Legal intake companies answer a law firm's new-client calls, screen each inquiry against the practice areas and jurisdictions the firm takes, collect conflict check details and book a consult with the right attorney. You can get that work from an outsourced intake company staffed by people, from intake software your own team operates, or from an AI intake agent that runs the screening live on every call, 24/7. Most firms end up combining two of the three.
A prospective client with a real matter rarely calls one firm. They search, call the first result, and if nobody picks up, call the second. Legal inquiries are shopped, not saved, and the firm that answers and asks the right questions first is usually the one that gets retained. That is the whole case for taking law firm intake seriously.
Legal intake vs a legal answering service
The two terms get used interchangeably, but they describe different jobs:
- An answering service takes messages. Name, number, a line about the problem, and a callback request that lands on someone's list the next morning.
- Intake screens the matter. It identifies the caller, checks the matter type and jurisdiction against what the firm handles, collects the details the conflict check needs, asks the qualifying questions your intake team already uses, and either books a consult or routes the inquiry elsewhere.
A message-taking service is better than voicemail, but it leaves all the actual intake work for later, when the caller may already have spoken to two other firms. If you are comparing vendors, the first question is which of these two they actually do.
What should legal intake services cover?
Whoever runs it, good legal intake services do the same four moves on every inquiry, so two callers with the same facts are screened the same way:
- Identify. Who is calling, whether they are the affected party, and how they found you, with the recording disclosure the caller's jurisdiction requires.
- Scope. Matter type and jurisdiction checked against the practice areas you take and the states you are admitted in.
- Screen. Adverse parties, employers, related matters, key dates, and your own qualifying questions.
- Place. A qualifying matter gets a consult with the attorney who handles that work. Everything else goes to referral or to your team, flagged.
Conflict checks on the first call
Intake does not clear conflicts. Your conflict process does that. What intake can do is make sure the fields your conflict process needs (adverse parties, matter type, jurisdiction, related matters) are captured on the first call and written to the record before anything is booked. On LumisReach, an intake that raises a flag goes to your team instead of onto an attorney's calendar, with the recording attached so someone can hear exactly what was said.
Dates and deadlines
Key dates belong early in the script. Intake staff and AI agents should not be judging whether a limitation period has run; that is a legal question. The practical rule is to ask for the dates, and surface anything that looks close to a deadline to a person immediately rather than leaving it in the general queue.
Scope: intake, never advice
Callers will ask "do I have a case?" and "what is it worth?" Intake should not answer. The LumisReach agent gathers facts and books time; a legal question goes to a person, and you approve the script before it takes a single call.
24/7 legal intake: the after-hours calls that matter most
Some practice areas live after hours. Personal injury inquiries arrive in the evening after the accident or the first doctor's visit. Criminal defense calls come at 2am from a family member whose son was just arrested. Employment and family law callers often phone after work, when they finally have privacy. A firm that runs intake only from nine to five is competing for these callers with whoever answers at night.
For 24/7 legal intake, decide in advance:
- Which matters warrant a person tonight and who is on the list to call, in order.
- Which can be booked into the next available consult slot without waking anyone.
- What happens to matters you do not take, so a caller at midnight still gets a clear answer and, where you have one, a referral.
On LumisReach, the after-hours line runs the full intake, conflict fields included, rather than a message. Calls that match your escalation rules are warm-transferred with a spoken summary, and if the first person does not pick up, the next number on the list is tried before a message is taken.
Legal intake companies vs intake software vs AI intake
These are three different products that solve different parts of the problem.
Outsourced legal intake companies staff trained intake specialists who answer under your firm name, follow your script, and often handle sign-up paperwork for high-volume practices. Some specialize in personal injury or mass torts. The strength is a human on every call; the trade-offs are per-call or per-minute pricing, scripts that can drift between agents, and a callback when a question falls outside the script.
Legal intake software is a tool, not a team. Forms, intake questionnaires, lead tracking, e-signature and reporting, often inside or alongside practice management software. It organizes intake beautifully, but someone still has to answer the phone. If your phones are the bottleneck, software alone does not fix it.
