Your phone is off in a courtroom. Theirs isn't.
People call a lawyer on the worst day of their month. A termination letter, a car accident, a relative in a holding cell. They search, they call the first firm that looks right, and if a solo attorney is at a hearing or in a client meeting, they get voicemail. Then they call the second firm on the list.
A missed intake call at a firm isn't like one at a plumber's, though. The reply can't just answer the question, because the question is usually legal. So the job here is narrow: give the caller a way to book a consultation, send anything substantive to you rather than answer it, and say nothing that sounds like advice or an engagement. Below is where that line sits.
The text says
- Who you are, and that the text is automated
- That it isn't legal advice and doesn't make you their lawyer
- A request not to send details of the matter by text
- Your consultation booking link, and your consult fee if you set one
- Once a reply needs a lawyer, only that someone will get back to them
It never says
- Whether they have a case, or what it's worth
- Anything about deadlines, charges, or what to do next legally
- "We can help" or "we'll take this" before a conflict check
- Questions about what happened, who's involved, or the other side
- Fee estimates for the matter itself
The right-hand list is written into the firm's intake as things the agent must never say. A second model reviews every draft against that intake before it sends. One that breaks a rule gets one rewrite; a second failure never reaches the caller, and you get an alert to call them back.
Three texts from a made-up firm.
Wrenfield Law doesn't exist. The shape does: every first text names the firm, says it's automated, and ends with the opt-out line, in 300 characters or fewer. The counts below are computed from the text itself.
A new inquiry, the first text
Every disclosure the firm asked for, and still under the cap. The price of all that disclosure is that there's no room for warmth. Don't try to add it.
A reply that sounds urgent
The agent doesn't try to triage a criminal matter, and it never tells them to call the line that just missed them. It says someone will call back, and you get an urgent Slack alert with what was sent. With a hearing that afternoon, that promise has to be kept, and if you're in court all day, someone at the firm needs to be watching those alerts.
A reply that asks the real question
The question gets no answer by text. The agent sends this holding reply, and you get a Slack alert with the question and a note to call them back. As a later text in the thread, it skips the firm name and the opt-out line.
The templates page has another law-firm opener next to other trades'.
Is an automated text to a caller a solicitation?
Here is what the ABA's model text says. It isn't advice, and it isn't the rule you practice under: each state adopts its own version, and some differ from the model in ways that matter for advertising and client contact.
Model Rule 7.3, solicitation
Rule 7.3 defines solicitation as a communication initiated by or on behalf of a lawyer, directed to a specific person the lawyer knows or reasonably should know needs legal services in a particular matter, that offers or can reasonably be understood to offer those services. The comment adds two points that bear on this agent. A communication responding to a request for information is not a solicitation. And the restriction on live person-to-person contact doesn't cover text messages. The agent is built around that distinction: it only texts someone who phoned first. Whether a missed call counts as a request for information under your state's version of the rule is a question for your ethics counsel. Rule 7.3(c) also bars soliciting anyone who has made known a desire not to be solicited, which is roughly what a STOP reply enforces.
Model Rule 1.18, prospective clients
Under Rule 1.18, a person who consults a lawyer about possibly forming a client-lawyer relationship is a prospective client. What you learn from them is protected even if you never take the matter, and learning enough of it can bar you, and your firm, from representing someone on the other side of the same or a substantially related matter. That is why these texts ask for nothing about the matter. The conflict check happens with a person, before anyone describes the facts.
ABA Formal Opinion 512, generative AI
Issued July 29, 2024, Formal Opinion 512 says lawyers using generative AI tools must consider their existing duties, including protecting client information and supervising the people and tools that work for them. It notes that Rule 1.18 extends confidentiality protection to prospective clients. This agent is a generative AI tool working on your behalf, so the opinion is worth reading before you sign anything, including with me.
The texting side works like any other business: the agent only replies to people who called, sends nothing between 8 pm and 8 am in your time zone, stops for good on STOP, and blocks promotional language. The number runs under Twilio's messaging policy. Take the whole setup to your state bar's ethics resources or your own ethics counsel before it goes live.
What the caller says is read by a model. Know that going in.
An unanswered call gets a short spoken message and the tone, and the caller can leave a voicemail. Twilio records it and transcribes it, and the agent reads the transcript to write the first text. It reads each reply to write the next one. So whatever a caller says or types, including facts about their matter, passes through the phone provider and the AI provider that powers the agent. The first text asks people not to send details, but by then some will have left them in the voicemail, and it can't stop someone from typing them anyway.
Voicemail transcripts and conversation text are kept for 90 days; the recordings themselves are held by Twilio. Every call and text is logged to HubSpot, or to any intake tool that accepts a webhook; alerts reach you in Slack. The agent doesn't write into Clio or any practice-management system directly. It attaches by call forwarding from your cell and by linking the consultation page you already use. If the firm's published number rings a desk phone on an office landline instead, read missed-call text back for a landline before you assume it can't work. The forwarding codes differ by carrier, and a caller who rings from a landline of their own still gets no text. If your confidentiality analysis says what a prospective client types can't go to a third-party model, stop here. That is a real reason not to buy.
The money is rarely the reason to say no.
$249 a month, plus AI usage and phone line costs, typically $20–40 a month, with no setup fee. Month to month, a 30-day cancel for any reason, and the number ports out with you.
Try it with example numbers. You miss 3 intake calls a week while in court: about 13 a month. If one caller in ten would have retained you at a $3,000 flat fee, that's 1.3 retainers, or about $3,900 a month, against roughly $289 for the agent. Your practice area moves those numbers more than anything on this page.
If what you want is a live voice on every call, look at an answering service built for that. As of September 2026, Smith.ai lists its AI receptionist as free for 25 calls a month ($3 a call after), with paid plans at $150 and $500 a month, month to month, on its pricing page. A voice answer suits callers in crisis better than a text.
Pass on this if
- Your practice lives on night calls. A call after 8 pm isn't texted until 8 am. You get any voicemail right away, but nobody talks to the caller that night.
- You have a receptionist or answering service already catching intake calls in business hours.
- Your work is referral-only transactional practice, where new clients rarely cold-call.
- Your confidentiality review rules out a prospective client's texts passing through an AI provider.
The setup steps, the review pass, and the carrier verification (about three business days) are on the missed-call text back page. Whether a text wins back a caller at all is weighed in does it work.
