Legal Answering Service, Legal Intake Service, or AI: What Law Firms Pay in 2026
· TrialBase
A personal injury firm lives on the first phone call. The person calling has just been hurt, is calling three firms, and signs with the one that answers and sounds like it knows what to do. Hennessey Digital has tracked how fast firms respond to web leads for five years; in its 2025 study about a quarter of personal injury firms answered within five minutes and the median was 13 minutes. Phone calls after hours fare worse, because most firms simply do not have anyone there.
Firms close that gap in one of four ways: a legal answering service, a legal intake service, an in-house intake specialist, or software that answers the phone itself. The names overlap and the vendors blur them on purpose. Here is what each one does, what it costs on published price lists in November 2026, and where TrialBase's intake fits.
What a legal answering service does, and what it costs
A legal answering service is a staffed call center with receptionists trained on law firm vocabulary. They answer in your firm's name around the clock, take a message, ask a handful of screening questions, and transfer the call or send you a note. Smith.ai, Ruby, Answering Legal, LEX Reception, Back Office Betties and Ring Savvy are the names firms search for most.
Two billing models dominate. Smith.ai bills per call; Ruby, Answering Legal and most others bill per receptionist minute. The difference matters for intake, because a real new-client conversation runs seven to twelve minutes, not the two minutes a message takes.
| Service | Published entry price | What is included | Extras that matter for intake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smith.ai | $300 a month for 30 calls, $11.50 per call over | 24/7 live answering, 5 intake questions, 1 transfer destination | 6 more intake questions $1.50 a call, Spanish line $1 a call, extra transfer destinations $15 a month each, second CRM $0.50 a call |
| Ruby | $250 a month for 50 minutes, up to $1,725 for 500 | 24/7 live answering, lead qualification, bilingual | Overage rate not published; a 500-minute plan covers about 60 intake calls |
| Answering Legal, LEX Reception, Back Office Betties | Quote based; third-party guides report roughly $300 to $425 a month for 100 to 150 minutes | 24/7 live answering, legal scripts | Setup fees, per-minute overage |
A human answering service is a receptionist, not an intake specialist. The receptionist reads your script, fills five to eleven fields and sends an email. Nobody on that call knows what a soft-tissue claim against an uninsured driver in Colorado is worth, and nobody will tell the caller your firm takes it.
What a legal intake service adds
Searches for "legal intake services" have grown faster than any other term in this space over the past year. A legal intake service is the next step up: trained intake specialists who work your full questionnaire, qualify the caller on your criteria, send the retainer for e-signature, and chase the ones who did not sign. Pricing is quote based and usually a monthly retainer plus a per-lead or per-signed fee; buyer's guides put a working intake desk at $1,300 to $3,400 a month.
The other way to get this is to hire. "Legal intake specialist" is one of the most searched phrases in legal intake, mostly by firms hiring and people applying. Job boards put the national average between $34,000 on Indeed and $55,000 on ZipRecruiter, with California postings at $58,000 to $65,000. That buys one person for forty hours a week. Covering evenings and weekends takes four.
Virtual receptionists and AI answering services
The fastest-growing searches are for a "virtual receptionist for law firms," and most of what answers that search today is an AI receptionist. Dialzara, Answering Agent, LegalClerk and Smith.ai's own AI tier sell flat-rate plans from about $150 to $400 a month for unlimited calls. They answer instantly, never put anyone on hold, and cost a tenth of a human service.
What they do on the call is thin. They follow a script you write in a form, collect name, number and a sentence about the matter, and send a text. Most cannot judge a case, few can transfer a live caller to a lawyer and stay useful once they have, and none of them know your practice. They replace voicemail well. They do not replace an intake specialist.
Intake software and CRMs
Legal intake software is a different product with a confusingly similar name. Lawmatics, Lead Docket, Captorra and Clio Grow manage the pipeline after a lead exists: web forms, e-signature, drip emails, conversion reports. Lawmatics' AI add-on, Merlin, starts at $149 a month on top of the subscription. Intaker sells website chat and texting from about $80 a month.
