Tuesday, 9:10 p.m. A driver rear-ended on the way home from work calls your firm’s main line. The answering service picks up on the fourth ring, takes a name and a number, and emails your intake specialist one line: caller wants to discuss a matter. No practice area, no date of the crash, no good time to call back. At 8:30 the next morning the callback goes to voicemail, and the phone tag starts.
Firm owners say the same thing in fewer words. One on r/LawFirm: “We used to pay for one of those premium legal intake call centers and they were charging us an absolute fortune just to leave generic voicemails. canceled that real quick.” (r/LawFirm) Another firm runs AI after hours and says it “feels more like a band-aid than a long-term fix” (r/LawFirm). Both routes can work well. This post sets a law firm answering service beside an AI receptionist, with prices from the vendors’ own pages, so you can run the sum on your own calls.
Count your own night calls first
Before comparing anyone’s prices, pull last month’s call log from your phone system or carrier. Count three things: evening calls after five, weekend calls and calls that came in while every line was busy. Then note how long the average call ran. Then strike out the spam, the robocalls and the wrong numbers, because some services bill for those and some don’t.
A new solo on r/LawFirm worried about paying a per-minute service to pick up spam all day. The sums below use 100 and 300 calls a month. Swap in your own count.
How live answering services charge
Services with people on the phones bill in one of two ways, by the call or by the minute. Both kinds publish their prices, which keeps the comparison honest.
Smith.ai’s pricing page, as listed in November 2026, bills by the call. Its live receptionist plans run 30 calls for $300 a month, 90 calls for $810 and 300 calls for $2,100. A call past the plan costs $11.50, $10.50 or $8.50, by plan. Five short intake questions come with every plan, and spam is not billed when caller ID comes through. Extras are priced on each call: $1.50 to book a consultation, $1.00 for a Spanish line, $0.50 for conflict-check questions.
Ruby’s pricing page, the same month, bills by the minute: 50 minutes for $250 a month, 100 for $395, 200 for $720 and 500 for $1,725. Bilingual answering and intake are listed among its options.
What an AI receptionist on a flat plan costs
AI receptionists are sold in more than one way. Some bill by the minute or by the call, just like a live service, so read their pricing pages with the same care. Others come inside a monthly plan that doesn’t count calls at all, so a slow August and a busy January cost the same.
Three questions tell you which kind you are looking at. Is there a cap on calls or minutes? Does Spanish cost extra? Does booking the consultation cost extra?
The sum at 100 calls a month
Say your firm gets 100 calls a month after hours and on busy lines.
| Route | What 100 calls cost |
|---|---|
| Per call (Smith.ai) | $915: the 90-call plan, plus 10 calls at $10.50 |
| Per call, booking every caller | $1,065 |
| Per minute, 3 minutes a call (Ruby) | 300 minutes: the 500-minute plan, $1,725 |
| AI receptionist on a flat plan | The plan’s monthly price, unchanged |
Call length changes the answer. A two-minute message fits a smaller plan; a call that asks intake questions and books a time runs longer. Time a dozen of your own calls before you pick a plan.
The sum at 300 calls a month
Now take a busy personal injury or criminal defense firm, with 300 calls a month outside office hours.
| Route | What 300 calls cost |
|---|---|
| Per call (Smith.ai) | $2,100 on the 300-call plan |
| Per call, booking every caller | $2,550 |
| Per call, booking and Spanish | $2,850 |
| Per minute, 3 minutes a call (Ruby) | 900 minutes: above every listed plan, so by quote |
| AI receptionist on a flat plan | The plan’s monthly price, unchanged |
Per-call rates drop as the plans grow, yet the bill still rises with each call. A flat plan holds still, which matters most to firms whose ads or Local Services Ads bring calls in bursts.
Upset and frightened callers
Here a person often does better. Someone calling about a parent arrested an hour ago, or about divorce papers served at the door, wants a human voice that slows down and says it’s sorry. Good receptionists are trained for that moment. Some callers hang up on any machine, and staff notice: “I personally hate the AI receptionists when I have to call other law firms” (r/paralegal).
An AI receptionist stays calm and doesn’t hurry anyone, but it can’t comfort anyone the way a person can. So the setup that works gives urgent calls a quick way out. When the AI hears an arrest tonight or a hearing tomorrow, it puts the call straight through to the attorney on call.
Spanish-speaking callers
Live services handle Spanish with bilingual staff, sometimes for a fee: Smith.ai’s Spanish line adds $1.00 a call, and Ruby lists bilingual answering as an option. Ask each one who picks up at 11 p.m. on a Sunday, when the bilingual receptionist may already be on another call.
An AI receptionist that speaks Spanish answers in Spanish at any hour and changes language partway through if the caller does. The summary your intake team reads the next morning is in English. For a third language, a live service with interpreters may be the better buy.
Screening, booking and the morning after
Here the gap between the two is widest. A message tells your intake specialist who called. Intake tells them whether the call fits a practice area, when the accident or the arrest happened, and when the consultation is booked.
One firm on r/LawFirm asked for exactly that: a service that can “follow a basic screening flow” and book the consultation “without creating cleanup for the team the next morning” (r/LawFirm). Live services screen well when the script is short; longer intake and booking are extras on most per-call plans. An AI receptionist asks your firm’s own questions, practice area by practice area, books the consultation on your calendar, and leaves a summary and a transcript on the caller’s record.
Neither route gives legal advice. The AI says at the start that it is your firm’s AI assistant, not a lawyer, and it never tells a caller whether they have a case.
When to keep a person on the phone
An AI receptionist isn’t the right answer for every call. Keep a human answering when:
- your daytime main line is how most clients reach you, and your receptionist knows them by name
- your callers are often in crisis and you would rather pay per call than risk a hang-up
- you get fewer than 30 calls a month after hours, where a small per-call plan stays cheap
- your callers need a language beyond English and Spanish
Plenty of firms split the work. The front desk answers by day, and the AI takes nights, weekends and the calls that arrive while every line is busy.
Where RetainerBooked fits
RetainerBooked includes an AI receptionist on every plan. It answers in your firm’s name, in English or Spanish, asks your screening questions, books the consultation and puts urgent callers through to your phone. Your own team still answers by day. All of it is on every plan, and the price depends on how many of your people sign in, with the first tier at $97 a month. The plans don’t count calls, so 100 calls and 300 calls cost the same. Bring last month’s call log to a demo and we’ll run the sum with your numbers.
RetainerBooked
RetainerBooked runs intake, phones and websites for US law firms with 1 to 10 lawyers. We write each post around something an owner or intake manager asked us on a call.
