What is a legal intake phone service?
The term turns up in searches more each year, and the services it describes range from a message-taking receptionist to an automated system that files the enquiry to the matter. This page gives the definition we use, what separates intake from answering, what a service has to capture, and what it must never do.
The test is what the firm has after the call. Voicemail leaves a recording, a receptionist leaves a message, and an intake service leaves an intake on the file.
What a legal intake phone service is not
Four things a firm might buy instead, and what each leaves behind.
- Voicemail
- Leaves a recording the lawyer has to listen to, return and write up. Most prospective clients do not leave one; they ring the next firm.
- A virtual receptionist
- A person answers in the firm's name and takes a message: name, number, a line about the matter. The lawyer still makes the call back and still writes the note. Charged per call or per minute on top of a monthly fee.
- An AI receptionist
- An automated agent that answers and takes a message or books a time. Generic ones do not know what a conflict check needs or what a limitation date is, and most leave the message in their own portal rather than on the matter.
- A legal phone system
- Records, transcribes and files the calls a lawyer takes, and saves time to the matter. It does nothing with the call nobody took except send it to voicemail.
What it has to capture
Enough to open a file and run a conflict check, or it has only created another call to make.
- The caller's full name and the number to call back on. The number they are calling from is not always the one they want used.
- The other party's full name. For the conflict check, which the firm runs before the first appointment. The service collects the name; it does not run the check.
- The matter in the caller's own words. Not a category picked from a list. The words are what the lawyer reads first.
- Any date that is close. A court date, a settlement date, a limitation period the caller knows about. It goes on the first line of the summary.
- What the caller wants to happen next. A call back, an appointment, a quote, or to be put through now.
- How they found the firm. The only way a small practice learns which of its marketing works.
Then the handover. A qualified new enquiry, one the firm can act on in an area it practises, with no date too close to help, is transferred to whoever is on intake with a one-line briefing, or booked for a call back at a time the caller chose. Everything else is a message. Either way the record lands on the matter, not in a portal, which is what makes it intake rather than answering. Our guide to file notes for phone calls covers what belongs on the matter.
What it must not do
Give legal advice
The service collects facts and hands them to a lawyer. The moment it tells a caller what their position is, or whether a date has passed, it has stopped being intake.
Run or imply a conflict check
It takes the other party's name so the firm can run the check. It never tells a caller the firm can act, and it never confirms whether the firm acts for anyone.
Pretend to be a person
An automated service says it is automated when asked, and tells every caller at the start that the call is transcribed, as Australian law requires. EzyBiz LEX's
Take payment details or change them
Payment instructions are never changed on the strength of a call; settlement fraud reaches firms by phone as well as email.
How a legal intake phone service is priced
Three models. A human service charges a monthly access fee of $25 to $49 and then $2.45 to $3.99 a call or $2.99 a minute before GST, with transfers, texts and after-hours calls often on top. An AI receptionist charges $49 to $499 a month with a minute or call allowance, and some add a setup fee. A flat plan charges the same whatever the volume: EzyBiz LEX includes
Questions about legal intake phone services
No. A virtual receptionist answers in the firm's name and takes a message, which the lawyer then has to read, return and write up. An intake service takes the details needed to open a file and run a conflict check, qualifies the enquiry, and either transfers it to the firm's intake person or books the call back, with the record filed to the matter. The difference is what the firm has after the call: a message, or an intake.
It must not. The service's job ends at collecting the facts, qualifying the enquiry and handing it to a lawyer. EzyBiz LEX's
No. It collects the other party's full name so the firm can run the check before the first appointment. A service that tells a caller the firm can act has gone past intake.
Human answering services charge a monthly fee plus per call or per minute, and AI receptionists a monthly plan with a minute allowance; our cost guide works through published 2026 prices at 30, 80 and 150 calls a month. EzyBiz LEX includes the intake service on the business line at A$79.99 a month per lawyer with GST included and nothing per call, with
A phone system records the calls a lawyer takes. Intake is what happens to the calls nobody took, so it needs something that answers: a person, or an automated service on the line. EzyBiz LEX is the system on our phone systems guide that has one built in; the others send the call to voicemail.
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EzyBiz LEX is the lawyer's phone system: a law firm phone system with a law firm answering service built in, which also works as a virtual receptionist for law firms and an AI receptionist for law firms. It answers when you can't, and files every call to the matter.