page visitors book on, with Copy link, and the sites it may be embedded on. The same embed script that draws a form draws a booking page: data-docavra-book in the page, or data-docavra-book-popup on a button.

What the visitor does

The visitor chooses a day and an open time, shown in their own time zone with the firm's beside it where they differ, gives their name, email and phone, answers any questions, and agrees to the firm's consent wording. A free meeting is booked at once. Where there is a fee, the time is held while they pay on the firm's payment page (15 minutes, set under Settings, General, Intake) and confirmed when the payment arrives; an unpaid hold is let go.

The visitor is emailed the meeting with a calendar file, reminded a day before and an hour before (by text too where they gave a number), and can move or cancel it from the link in their email until the firm's cut-off (24 hours before, by default). A fee is sent back when they cancel in time; after the cut-off, the firm's rule decides.

What the firm sees

The booking makes an enquiry, routed as the questions' form says, and books its consultation with the lawyer, who is told. The day before, the lawyer is reminded, and told whether the enquiry's conflict check has been decided. Nothing on the booking page says whether the visitor or anyone they name is known to the firm.

Client intake, Bookings lists every booking, searched by reference, name or email and narrowed by status, type, lawyer and date. A booking's page shows the meeting, the visitor, their answers and the fee. Move chooses another open time and Cancel booking takes a reason; the visitor is told either way, and a fee the firm cancels is always sent back. A fee that could not be asked back automatically is flagged on the booking for someone to refund from its payment request.

The lawyer records the meeting as held or missed on the enquiry's consultation, as for any consultation.