Clio changed this in August 2026. Grow AI adds AI phone agents in the US plus email and chat agents to Clio Grow, billed at $25 per hired matter rather than per call. If you already run intake in Clio Grow, that is the cheapest way to stop missing calls. The agent is a receptionist, though: it books the consultation. The lawyer still does the intake.
Legal AI platforms with intake: Supio
Supio sells an intake product beside its demand letter and medical chronology tools. It is the closest thing on the market to what TrialBase does: a 24/7 voice agent built on your intake SOP, lead scoring by severity and urgency, transfer of high-value callers to an attorney, and live coaching for human intake staff on their calls. It takes intake across voice, SMS, web and email, connects to Litify, SmartAdvocate, Salesforce, RingCentral and CallRail, and is SOC 2 compliant. Pricing is not published; firms start with a pilot.
How TrialBase intake works
TrialBase's intake is built for the call itself, not just the hand-off.
The call. Your intake number is answered day and night by a concierge with the name and voice your firm picks. It gives the recording notice, asks what happened, and screens the caller on your criteria: the case types you take, the states you practice in, the filing deadlines that apply. It handles Spanish callers if you turn that on. Every call gets a score from one to ten against your own bands.
The transfer. A good case is transferred while the caller is still on the line. The concierge rings your team and stays on the call after someone picks up. Your attorney can say "open a case" and the case opens in TrialBase with the transcript attached. A note taker listens to both sides of the attorney's conversation and fills in your own intake form, the one you uploaded, with the quote behind each answer, so the attorney asks about what is missing instead of starting over.
After the call. Your team gets a summary with follow-ups, the full transcript and the recording. The intake form draft sits on the call page for approval. The new case is already in the same place your demand letters, medical summaries and deposition outlines get drafted, so the intake becomes the first document in the file instead of an email someone retypes.
The price. A flat fee per completed intake, drawn from your prepaid balance. Hang-ups and spam are free. There is no monthly minimum, no per-minute meter and no seats. You can pause the number any time, and a fallback number rings your office if anything is ever down.
Two things TrialBase does not do yet: it does not sync to Litify, Clio or other case management systems, and it does not take intake by text or web chat. The case and the documents live in TrialBase, and you export what you need.
The same month, five ways
Take a firm that gets 100 new-client calls a month, averaging seven minutes each, with 15 of them worth signing.
| Option | What that month costs | Who did the intake |
|---|---|---|
| Human answering service, per call (Smith.ai Basic plus extended intake) | About $1,065 | A receptionist, 11 questions |
| Human answering service, per minute (Ruby, 700 minutes) | $1,725 or more | A receptionist, qualification only |
| AI receptionist, flat rate | $150 to $400 | A script; your staff call everyone back |
| Clio Grow AI | $375 in hired-matter fees plus the Grow subscription | Booking; your lawyer does the intake |
| In-house intake specialist | About $4,600, business hours only | A trained person, 40 hours a week |
| TrialBase intake | A flat fee per completed intake, nothing for hang-ups | The concierge screens, your attorney closes, the note taker writes it up |
Published prices change and quotes vary, so check each vendor before you decide. The shape of the comparison does not change: the services that answer cheaply do not do the intake, and the ones that do the intake charge for every minute or every head.
Questions to ask any intake vendor
Whether you are comparing the best answering service for lawyers or a full intake platform, the same six questions sort them out.
- Who answers at 2 a.m., and what do they know about my practice?
- When the caller has a real case, does someone at my firm talk to them on that call, or get a message?
- What do I have after the call: a message, a filled form, a transcript, a recording?
- Am I paying per minute, per call, per lead or per signed case? Fee splits on signed cases raise ethics questions in most states.
- Does it speak Spanish, and does that cost extra?
- Where does the data go, and does the new case land in the system my team already works in?
If the answers are "a receptionist," "a message," "per minute" and "an email," you have bought an answering service. That is fine for a firm that needs voicemail replaced. A firm that needs intake done should expect more from the first call.