Answering Legal Pricing: What to Ask Before a Quote

You have seen Answering Legal in an ad or among your case software's add-ons, and you want a number before a sales call. Its open pages show no dollar price, and its pricing page asks for your contact details first. So learn how it bills and what to bring to the call.

Quick answer

• Count last month's missed, after-hours and overflow calls and their minutes from your phone log.
• Ask for a written price per package, the overage rate and how a minute is counted.
• Ask how long the trial really is: its own pages give different lengths.
• Run a ten-minute test call and check what reaches your email and CRM (lead-tracking software).
• Ask whether the record keeps the number dialed, so the call can be tied to an ad.

What does Answering Legal say about how it bills?

It bills by the minute, in a monthly package, and its open pages show no dollar figures. Here is what each page states and leaves out.

Its cost page claims "Our average call time is less than 3 minutes." That is the vendor's own claim, and your callers may talk longer.

The "Preview your price" button on the flat-rate page opens an ROI (return on investment) calculator, not a quote.

The pricing-plans page promises "all of our pricing information" on the next page. First it requires six fields: first name, last name, company name, email, cell phone, and whether you are an attorney or asking for a firm. I did not fill in either form.

How many minutes would my firm actually buy?

Count minutes from your own phone records, then add a cushion. Pull last month's call log and fill in this worksheet.

Illustrative: every value in the table and the sums below is made up for an imaginary two-lawyer family law firm, and none comes from a client. The $1.80 rate is invented too, not Answering Legal's.

Minutes: 60 × 4 + 20 × 1 = 260. With a 20% cushion: 260 × 1.2 = 312. Cost: 312 × $1.80 = $561.60. Divide by 4 signed cases and each case costs the firm $140.40 in answering fees.

Repeat it with your numbers and the rate from your quote. If the package is larger than your minutes, you may pay for idle minutes; if smaller, you pay the overage rate on the rest.

Is the free trial really a test?

It can be, but its own pages describe the trial three ways, so get the terms in writing. The trial overview says 7 days of full access with no credit card and no contract, and names no minute limit.

The article on starting the trial says 14 days, and the one on what happens after calls it a 400-minute trial. The legal intake page offers "400 minutes of expert answering" and says "get 14 days free."

At the end, the team sends a usage report and recommends a monthly plan from your trial data. If you stop, service ends "with no charges and no contract obligations."

This test takes about ten minutes and two phones:

1. Once the onboarding specialist has your forwarding live, wait for your office to close.
2. From a second phone, call your firm's number with a made-up case.
3. Time how long until the message reaches your email or app.
4. Open your CRM and find the new lead.
5. Look for the number you dialed and the source. Note what is missing.
6. Ask for the usage report and compare its minutes with your stopwatch.

What should the quote spell out?

Ask for each of these as a written line, not a phone answer.

• Package sizes, each with its monthly price.
• The overage rate per minute.
• How a minute is counted: rounding, a minimum per call, hold and transfer time.
• Whether spam and wrong numbers use minutes.
• Whether unused minutes roll over.
• How much notice you get before a price change.
• The trial length, minute limit and what happens on the last day.
• The notice needed to cancel, and the date of your final invoice.
• What you can export when you leave: messages, intake answers and any call recordings.

How per-minute, per-call and per-booking bills compare prices one month three ways. For a rival's plan sizes, see Smith.ai pricing.

That first post also covers ABA Model Rule 5.3, whose text reaches nonlawyers a lawyer employs or retains. Each state adopts its own version, and I am not a lawyer, so treat this as a pointer, not legal advice. In Canada, provincial and territorial law societies set the rules; the Federation of Law Societies' Model Code says a lawyer "must directly supervise staff and assistants" (rule 6.1-1).

Will the call record keep the ad that paid for it?

Only if the firm sets it up, as far as its pages show. Its "what gets synced" articles list caller details and intake answers, not the number dialed or the ad.

For Clio Grow, the sync article lists name, message content, custom intake answers, phone and email (Clio Grow sync). For Lawmatics, it lists name, phone, email, a call summary and the intake answers in Notes (Lawmatics sync). Neither mentions recordings or a transcript.

Two articles come closer. For Google's Local Services Ads, the help center describes a unique tracking number tied to the ad and says the team notes that ad origin in your messages. Its intake article lists "Referral source," but that is what the caller says, not the ad they saw.

So the firm sets up the source itself:

• Buy one tracking number per ad source, such as Google Ads and your map listing. A tracking number is a separate line shown in one place only, so a call to it came from there.
• Forward each tracking number to the service.
• Ask the receptionists to record the dialed number as an intake answer, since those sync.
• Add an outcome field in the CRM: signed, not a case, wrong area, spam.

How a law firm CRM stores a call and its outcome shows the record to aim for. Ask sales whether every tracked line can be flagged like that one.

How far can I trust the reviews?

Treat each source as one kind of evidence:

• Testimonials on the vendor's site are chosen by the vendor.
• A Reddit thread is one person's story.
• An employee review on a jobs site describes working there, not buying the service.

For customer ratings, I tried G2, Capterra and Clio's App Directory on 2026-10-20, and all three returned an access error, so I quote no score. Open them yourself and read the newest reviews first, looking for billing surprises and missed calls.

Prices and rules checked on 2026-10-20.