Two quite different products are sold under this heading. One is a general answering service that will happily take calls for a law firm using a script you wrote. The other is a desk staffed by operators who take legal calls all day and have a tested questionnaire for each practice area. They price differently and they fail differently, and the choice depends on how much of the intake work you want to own.
A general operator with your script
This is the cheaper route and for many firms it is sufficient. You write the questions, the provider's operators read them, and the output is a structured message. The work of designing intake stays with the firm, which is an advantage if you have a view about how it should be done and a problem if you do not. The failure mode is the unusual caller: an operator who takes legal calls occasionally will not recognise when a caller is describing something time-critical unless your script told them the words to listen for.
A legal intake desk
Here the provider brings the questionnaire. Operators are trained on practice areas, have heard thousands of calls of the same shape, and generally handle a distressed caller better because they are not encountering the situation for the first time. You pay for that, both in a higher rate and often in a setup process that takes longer. The trade is that intake quality stops depending on how well the firm wrote a script it has never tested.
What both must refuse
Neither may advise, assess a limitation period, estimate a case value or tell a caller they have a claim. The specialist desk is if anything more at risk here, because operators who know the vocabulary sound authoritative and callers press them. Whichever route you take, the script needs an explicit refusal sentence and the operator needs to be instructed to read it rather than paraphrase. Ask to see how that sentence is stored, because one held in training rather than in the script will not survive a night shift.
What the record shows for legal cover
Eight of the nine providers checked here keep a live page aimed at legal work, which is the widest industry cover in this record, and all eight publish an entry price. Those run from thirty dollars a month at the pay-as-you-go end to three hundred and ninety nine at the top, a wider spread than the market as a whole, and the spread tracks how much intake work the plan expects the operator to do rather than any quality ranking.
Questions people ask about legal answering services
What is the difference between legal answering services and general ones?
Who writes the intake. A general operator reads a script your firm designed; a legal intake desk brings a tested questionnaire per practice area and operators who take these calls all day. The second costs more and removes the risk of an untested script.
How much do legal answering services cost?
Eight of the nine providers in this record keep a legal page and all publish a price, from thirty dollars a month at the pay-as-you-go end to three hundred and ninety nine at the top. The spread tracks how much intake work the plan expects, not quality.
Can a legal answering service give advice?
No, and a specialist desk is more at risk here than a general one because operators who know the vocabulary sound authoritative and callers press them. The script needs a refusal sentence the operator reads rather than paraphrases.
Should a small firm use a specialist legal desk?
It depends on whether you have a tested view of how intake should run. If you do, a general operator reading your script is cheaper and works. If you do not, buying the questionnaire is usually worth the higher rate.