The legal profession is fast-paced, filled with client meetings, court appearances, and constant travel. As a result, it’s nearly impossible for attorneys to answer every incoming call. That’s where a legal answering service or lawyer answering service becomes essential.
These services help ensure that potential clients are greeted professionally and that no opportunity slips through the cracks. With the rise of remote work and always-on technology, using a virtual receptionist for law firms has become a popular way to improve client service, capture more leads, and maintain a competitive edge.
What Are Virtual Receptionist Services?
Virtual receptionist services are a modern solution for law firms aiming to increase efficiency, professionalism, and responsiveness. These services provide a remote team trained to answer calls 24/7, ensuring your firm never misses a potential lead or important client communication.
A law firm answering service can manage a wide range of tasks, including message taking, appointment scheduling, call forwarding, and responding to common questions from both new and existing clients. By handling these responsibilities, a virtual receptionist for law firms helps your team stay focused on casework without sacrificing responsiveness.
For firms seeking the best answering service for lawyers, it’s important to find one that understands the unique needs of legal professionals: confidentiality, accuracy, and a strong client-first approach. The best legal answering service will seamlessly integrate with your workflows while delivering an exceptional client experience from the first call.
Why Use a Legal Answering Service?
An attorney answering service offers advantages like round-the-clock accessibility, positive first impressions, no missed calls, and fast answers for your potential client's phone calls. These live answering services are typically more cost-effective than having an internal employee while still allowing your callers to speak to a real person. Additionally, it means that the client intake process can begin when it's most convenient for your clients — even after hours.
Not answering new client calls leaves clients with the impression that their call isn't important to your firm and often leads them to call another lawyer.
This is such a problem that the American Bar Association estimates 42% of leads have to wait 3 or more days to get a response to their voicemail from law firms. That statistic implies that you have the opportunity to get an edge over competitor firms just by answering the phone and getting them into your CRM software.
Selecting the best provider for your law practice can be difficult because there are so many options. To keep you from being overwhelmed or making a bad decision, Here is a list of some of the best virtual receptionist providers, along with a quick summary of each one's top features.
7 Benefits of Using a Legal Answering Service
Hiring a legal answering service or lawyer answering service can significantly improve your law firm’s efficiency, client satisfaction, and lead conversion. Here are the top benefits:
1. Never Miss a Lead
Legal answering services ensure every call is answered—even after hours or during busy court days. This helps you capture potential clients who might otherwise move on to a competitor.
2. Professional First Impressions
Virtual receptionists are trained to handle legal calls with professionalism and empathy. This gives callers a strong first impression, reinforcing your firm’s credibility.
3. Increased Productivity
By outsourcing routine call handling, your in-house team can stay focused on casework and strategy instead of being interrupted by phone calls throughout the day.
4. 24/7 Availability
Most of the best legal answering services offer round-the-clock support, making your firm available to clients even during nights, weekends, and holidays.
5. Appointment Scheduling & Intake Support
Many services integrate with your CRM or calendar tools, helping you automate appointment setting and basic intake—streamlining your onboarding process.
6. Bilingual Support
Some of the best answering services for lawyers offer bilingual receptionists, which can expand your client base and improve accessibility.
7. Cost-Effective Staffing
Compared to hiring a full-time receptionist, a virtual receptionist for law firms provides flexible coverage at a fraction of the cost—without sacrificing service quality.
10 Best Legal Answering Services: Features & Pricing
Choosing the best legal answering service for your law firm can have a significant impact on your ability to convert leads, manage client communications, and maintain a polished, professional image. Whether you’re a solo attorney or managing a multi-office firm, the right lawyer answering service can ensure that every client call is handled with care—even outside of business hours.
Below, we’ve compiled a list of the top virtual receptionist services for law firms, breaking down their features, pricing models, and what makes each one stand out. These companies offer a range of options, from 24/7 availability to bilingual support and CRM integrations—so you can find the answering service for lawyers that fits your needs and budget.
1. Smith.ai
Smith.ai goes beyond answering phone calls from potential clients and taking their messages. Their live receptionists also monitor incoming text, Facebook, and attorney website chat messages. These virtual receptionists can screen your calls, set up new appointments, place outbound follow-up calls, and collect payment for services rendered.
Pricing for Smith.ai is on a per-call basis rather than per-minute, and the service does not charge for spam or wrong-number calls. The service also has integrations with common tools like Zapier, HubSpot, SalesForce, and more, so you can quickly move lead data from one tool to another.
Features:
- Incoming calls are answered 24 hours a day
- 24/7 Website chat
- CRM Integration
- Appointment scheduling
- Payment collection
- Bilingual receptionists (English & Spanish)
- Overflow call answering
- Call recording
Pricing:
- Smith.ai charges per client call, which is more budget-friendly than other virtual reception services that charge per minute
- Standard plans range from $210 per month to $750 per month (30 calls and 150 calls, respectively). For call volumes over 150 calls per month, custom plans are available
- Fourteen-day money-back guarantee, no cancellation fees
2. Lex Reception
LEX Reception is a 24-hour phone answering service built specifically for lawyers and firms. LEX Receptionists are experts in the legal intake process, making them a perfect tool for the legal practice that's trying to secure every incoming lead.
