AI for law firms
AI intake for law firms that answers potential clients day and night
AI intake for law firms answers phone calls and website chat 24/7, asks your intake questions and books consultations with the right attorney. It says it is an AI and not a lawyer, gives no legal advice and leaves conflict checks and case acceptance to your team.
What the intake agent handles
- Intake calls and web chat, 24/7
- Structured intake questionnaires by practice area
- Consultation scheduling with the right attorney
- Follow-ups for missing documents
- Answers to common office questions
Why law firms lose potential clients at intake
People contact a law firm when something has gone wrong: an accident, an arrest, a divorce, an eviction notice. Calls and web forms arrive in the evening and on weekends too, and a person in trouble may contact more than one firm. When the call goes to voicemail or the web form waits until Monday, the person may hire the firm that answered first.
Intake staff also spend much of the day on inquiries outside your practice areas and on reminders for documents that never arrived. Attorneys then prepare for consultations with incomplete notes.
An AI intake agent answers at any hour, asks the same questions in the same order each time and gives your team a complete record to review.
What AI intake for law firms covers
The agent gathers facts and schedules meetings. Legal judgment stays with your attorneys.
Intake calls and web chat, 24/7
It answers your main number after hours or on overflow and replies in your website chat, so a new inquiry gets a response even at 11 p.m. on a Sunday.
Structured intake questionnaire
It asks the questions your firm writes for each matter type, starting with the names of the parties for your conflict check. The answers go to a new intake record for your team to review.
Routing by practice area
It recognizes whether an inquiry concerns family law, personal injury, immigration or another area you handle and sends it to the right team. Inquiries outside your practice areas get a polite reply and, if you wish, your referral list.
Consultation scheduling
It books the consultation in the right attorney's calendar and sends a confirmation with the address or video link, plus a reminder before the meeting.
Follow-ups for missing documents
It reminds new and prospective clients to send the documents on your checklist, such as a police report, a lease or a court notice, and tells your staff what is still missing.
Answers to office questions
It answers questions about office hours, location, languages spoken, how consultations work and your general fee policy, using text your firm approves.
Works with your case management and intake tools
The agent connects to the systems your intake team uses today, with access limited to intake records.
- Case management or practice management software
- Your main phone number and phone system
- Website chat and intake forms
- Attorney calendars and scheduling
- A secure document upload or client portal
- Email and text messaging for reminders
- Your intake pipeline or CRM, if you use one
Ethics guardrails for AI intake
American Bar Association (ABA) Formal Opinion 512, issued on July 29, 2024, explains how duties such as competence, confidentiality, client communication and supervision apply to generative AI. We design intake around those duties, and your firm confirms the rules of each state where it practices, because state rules vary.
- The agent introduces itself as an AI assistant, not a lawyer or a member of your staff, and says it can't give legal advice.
- It tells the person that the conversation does not make them a client of the firm, in wording your attorneys approve. Only an attorney decides to accept a matter.
- It asks only for the facts your firm needs to check conflicts and decide whether to take the matter, as the ABA's comment on prospective clients recommends (Model Rule 1.18).
- People run conflict checks and make every case acceptance decision. The agent collects party names first, so your team can run the check before the consultation.
- Everything a prospective client shares stays in your firm's own accounts, and the agent can reach intake records only, not your case files.
- Your firm sets a written policy for the agent, and an attorney reviews the scripts and a sample of conversations each week during the pilot.
What we measure with your firm
We take a baseline from your current intake numbers before the pilot and report the same measures every month.
- Inquiries answered live
- Calls and chats that got a live response, split by office hours and after hours.
- Consultations booked
- Consultations scheduled from calls and chats, by practice area.
- Intake completeness
- New matters that reach the attorney with every required answer and document.
- Staff time on intake
- Hours your intake team spends on routine calls, reminders and data entry.
From audit to launch in four stages
- 01 · 1–2 weeks
Opportunity and risk audit
We interview your team, map the workflows and rank AI opportunities by payback and risk.
You get: Ranked use cases, ROI model, risk map
- 02 · 4–6 weeks
Pilot with clear success criteria
One agent and one workflow, connected to your real systems and measured against the goal we agreed on. Then you decide whether to continue.
You get: Working agent, results report, go/no-go decision
- 03 · 2–4 weeks
Secure launch
We harden, attack-test and monitor the agent and train your staff before it talks to a single customer.
You get: Security report, operating guides, launch
- 04 · Ongoing
Run and improve
We track quality, cost per workflow and new risks, and keep improving the agent. Short contracts, no lock-in.
You get: Monthly performance and cost report
AI agents for law firms: FAQ
Can AI handle client intake for a law firm?
Yes, for the fact-gathering part. An AI intake agent answers calls and web chat, asks your intake questions, routes the inquiry by practice area and books a consultation. It doesn't give legal advice, run conflict checks or decide whether to take a case. Your attorneys and staff review each intake record and make those decisions.
Is it ethical for a law firm to use AI for intake?
ABA Formal Opinion 512, issued on July 29, 2024, explains how existing ethics duties apply when lawyers use generative AI, including competence, confidentiality, client communication, supervision and reasonable fees. ABA opinions are guidance. Each state has its own rules and ethics opinions, and they vary. The Florida Bar's Opinion 24-1, for example, calls for chatbots to state that they are an AI program and not a lawyer or firm employee. Your firm confirms the rules where it practices.
Does an AI intake chat create an attorney-client relationship?
The agent is designed to avoid that. It states that it is an AI and not a lawyer, gives no legal advice and tells the person that the conversation does not make them a client, in wording your attorneys approve. What the person shares is still treated as confidential, because ethics rules also protect prospective clients (ABA Model Rule 1.18). Your firm decides when a person becomes a client.
How does AI intake handle conflict checks?
The agent collects the names of the people and companies involved at the start of the conversation and passes them to your conflict-check process. It doesn't decide whether a conflict exists. Following the ABA's guidance on prospective clients, it limits the first contact to the facts your firm needs to check conflicts and decide whether to take the matter.
Which practice areas can use AI intake?
Practice areas with many new inquiries and a repeatable questionnaire, such as personal injury, family law, immigration, criminal defense, estate planning or employment law. Each area gets its own questions and routing rules. Urgent situations that need an attorney quickly, such as a person in custody or a court date tomorrow, go to a person at once.
Where is client data stored with an AI intake agent?
In your firm's own accounts. We build the agent on your AI provider, phone and cloud accounts, under enterprise terms that exclude your data from model training, and we don't host it on our systems. The agent reaches intake records only, and your firm sets how long transcripts are kept.
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