law firms · legal intake
Answering Service for Law Firms — Intake First, Everything Else Routed
For most firms the phone is two businesses in one: new-matter intake, which is revenue, and everything else, which is workload. An answering service that treats those the same will cost you clients at one end and bill you for noise at the other.
Live intake agents from US$650 a month, AI for the routine at US$0.15 a minute, Spanish intake by native speakers. Your intake form, your escalation rules. Our agents never give legal advice.
For a broader comparison before you define your firm’s intake rules, see our answering service guide.
at a glance
What is a legal answering service?
A legal answering service answers a law firm's calls when the firm can't — after hours, during court, at capacity — captures structured new-matter intake on the firm's own form, and escalates urgent calls by the firm's rules.
Callnovo staffs it with live multilingual agents backed by AI for routine calls — part of our AI answering service with live-agent backup. Agents never give legal advice.
the intake call
The caller who has never hired a lawyer before is your hardest call — and your most valuable.
Someone calling a firm for the first time is usually calling on a bad day: an arrest, an accident, a notice, a deadline. They are anxious, they don't know the vocabulary, and they are very often calling more than one firm. The matter tends to go to whoever answers first and sounds like they know what happens next.
That is not a call for voicemail, and it is not a call for an AI that answers in a loop. It is a call for a person with your intake form in front of them, who knows exactly what to capture and what never to say.
who takes which call
Four kinds of calls, four different costs of getting it wrong.
| The call | Route to | Cost of getting it wrong |
|---|---|---|
| A prospective client, first contact | Human — always | The matter goes to the next firm on their list |
| "Any news on my case?" | AI or human — your choice | An anxious client left more anxious |
| Court clerk, opposing counsel | Human | A missed date, or a sentence you didn't want said |
| Billing and payment questions | AI reads; disputes go human | A fee dispute handled like a FAQ |
| A caller in custody, or family calling about one | Human — your on-call rule | A client relationship that started with a machine |
intake, structured
Your intake form, executed exactly — and two things we never do.
What our agents capture on a new-matter call is defined by you, not by a generic script. Typical fields firms give us:
Matter type and urgency
In the caller's words, plus your categories — so the right attorney sees it first.
All party names
Captured so your team can run conflict screening before anyone calls back. We collect; we don't clear.
How they found you, and callback windows
So the follow-up lands, and your marketing spend gets attributed.
Your one-line summary
The sentence you want at the top of every intake email — your format, not ours.
Two hard rules, in the contract and in the training: agents never give legal advice — not "probably", not "usually", not "in my experience" — and agents never discuss one caller's matter with another caller. Every call is logged with a timestamp, so if a caller later disputes when they called or what was said, you check the record instead of arguing.
after hours & languages
Arrests don't keep office hours, and not every caller speaks English.
The calls a firm most fears missing land at night and on weekends. Our after-hours coverage runs on your escalation list: you define what qualifies as reach-the-attorney-now, who gets called in what order, and what the caller is told in the meantime — your sentence, not ours.
Spanish-language support is arranged around your required time zone and service window. Agent schedules, weekend and holiday coverage, and escalation contacts are confirmed for the project. For other languages, we confirm the language requirements, human handoff arrangements and service hours before coverage begins.
coverage planning
Plan Language Coverage for Low-Volume and Overflow Calls
If your firm needs Mandarin, Cantonese or another specific language variety, include that requirement in the coverage request. We confirm the language requirements, human handoff arrangements and service hours for your project before coverage begins.
Our standard projects use non-shared agents. For special requirements such as low-volume calls or overflow when your team is busy, a shared-agent arrangement can be assessed with an agreed scope and service window. Define the information to collect, the calls to transfer and the fallback when the designated contact is unavailable. Keep reception and intake tasks within the firm's approved instructions; agents do not provide legal advice.
what it costs
Published rates — the same ones every client gets.
| Option | Published price | Per unit | Where it fits a firm |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live shared team | from US$650 / month | includes 1,500 min → ≈ US$0.43/min | Steady intake volume, including 24/7 setups |
| Dedicated agent | from US$5.80 | per hour, per agent | Your intake form verbatim, a named team |
| AI voice | US$0.15 | per minute | Hours, directions, appointment moves — the routine |
| Pay-per-resolution | from US$1 | per resolved contact | Pay for outcomes, not minutes |
Minimum engagement is half a seat — a solo practice doesn't buy a five-seat block to get its phone answered. The range runs to 200+, so growth isn't a re-procurement. Boundary terms — included minutes, overages, minimums — are spelled out in your quote. Package overview: pricing →
when we're the wrong choice
Three cases where you should hire someone else.
- You want legal advice given on the line. We won't — not ever, at any price. An answering service that will is one you should run from, because the liability lands on your bar card, not theirs.
- You want a paralegal, not an intake desk. Drafting, filing, docketing, substantive screening — that is a hire or a paralegal service, and mixing it into phone coverage produces someone mediocre at both.
- Your intake is one call a week. At that volume, your mobile and a good voicemail greeting are honestly fine. Revisit when missed calls start costing you matters.
questions
What firms ask before they sign.
What is a legal answering service?
A legal answering service answers a law firm's calls when the firm can't — after hours, during court, at capacity — captures structured intake for new matters, and escalates urgent calls by the firm's own rules. The critical difference from a generic service: trained message discipline, and a hard rule against giving legal advice.
Do your agents give legal advice?
No — never, in any form. Agents capture facts, read back only what your firm has approved, and route legal questions to your team. This is in the contract, the training, and the QA review.
Can you use our existing intake form?
Yes — your fields, your order, your required items. Most firms hand us the form they already use and we execute it verbatim, including the party-name capture your conflict screening needs.
How do you handle potential conflicts of interest?
We capture every party name the caller can give, flag them in the intake record, and leave the screening to your team before any substantive callback. We collect the data for the check; we never make the call ourselves.
Do you answer in Spanish?
Yes — Spanish-language support is arranged around your required time zone and service window. Agent schedules, weekend and holiday coverage, and escalation contacts are confirmed for the project.
How fast can coverage start?
Five days is the fastest we can staff a live account — five days to place and brief agents on your intake form and escalation rules, not five days of software setup. Training, system access and any pilot period can add time, and we confirm the full schedule for your firm. AI coverage for routine calls can start sooner.
start
Send us your intake form and a month of call logs.
Or just a rough count and your practice areas — whatever you have. We'll come back with a split: which calls were new-matter intake, which were existing clients, which landed after hours — and what covering each slice costs at your volume, on published rates. If the answer is a voicemail upgrade, we'll say so.