Every LEX package includes all the technology your firm needs. From a web access dashboard, you can monitor your minutes used and billing, see and change custom scripts, play call recordings, and view real-time analytics.
The LEX mobile app provides updates while on the go. You can quickly check your messages, update your availability, and make calls from your business line while you're away from your law office.
Features:
- Incoming calls are answered 24 hours a day
- 24/7 Website chat
- CRM Integration
- Appointment scheduling
- Bilingual receptionists (English & Spanish)
- Overflow call answering
- Call recording
- Mobile app
Pricing:
- Plans are per minute and start at $325/month for 150 minutes and go up from there
- Extra minutes cost between $1.75 and $1.95 a minute, depending on the plan
- There is a $75 setup fee on the lowest plan
3. AnswerConnect
AnswerConnect is very similar to Lex Reception, with the notable difference being that AnswerConnect is not purpose-built for law firms. That said, they do provide trained legal receptionists.
Don't let the fact that they are built for all types of businesses scare you away before considering them. They are very highly reviewed, scoring particularly well for quality customer service, both for buyers and their clients.
Features:
- Incoming calls are answered 24 hours a day
- 24/7 Website chat
- CRM Integration
- Appointment scheduling
- Payment collection
- Bilingual receptionists (English & Spanish)
- Overflow call answering
- Call recording
Pricing:
- AnswerConnect offers monthly plans based on how many minutes you think you'll use
- Plans can be added to or reduced based on usage
- A product demo is required to get your exact pricing
4. Abby Connect
Abby Connect is another very well-reviewed virtual reception service. Noted for their professionalism when answering calls and detailed call notes, they are considered a trustworthy partner. The team is very enthusiastic, collaborative, flexible, and communicative, and they continuously keep you in the loop.
Features:
- Incoming calls are answered 24 hours a day
- 24/7 Website chat is extra
- CRM Integration
- Appointment scheduling
- Bilingual receptionists (English & Spanish)
- Overflow call answering
- Call recording
- Mobile App
Pricing:
- Plans are per minute and start at $299/month for 100 minutes and go up from there
- No contracts, cancel anytime
5. Ruby
Ruby provides exceptional customer service over the phone and online via website chat to small businesses. They focus on customer service combined with a cutting-edge IT firm. Their live receptionists use specialized tools to customize a caller's or website visitor's experience, respond to frequently asked questions, transfer calls, take messages, and gather data that makes it simple for the law firms they represent to follow up.
Some reviews mention a steeper learning curve with Ruby than with other services on this list, but it is almost universally well-liked and trusted as a virtual receptionist option.
Features:
- Incoming calls are answered 24 hours a day
- 24/7 Website chat for an additional fee
- CRM Integration
- Appointment scheduling
- Bilingual receptionists (English & Spanish)
- Overflow call answering
- Call recording
- Mobile app
Pricing:
- Plans are per minute and start at $219/month for 50 minutes, $349 for 100 minutes, and go up from there
- No contracts, cancel anytime
6. Alert Communications
Another legal industry-only entrant to the list, Alert Communications, has been around since the 1960s. Its technology has evolved over time, and it has worked with thousands of law firms, so it has plenty of experience.
Features:
- Incoming calls are answered 24 hours a day
- CRM Integration
- Appointment scheduling
- Bilingual receptionists (English & Spanish)
- Overflow call answering
- Call recording
Pricing:
- Plans start at $150 per month plus setup fees
- No contracts, cancel anytime
7. AnsweringLegal
Another virtual receptionist exclusive to law firms is Answering Legal. This allows them to employ highly trained legal personnel available to answer your calls.
Answering Legal is a bit of a combination of other services on this list in that they can function as a high-volume call center like Alert, but their focus is on diligently handling and returning your calls, similar to Ruby.
Features:
- Incoming calls are answered 24 hours a day
- CRM Integration
- Appointment scheduling
- Bilingual receptionists (English & Spanish)
- Overflow call answering
- Call recording
Pricing:
- Free trial. Plans for firms of all sizes
- No long-term commitments
- No upcharge for premium features
- Demo required for pricing
8. Back Office Betties
Another popular legal-only virtual receptionist service, Back Office Betties gets high marks for their expertise and friendly service. They offer some premium features, but they are also missing a few key features found in other popular virtual receptionists.
The premium features they offer include processing payments, creating work orders, making outbound calls to follow up with existing clients, and even robust appointment-scheduling software for lawyers.
That said, they are not available 24/7, only during regular business hours, and they do not have a mobile app.
