Confidential Scheduling Software for Lawyers
Prospective clients book a first consultation without their enquiry passing through advertising networks. You see who is asking before you accept.
Updated 22 October 2026
Why do lawyers need more care with online booking than most professions?
A request for a first consultation is already a disclosure: this person wants advice, from your firm, on something they may not have told their employer, their spouse or the other side. Many booking pages hand that moment to advertising scripts before the enquirer has typed a word. Tymeslot's booking pages carry no advertising trackers, so the enquiry is not handed to an ad audience.
What a law firm needs from a booking page
Most booking tools assume that anyone who finds a free slot should get it. A firm cannot accept an instruction that way: the other party's name has to go through the conflict search first, and some matters fall outside the practice areas you take on. Mainstream tools also treat a free 20-minute enquiry and a paid hour of advice as the same event, and leave instructed clients competing with strangers for Thursday afternoon.
In Tymeslot each of those is a setting. Approval holds a request until your conflict check is done. A fixed fee can be taken through the firm's own Stripe account for a paid consultation. Meeting types for instructed clients stay off the public page and are reached by direct link. The form asks only for names and the area of law, because the facts of the matter belong on the file, not in a booking.
Everything lawyers need. Nothing they don't.
Approve Before It Is Booked
With approval on, an enquiry holds the slot and appears as a tentative event in your calendar until you accept it. The request email lists the enquirer and the other party, so the conflict search can run before you commit to a meeting.
Questions Kept to the Conflict Search
Ask for the enquirer's name, the other party and the area of law, and nothing about the facts. A shorter form means less confidential material sits outside the case file if you decline the matter.
Fixed-Fee Consultations
On Pro, a one-hour advice session can carry its fixed fee, paid by card when the client books. If the request also needs approval, a declined or expired request is refunded in full without you lifting a finger.
Private Links for Instructed Clients
A hidden meeting type is reachable only through its direct link. Put it in the client care letter, and instructed clients book matter updates on hours that new enquiries never see.
Time to Read the File
A buffer of up to two hours on the availability schedule keeps time free after each consultation for the attendance note, and before the next one for reading in.
Court Days Block Themselves
Hearings, client visits and travel already in Outlook or Google Calendar block those hours on your booking page. Enquirers see only that the time is taken, never which court or which client.
Privacy and compliance for lawyers
For a law firm, the booking is the first moment a stranger's matter touches the practice, often before anyone knows whether the firm can act. The professional rules below decide what you may ask at that stage, who may see it and when a request may become a meeting.
Confidentiality covers former clients too
SRA Code paragraph 6.3 requires solicitors to keep the affairs of current and former clients confidential. Bookings carry the enquirer's name into your diary, so link a calendar that colleagues outside the matter and assistants cannot browse, and name meeting types by format, not by the subject of the dispute.
No meeting until the conflict search is clear
Paragraph 6.2 of the same Code bars acting where there is a conflict, or a significant risk of one, outside narrow exceptions. Requiring approval on the enquiry meeting type turns that into the booking flow: the request waits as a tentative entry until the other party's name has been checked.
Duties to people you never act for
ABA Model Rule 1.18 protects information from prospective clients even when no engagement follows, and Comment [4] advises taking in only what you need to decide whether to act. A booking form asking for names and the area of law, never the facts, makes it unlikely that a declined enquirer could later disqualify you.
- Hosted in the EU
- Signed DPA on Enterprise only
- Self-hosting for full control
See the difference
Without Tymeslot
With Tymeslot
Common scheduling scenarios
How do lawyers take consultation requests and still run a conflict check?
A first enquiry should be easy to make, but you cannot accept it until you know who is on the other side. Tymeslot lets the enquirer pick a time while the firm keeps the final say.
- Create an "Initial enquiry" meeting type of 30 minutes, switch on approval and allow yourself 24 or 48 hours to answer.
- Ask for the enquirer's name, the names of any opposing or connected parties and the area of law (booking questions need Pro on tymeslot.app), and stop there.
