Legal intake software for law firms: AI client intake that books the consult

Legal intake software sits between a stranger raising their hand and a signed client. It captures the inquiry from wherever it lands, gathers the facts of the matter, screens it against what the firm actually takes, runs the conflict check, collects the records the attorney will need, and books the consultation.

Legal intake solutions range from a static web form bolted onto a case management system to a human answering service to, now, an AI that runs the whole intake conversation. They all promise the same outcome, more inquiries turned into signed clients, but they do very different amounts of the actual work. The difference that matters is whether the solution merely records a lead for a person to follow up on later, or whether it answers, qualifies, and books on its own the moment the inquiry arrives.

Most products in this category are built around a form. The form collects fields, drops the lead in a pipeline, and then a paralegal or an intake coordinator picks it up, calls back, asks the questions the form could not ask, and starts chasing documents. That handoff is where firms lose leads, because the callback happens hours later and the potential client has already spoken to two other firms.

An intake form cannot ask a follow-up question. When a potential client writes "car accident, three weeks ago" into a text box, a form has no way to ask whether they saw a doctor, whether the other driver was insured, or whether they already signed with another firm. Those answers decide whether the matter is worth a consult.

A conversation can ask. Consultations runs the intake as an actual conversation, so it probes where the answer matters and stops where it does not. The result is not a set of form fields, it is a brief the attorney can read in ninety seconds before walking into the consult.

The case for taking intake seriously is not a matter of opinion. Studies of how law firms handle inbound leads point to the same conclusion: most firms respond too slowly, and slow response is the single largest source of lost cases. The gap is widest at nights and weekends, when many legal inquiries actually arrive and most offices roll to voicemail.

These are the figures worth keeping in front of you when you evaluate any intake tool. The question to ask of each product is simple: does it move these numbers, or just record them after the fact?

Consultations asks the conflict-relevant questions your firm defines and surfaces the answers in the brief. It flags what the firm told it to flag. It does not make the conflicts determination, and it does not clear a matter. A lawyer at the firm reviews and decides, which is where that decision belongs.

The same guardrail runs through everything else the agent does. Consultations handles intake, fact-gathering, matter screening, and scheduling. It never gives legal advice to a potential client, and it never tells someone whether they have a case. Your attorneys advise, every time.

Almost every legal intake product is priced per lawyer, per call, or by quote. Clio Grow is a $59 per user per month add-on on top of a Clio Manage plan (checked July 2026), so a five-attorney firm on the Essentials plan pays $89 plus $59 per user, which is $740 a month before anyone answers a phone. Smith.ai publishes clear per-call pricing, but the base plan caps included intake at five short-answer questions and meters real discovery after that.

Consultations is priced per firm, not per seat: $49 a month for a solo, $129 for up to five professionals, $299 for up to twenty. Intake volume is what varies between firms, not headcount, so that is what the plan tracks. Compare the models honestly on the pricing page before you commit to any of them.