Features:
- Payment processing
- CRM Integration
- Appointment scheduling
- Bilingual receptionists (English & Spanish)
- Overflow call answering
- Call recording
- Website chat is extra
Pricing:
- Plans are per minute and start at $349/month for 100 minutes, $349 for 100 minutes, and go up from there
9. Law Assistant
Law Assistant is another great law firm answering service. They provide highly skilled legal assistants who can do everything from answering calls to client intake and onboarding.
They can also do outbound phone calls, appointment scheduling, and even legal document processing. Their assistants can do much more than just answering phone calls, so you get a full time legal assistant directly integrated into your law firm.
Features:
- Incoming call answering
- Outbound call dialing
- Bilingual receptionists (English & Spanish)
- Appointment scheduling
- Client Intake and onboarding
- Website chat
- CRM integration
Pricing:
- Interview candidates for free
- Plans are $1900 a month for a full-time assistant who works in your time zone.
- No long-term contracts, cancel anytime
10. Techstaunch Solutions
Techstaunch Solutions offers an exceptional virtual receptionist service that is sure to impress legal professionals looking to enhance their client interactions. With 24/7 call handling, clients can access support anytime, ensuring that every inquiry is addressed promptly, which significantly boosts overall client satisfaction. The bilingual support feature is particularly valuable, allowing firms to engage effectively with a broader audience and eliminating language barriers.
Additionally, the integration of AI for message management streamlines communication, capturing messages accurately and delivering them in a timely manner. This innovative approach enables law firms to focus on their core operations, knowing that client communications are managed efficiently. Moreover, with tailored pricing options available, Techstaunch Solutions provides flexibility that accommodates various budgets, making it an attractive choice for firms seeking quality service without exorbitant costs.
Features:
- Bilingual support
- Urgent message escalation
- Professional call handling
- Appointment scheduling
- Secure encrypted communication
- Integration with legal software
- Customizable services
Pricing:
- $50 to $300 per month, depending on the features selected and the volume of calls handled.
How Much Does a Virtual Receptionist Cost?
The cost of a virtual receptionist for law firms can vary based on call volume, features, availability (24/7 vs business hours), and whether the provider offers legal-specific support. Most legal answering services offer monthly plans based on either the number of minutes used or the number of calls handled.
Here’s a general pricing breakdown:
- Per-minute plans typically start around $200–$350/month for 100–150 minutes. Additional minutes are usually billed at $1.50–$2.00 each.
- Per-call plans (offered by services like Smith.ai) range from $210–$750/month, depending on call volume and included features.
- Flat-rate or full-time assistant options can range from $1,500–$2,000/month, especially if you want a dedicated receptionist for your firm.
Keep in mind that the best answering service for lawyers is not just about price—features like bilingual support, CRM integration, call recording, and legal intake expertise can make a big difference in value. Many providers also offer free trials or money-back guarantees, so you can test their service before committing.
How to Integrate a Virtual Answering Assistant into Your Law Firm in 5 Steps
Integrating a virtual receptionist for your law firm is a straightforward process that can significantly improve your operations and client communication. Most legal answering services are designed to work seamlessly with your existing tools and workflows.
If you haven’t already, check out our guide on how to define the target market for your law firm to ensure you’re aligning your intake strategy with the right audience.
Here’s how to get started:
1. Choose the Right Provider
Look for the best legal answering service that fits your firm’s size, call volume, and specific needs—such as bilingual support or legal intake expertise.
2. Customize Your Call Scripts
Work with the provider to develop call scripts tailored to your practice area. This ensures the receptionist can answer FAQs, gather accurate intake information, and forward calls to the right person.
3. Sync with Your Tools
Most lawyer answering services integrate with common CRMs, case management software, and calendar tools. This helps automate appointment booking, follow-ups, and lead tracking.
4. Set Call Routing Rules
Decide when and how calls should be forwarded—during business hours, after hours, or based on urgency. You stay in control while the service filters and manages call flow.
5. Monitor & Optimize
Review call logs, transcripts, and performance dashboards provided by the service. Many top providers offer real-time analytics to help you refine scripts and improve conversions.
By taking these steps, you can seamlessly integrate a virtual answering assistant into your firm and deliver a more responsive, professional client experience—without the cost of additional staff.
Selecting the Best Virtual Answering Service For Your Law Firm
It's key to do your research and determine which virtual answering service best matches your needs and budget. It’s essential to research each provider’s features, availability, and legal-specific expertise to ensure they align with your firm’s goals, caseload, and client expectations.
Without a reliable system in place to manage and respond to calls after hours or during busy court days, your firm may be unknowingly losing qualified leads. Even one missed call could represent a lost case—and a lost client for life.
A great place to start is our article on the legal intake process. Without a system to track and answer calls when you are not available, you have no idea how many cases you are leaving on the table due to missed calls.