- Search those names against your client records, then accept or decline the request. A declined enquirer receives a short email; the facts of their matter never reached you.
- Leave a request unanswered past your window and it expires, freeing the slot for the next enquirer.
How do lawyers charge for a first consultation at the time of booking?
Many firms offer a short free enquiry and charge a fixed fee for a full hour of advice. Collecting the fee as the client books replaces an invoice and a chaser, and the client knows the cost before they commit.
- Create a 60-minute "Fixed-fee consultation" and connect the firm's Stripe account (Pro on the managed service).
- Enter the fee as a fixed amount on that meeting type; the client's card is charged and the appointment confirmed in one go.
- Write your refund terms into the meeting type description. Tymeslot sets no cancellation deadline, so how you treat a late cancellation is your decision.
- Should the firm have to call it off, cancelling from the dashboard lets you return the fee at once.
How do lawyers keep existing clients' meetings apart from new enquiries?
A client halfway through a divorce or a dispute should not hunt for a slot among strangers' enquiries. A hidden meeting type with its own schedule reserves time for the people you already act for.
- Create a 30-minute "Matter update" meeting type and hide it from the public booking page.
- Give it an availability schedule of its own: 24 hours' notice and a two-month horizon, against 48 hours and three weeks for new enquiries.
- Send the direct link in the client care letter and in your email signature to instructed clients.
- Offer video and phone on the same meeting type, so a client at work can choose a call.
See Tymeslot in action
A starter setup for lawyers
| Meeting type | Duration | Buffer | Minimum notice | Bookable ahead | Payment at booking |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initial enquiry (approval required) | 30 min | 15 min | 2 days | 3 weeks | None |
| Fixed-fee consultation | 60 min | 15 min | 2 days | 4 weeks | Full fee at booking |
| Matter update for existing clients | 30 min | 10 min | 1 day | 60 days | None |
Intake questions
- Your full name, or your company's name
- Names of any other parties involved, so we can check for conflicts
- Which area of law is this about?
- Is there a deadline we should know about?
Every question here feeds the conflict search or tells you how urgent the matter is; a limitation date is the one fact worth knowing early. The enquiry and the paid consultation can run on one schedule. Matter updates for instructed clients want shorter notice and a longer horizon, which means a schedule of their own.
Tymeslot compared with Calendly and SavvyCal
Against Calendly and SavvyCal, Tymeslot's difference for a law firm is where an enquiry goes before you accept the instruction. Both run from the United States and load outside scripts on the booking page; Tymeslot runs in the EU or on the firm's own server. Hence these rows: hosting, self-hosting, the processing agreement and page scripts. The trade-off: both include a DPA with their standard terms, while Tymeslot signs one only on Enterprise, so a firm whose supplier checklist demands one from a cheap hosted tool may approve them faster.
| Feature | Tymeslot | Calendly | SavvyCal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting in the EU | Enquiries stored in the EU on tymeslot.app | No: data is stored in US data centres | No: hosted in the US (Virginia) |
| Self-hosting | Yes: on the firm's own server, every feature | No: hosted service only | No: hosted service only |
| Signed data processing agreement | Signed only with Enterprise; not on Free or Pro | Yes: accepted with the customer terms | Yes: accepted with the Terms of Use |
| Booking page without third-party scripts | No ad trackers; reCAPTCHA once the enquirer types | No: third-party scripts are referenced (Stripe, reCAPTCHA, Airbrake, Google Tag Manager) | No: third-party scripts load (Tally, Help Scout, PostHog) |
Sources checked 5 October 2026.
How much time could you save?
A rough estimate, not a promise.
150
minutes saved per week
130.0
hours saved per year
€32,500
annual value of saved time
Which calendars and video apps do lawyers use with Tymeslot?
Start free, upgrade when you're ready
A sole practitioner who screens enquiries by approval and gives existing clients a private link pays nothing. The conflict-check questions and the fixed-fee consultation in this setup are Pro (€9/month). A firm that wants enquiries kept on its own hardware gets the same features free by self-hosting.
Free
€0 / month
Pro
€9 / month