> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://api.lawtte.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# After-hours coverage

> How your AI receptionist handles calls when nobody's in the office — office hours, after-hours transfers, urgent callers, and taking messages overnight.

She answers every call, day or night. Office hours don't change *whether* she picks
up — they tell her **whether there's a human to hand the caller to**.

<Info>
  This is the part most firms get backwards on the first pass. Setting Mon–Fri 9–5
  does not mean she only works 9–5. It means that at 8pm she stops offering to connect
  someone and starts taking a message instead.
</Info>

## Set your hours

**Dashboard → Agent → Who she is**, or the builder's setup step.

One-click presets:

* Mon–Fri, 9am–5pm
* Mon–Fri, 8:30am–6pm
* Mon–Sat, 9am–6pm
* Open 24/7

Or set each day individually — different hours per weekday, closed days, a half-day
Saturday. Pick your **time zone** in the same place; it's the zone your office is in,
not the caller's.

<Note>
  Whether the office is open is worked out exactly, on our side, at the moment the
  call arrives — not estimated by the AI from a sentence about your hours. Transfers
  and after-hours routing are too important to leave to a judgment call.
</Note>

## What changes outside your hours

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="During office hours" icon="sun">
    She can warm-transfer a screened new client to your team number. If nobody picks
    up, she takes a message.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Outside office hours" icon="moon">
    Either **take a message** — your team follows up next business day — or
    **transfer to another number**, like an on-call line or an attorney's cell.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

Set this under the transfer option in **When a new client calls**: *Outside office
hours* → take a message, or transfer to an after-hours number.

## The urgent caller at 11pm

Separate from your hours, and it overrides the intake list: if someone's been
detained, has a hearing tomorrow, is facing a response deadline, or doesn't feel safe,
she gets just enough to route the call and acts immediately — she does not work
through the rest of your questions first.

What "acts immediately" means is your choice, set under **the hard calls**:

| Your setting                                    | What happens at 11pm                               |
| ----------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| Take the message and flag it urgent *(default)* | Marked urgent in the summary emailed to your team. |
| Transfer to this number                         | She calls your on-call number, whatever the hour.  |
| Treat it like any call                          | Normal intake, normal message.                     |

<Warning>
  If you set an urgent transfer number, it will ring in the middle of the night. That's
  the point — but make sure whoever owns that number knows.
</Warning>

## Intake still happens overnight

Whatever the hour, she takes the full intake and sends it. A 2am car-accident caller is
fully documented in your inbox by 2:10am — name, number, what happened, whether
they've seen a doctor, whether an insurer already called. Your team opens the day with
the case worked up instead of a voicemail saying "call me back."

## Using her for after-hours only

Plenty of firms start this way: your team answers during the day, she covers nights
and weekends.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Set your real office hours in Lawtte">
    So she routes correctly on the calls she does take.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Forward your office line to her after hours">
    Do this in your phone system or with your carrier — see
    [forwarding codes](/studio/phone-number). This is what decides which calls reach
    her at all.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Pick what she does with an after-hours new client">
    Take a message, or transfer to an on-call number.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Test it at night">
    Call her once after your office closes. Nothing else tells you as much.
  </Step>
</Steps>


## Related topics

- [Her phone number](/studio/phone-number.md)
- [How to build an AI receptionist and intake system](/guides/build-an-ai-receptionist.md)
- [What is Lawtte Studio?](/studio/overview.md)
- [Managing her after launch](/studio/dashboard.md)
- [Studio FAQ](/studio/faq.md)