Honest answers to what firms actually ask.
Written the way we'd answer on a call. Where the honest answer depends on your firm, we say so, and where it's a question for your ethics counsel, we point you there instead of guessing.
On this pageWhat Iris isVisitors and conversationsQualification and escalationPrivacy and privilegeSetup and pricing
What Iris is
Is Iris a chatbot?
If a chatbot means a menu of buttons that answers common questions, then no. Iris is an intake agent. It runs a complete intake conversation: the follow-ups, the qualification, the care, and turns it into a structured summary an attorney reads in ninety seconds. What firms notice first isn't the technology. It's that nobody had to take the 11pm message.
Does Iris give legal advice?
No. Iris collects information on the firm's behalf, and says so plainly: every conversation opens with a disclosure that it's the firm's intake agent, not an attorney. What that means for privilege is written out in plain terms.
Does Iris replace our intake staff?
No. It covers what staff can't. The 11pm inquiry, the weekend surge, the conversation that starts while everyone's in a hearing. Firms that keep intake staff use Iris as the front door; the summaries give their people a running start instead of a blank page.
What happens when Iris doesn't know an answer?
It says so, and moves on. Iris never guesses. A question outside intake is noted and passed to the attorney in the summary. An open question on a brief is information. A wrong answer is a problem.
Visitors and conversations
How does Iris handle someone in distress?
Slowly, and on their terms. Iris lets the person tell the story first, follows up on what matters, and doesn't press for details they aren't ready to give. When a conversation touches safety, that question is asked early, and quietly.
What if someone has an emergency?
Iris recognizes the cases that can't wait: an imminent statute, a family member in custody, an arraignment on Monday, and escalates on the spot. The on-call attorney gets a text and an email the moment the conversation ends, with everything needed to decide.
Which languages does Iris speak?
English and Spanish. Iris reads the language of the first message and holds the whole conversation there, naturally, not translated. Attorney summaries always arrive in English, whichever language the intake happened in.
Can a visitor talk to a person instead?
That's the point. Iris gathers what the firm needs and hands off: the callback, the relationship, and every decision belong to the attorney. For urgent cases, the handoff happens that minute, not the next morning.
Qualification and escalation
How does Iris qualify cases?
The firm sets the threshold; Iris applies it. Every summary carries a score, a status, and the reasons behind both. The same standard at 2am as at 2pm. Whether to take the case stays the attorney's call, always.
Can we change what Iris asks?
Yes. Intake is configured per practice area during onboarding, and the criteria can be adjusted at any time. If the threshold is too loose or too tight, it shows up in the summaries within days, and changing it is a settings adjustment, not a project.
Privacy and privilege
Is client data confidential?
Conversations belong to the firm. Oculon doesn't sell them, share them, or use them to train models. Everything is encrypted in transit and at rest. The full commitments are on the confidentiality page.
Do you use conversations to train your models?
No. Client conversations are the firm's work product, not training data, and there is no setting that changes this.
What about attorney-client privilege?
Privilege doesn't attach during an Iris conversation. It precedes an attorney engagement. That's why Iris discloses its nature at the start of every conversation, and why we provide a standard disclosure template firms can enable. We explain the implications on the privilege page; for your own intake flow, your ethics counsel is the right reader.
Where is our data stored?
On US-based infrastructure, encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256). Retention defaults to 90 days and is configurable. The firm can request deletion of anything, at any time, and deletion is permanent.
Setup and pricing
How long does setup take?
Most firms are live within one business day. The embed is one script tag; the configuration happens on a single onboarding call. The four steps are on the implementation page.
What does Iris cost?
It depends on your firm's traffic. A firm with a thousand visitors a month shouldn't pay what a firm with ten thousand does. Every firm starts with the free 60-day pilot; at the end, you get a quote sized to your real volume. The pricing page explains how it works.
What do we need to get started?
A website, an inbox for the summaries, and an hour for the onboarding call. If your site loads, you're ready.
The question that isn't here.
Ask it once you've run the demo, and the answer can be specific to your firm. Or write to us directly. A person reads every message.