Why intake calls are different
A person calling a plumber has a broken pipe. A person calling a family or injury or defense firm is often having one of the worst weeks of their life, and they picked up the phone at the moment they finally decided to act - which is very often evening, weekend, or lunch hour, precisely when a small firm's phone goes to voicemail. That caller does not wait for Monday. They call the next listing, and the firm that answers gets the consultation.
Our calculator's law-firm preset uses $2,000 as a commonly cited value for a won intake call - an editable default, not a claim about your practice, and conservative for many practice areas. You do not need the preset anyway: you know your average fee agreement, and you know whether last month's voicemail box had a potential client in it. One is usually enough to change the math for the year.
What the agent does on an intake line
It answers as your firm, at any hour, and runs the intake you define: what happened, when, where, who else is involved, how the caller was referred - the same screening questions your staff asks, asked consistently every time. It captures details verbatim into a transcript, books the consultation into your calendar, and sends the caller confirmation. Connected to Clio, the intake lands in your practice management system as a new matter inquiry rather than a message slip.
Urgency routing matters in law too. 'I was just arrested' and 'I want to update my will' are different calls; the agent triages on the criteria you set and transfers genuinely urgent matters to whoever you designate, with the same waterfall routing our trades clients use for on-call.
And it is instructed to be what it is. If a caller asks whether they are speaking to a lawyer or a person, it answers honestly. A prospective client relationship that starts with a deception is not one your bar - or ours - would want.
The line it does not cross
The agent does not give legal advice, evaluate the merits of a case, quote fees you have not scripted, or promise representation. It cannot run your conflicts check - it collects the names your conflicts process needs and leaves the check to your team, before any substantive conversation happens on your side. Where intake questions themselves could edge into advice, the script stops and books the consult instead. You review the scripts before they take a call, which is exactly how you would train a new intake assistant - this one just never freelances beyond its training.
If your intake genuinely requires attorney judgment on the first call - some practices do work that way - then what you want is a human answering service with legal intake experience, or your own staff on rotation, and we will say so rather than sell you the wrong tool.
What it costs against the alternatives
Legal answering services price at staffed rates: Smith.ai's published plans run $300 a month for 30 calls up to $2,100 for 300, with per-call overage; Ruby's run $250 for 50 receptionist minutes to $1,725 for 500. Both are competent at legal reception. Our tiers run $197 to $797 a month for 200 to 1,200 included minutes with per-minute overage in cents - and the difference compounds for firms whose calls are long, because intake conversations run to minutes, not seconds, and staffed per-minute billing meters every one of them.
The trade-off is the same one on every page of this site: our agent needs building and tuning from your real intake process - that is what the setup fee pays for - and its first week is its worst. A firm that wants generic message-taking tomorrow should buy that instead; it is cheaper than what we sell and we will tell you so on the call.
Common questions
Is an AI agent taking intake calls an ethics problem?
The agent is an intake tool, like your staff, your web forms, and your answering service - it collects information and schedules, it does not advise or form the attorney-client relationship. You control every script, the transcripts give you a complete record, and it discloses what it is when asked. Your professional-responsibility obligations stay yours; we build the tool to make them easy to meet, and if your bar has guidance you need reflected in the scripts, that goes in during setup.
What about confidentiality?
Intake details are handled like any intake system's data: transcripts and captured details go to your firm, not into anyone's marketing. If your requirements include a signed BAA-equivalent or specific contractual confidentiality terms, that is our Enterprise / Regulated tier - state the requirement up front and it goes in the agreement.
Can it screen out the calls we don't take?
Yes, and this is one of its best uses. Practice areas you decline, geographies you don't serve, matters below your minimum - the agent declines politely with the referral language you give it, and your staff stops spending mornings on calls that were never going to be clients.