Attorney answering service: an answering service for attorneys, attorney telephone answering service and attorney virtual receptionist that books the consult, priced

It answers the calls a practicing attorney cannot take, which for a litigator is most of the working day. A good one does four things on every call.

First, it sorts the caller. A prospective client, an existing client checking on a filing, opposing counsel, the court clerk, a process server and a legal marketing salesman are six different calls with six correct handlings. The sorting is most of the value, because it keeps your phone quiet for the salesman and reaches you for the clerk.

Second, it runs intake. For a personal injury practice that means the date and place of the incident, injuries, whether there is a police report and whether another lawyer is already involved. For family law it means the county, whether a case has been filed and whether children are involved. For criminal defense it means the charge, the custody status and the next court date. PhoneAgent.ai asks the questions you wrote for each practice area, in your order, on every call.

Third, it captures what your team needs for a conflicts check before anyone sits down with the caller: full name, the other party's name and the matter type. It does not run the check and it does not discuss the merits.

Fourth, it books the consultation. Message-taking services end the call with a name and number and leave the booking to a callback that often never connects. PhoneAgent.ai checks your calendar and books the consult while the caller is on the line, then texts the confirmation.

It depends on the meter more than the headline price. Priced at 60 intake calls a month and a five minute average, the legal-only live services that publish a rate card run from $294 at LexHelper to about $515 at Veza Reception, $600 to $900 at LawyerLine's published per-minute range and $1,286 a month at Back Office Betties, which also charges a $399 onboarding fee. The general live services run from $395 at AnswerConnect and $479 at PATLive to $645 at Smith.ai (before its $1.50 booking and $0.50 conflicts-check add-ons) and $1,725 at Ruby. Four legal services attorneys see recommended most often, Answering Legal, LEX Reception, Alert Communications and Nexa, publish no price at all; you fill in a form and a salesperson calls back. All figures come from the provider's own pricing page, checked in September 2026.

The AI options are far cheaper: about $105 on Smith.ai's AI receptionist at that volume and a flat $89 for PhoneAgent.ai Starter. The difference is not only the rate. Legal intake calls are long, five minutes is normal and a distressed caller can run ten, so a per-minute plan punishes exactly the calls you most want answered well. A flat plan does not care how long the caller needs.

There is a second cost that the rate cards hide: rounding. AnswerConnect rounds every call up to the whole minute, so a 5:05 call bills as six minutes, and across 60 calls that is roughly 30 extra minutes a month. Back Office Betties makes a point of billing to the quarter minute for that reason. The answering service cost page walks through rounding and overage math for every major provider, and the lawyer answering service cost breakdown covers the legal-only add-ons.

The best answering service for attorneys is the one that books the consultation on the call, captures conflicts details on every call, and bills in a way that survives a busy month. On those three tests the field separates quickly.

If you want a legal-trained live receptionist and you can afford $300 to $1,300 a month, Back Office Betties, Veza Reception and LexHelper are the legal-only services that publish their prices and let you compare before a sales call. Back Office Betties lists CRM and legal tool integrations plus Acuity or Calendly booking on its pricing page, and Veza names Clio, MyCase and PracticePanther on its site. Answering Legal and LEX Reception have long track records with law firms and the deepest published integration lists (Clio, MyCase, Lawmatics, PracticePanther, Smokeball, and Filevine at LEX), but both make you request a quote, which means you cannot compare them on price here or anywhere else.

If you want the widest set of add-ons, Smith.ai's receptionist plans bolt on booking, conflicts checks, payments and a dedicated Spanish line, each billed per call. The per-call model is simple to predict but expensive at intake volume.

If you are a solo attorney or a firm of two to five lawyers and the goal is simply that nobody who calls your firm reaches voicemail, and that the promising ones leave the call with a consultation on your calendar, an AI attorney answering service does that at a fraction of the cost and answers every caller at once. PhoneAgent.ai is $89 a month on Starter, $199 on Professional with warm transfer, and $399 on Practice. The best answering service for lawyers comparison ranks the same providers by practice size and practice area.

Intake, yes. The conflicts check itself, no, at any provider. What a service can do is gather the inputs your team needs to run the check: the caller's full name, the opposing party or parties, the matter type and the county. PhoneAgent.ai asks for those on every prospective client call before it books anything, and it records them in the summary it sends you, so your assistant can clear the conflict before the consultation is held rather than after.

It also stays inside the lines a legal answering service must not cross. It does not assess the merits of a matter, predict an outcome, quote a fee you have not published, or tell a caller whether they have a case. When a caller pushes for advice, it says the attorney will answer that at the consultation and books it. Callers who say they are already represented, or who name a party you have flagged, are routed to you or your intake staff instead of being booked.

PhoneAgent.ai does not write into Clio, MyCase, Lawmatics, PracticePanther, Smokeball or Filevine, and we would rather say so here than let you find out during setup. It books the consultation into Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly or Acuity, which most practice management systems sync with, and it sends every intake summary by text and email so it can be pasted or forwarded into the matter.

If a new lead must appear in your legal CRM automatically, without anyone touching it, look at the live services that publish integration lists: Answering Legal and LEX Reception both name Clio, MyCase, Lawmatics, PracticePanther and Smokeball on their integrations pages (LEX adds Filevine and Acuity), Veza Reception names Clio, MyCase and PracticePanther, Back Office Betties lists CRM and legal tool integrations, and Smith.ai lists CRM integrations as included. Ask each one which fields are written and whether the integration costs extra, because at Smith.ai several of the intake features that feed a CRM are per-call add-ons.

For most solo and small-firm practices the AI wins on the three things that decide whether a call becomes a client: it answers every call at once, it books the consultation during the call, and its bill does not climb in the month a news story or a referral source sends you thirty calls. A live receptionist answers one call at a time, often ends the call with a message rather than a booking, and bills the long intake calls by the minute.

A live legal receptionist is the better buy in two situations. The first is a high-value contingency practice, such as serious injury or mass tort, where the first call is effectively a sales conversation and the firm wants a trained human to build rapport and keep the caller from phoning the next firm. The second is a practice whose intake requires judgment on the call, such as deciding in real time whether to accept a walk-in criminal matter at 2am. In both cases Back Office Betties, Veza Reception or Answering Legal are worth the quote, and the honest comparison is on the AI receptionist vs human receptionist page.

Everything else, the divorce inquiry, the will, the DUI, the landlord dispute, the small business contract, is a call where the caller wants to know that a real firm picked up and that they have an appointment. An AI attorney answering service does that on the first ring for $89 a month.

It fits solo practitioners and firms of two to ten attorneys whose phone rings while everyone is in court or with clients: personal injury, family law, criminal defense, estate planning, immigration, bankruptcy, employment, real estate closings and small business practices. The common pattern is a small team, a phone that rings during working hours and after them, and matters worth thousands of dollars each. Criminal defense and personal injury get the most out of the 24/7 coverage because their callers phone at night and on weekends and retain whoever answers.

If your practice is a firm of twenty or more attorneys with a staffed intake department, the legal answering service page covers overflow and after-hours coverage for larger firms, and the AI receptionist for law firms page covers the intake-heavy configuration. Firms with Spanish-speaking callers should read the bilingual legal answering service comparison, because the Spanish hours and surcharges differ sharply between providers.