AI intake answers the phone itself, runs your script on every call at once, and books the consult while the caller is on the line. It does not get tired at 3am and does not skip the conflict fields on a busy afternoon. It is not a lawyer and should never act like one, and some callers in a crisis will want a human voice sooner.
| Outsourced intake company | Legal intake software | AI intake (LumisReach) | In-house intake team | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answers the phone | Yes | No, your team does | Yes | Yes, during staffed hours |
| Hours | Often 24/7 | Whenever your team works | 24/7, including holidays | Usually business hours |
| Calls at once | Depends on center staffing | n/a | Many in parallel | One per person |
| Conflict fields captured | Per script | Per form | Every call, before booking | Per person and day |
| Books with the right attorney | Varies by provider | If calendars are connected | Yes, on live calendars | Yes |
| Recording and transcript | Varies | n/a | Every call, attached to the record | Only if your phone system records |
| Pricing model | Per call, per minute or per signed case | Per seat subscription | Per minute, by the second | Salaries and training |
| Best fit | Firms that want a human on every call | Firms with staff who already answer | After hours, overflow and paid campaign traffic | Complex matters and relationship-heavy practices |
To be fair to the alternatives: an experienced intake specialist reading a distressed caller's tone is hard to beat, and many firms will keep exactly that for daytime hours. Legal intake software remains useful for tracking and reporting regardless of who answers. The cheapest mistake to fix is the one where an inquiry reaches voicemail at all.
Where AI legal intake fits in a firm
The LumisReach Call Receptionist sits wherever your intake is thinnest, and the routing rules can differ by source:
- Overflow behind the desk, picking up calls your intake team cannot reach during the day, with the same script they use.
- The whole line after hours, running full intake on evenings, weekends and holidays.
- Campaign and ad traffic, where the Speed-to-Lead Agent calls a web inquiry back inside a minute of the form.
- Referral in and out, routing matters you do not take to referral partners with the intake summary.
- Unsigned consults, following up on prospective clients who went quiet, by call or text, on the cadence you set.
The same agent also works outbound to records custodians, court clerks and adjusters, absorbing the hold time and reading figures and dates back for confirmation. Anything a clerk will not confirm comes back flagged as unverified instead of landing in the file as fact. The full picture for firms is on our AI legal intake and law firm answering service page.
How to set up law firm intake with AI
- Write down your practice areas and jurisdictions, including matter types you do not take and where those callers should be referred.
- Export your current intake questions. Your best intake specialist's questions, in their order, are the starting script.
- List your conflict fields and decide what happens to a flagged intake (to which person or queue).
- Map attorneys to matter types and connect their calendars (Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar or Cal.com) so consults land with the right person.
- Set disclosure and escalation rules. Recording disclosure handled per state, and in plain language which situations warrant a person tonight.
- Approve the script before it takes a call, including what it says when asked for advice.
- Run after hours first for a month, then compare signed matters against the same period last year before adding daytime overflow.
Recordings, transcripts and summaries can sync to Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive, GoHighLevel or Attio, or to other tools via Zapier or a direct webhook.
How much do legal intake services cost?
Outsourced legal intake companies usually price per call, per minute or, for some personal injury specialists, per signed case, often with monthly minimums. Intake software is typically a per-seat subscription, and you still pay for whoever answers. In-house intake is salary, benefits and training.
On LumisReach, AI voice is billed at $0.20 per minute, by the second, after your plan's included minutes, with no setup fees and no per-call surcharges for after-hours or weekend calls. Current plans are on the pricing page, and our guide to answering service pricing compares the common billing models. If many of your callers are more comfortable in Spanish or another language, see our guide to a bilingual answering service.
Frequently asked questions
What do legal intake companies do?
Legal intake companies answer a firm's new-client calls under the firm's name, screen each inquiry against the practice areas and jurisdictions the firm handles, collect the details needed for a conflict check, and book qualified callers into a consultation. Some also handle sign-up paperwork for high-volume practices.
What is the difference between law firm intake and an answering service?
An answering service takes a message for someone to return. Law firm intake screens the matter on the call: matter type, jurisdiction, adverse parties, key dates and your qualifying questions, then books a consult or routes the caller to referral.
Can AI handle conflict checks?
AI intake does not decide conflicts; your conflict process does. What it does on LumisReach is capture the conflict fields (adverse parties, matter type, jurisdiction, related matters) on the first call and write them to the record before anything is booked, and send flagged intakes to your team with the recording attached.
Will an AI intake agent give legal advice?
No, and it should not. The LumisReach agent gathers facts and books time. A legal question goes to a person rather than to a plausible-sounding answer, and you approve the script before it takes a call.
Is 24/7 legal intake worth it for personal injury and criminal defense?
For practice areas where calls arrive at night, such as accidents and arrests, after-hours intake is often where the most retainable inquiries are. Running AI on evenings and weekends first, then comparing signed matters against the same period last year, is a low-risk way to find out.
What is the difference between legal intake software and AI intake?
Legal intake software organizes intake: forms, tracking, e-signature and reporting, used by your own staff. AI intake answers the phone and runs the screening itself. Many firms use software for tracking and AI for the calls nobody is free to answer.
How much does AI legal intake cost?
LumisReach bills AI voice at $0.20 per minute, by the second, after your plan's included minutes, with no setup fees and no surcharge for after-hours or weekend calls. Outsourced intake companies typically charge per call, per minute or per signed case.