What happens to new inquiries
In Clio's 2024 secret-shopper study, a research firm posed as prospects and contacted 500 US law firms. According to a Utah Center for Legal Inclusion summary of the study, 40% of firms answered the call and 33% responded to email. In 2019 the numbers were 56% and 40%. And 48% of firms neither answered nor called back.
The same summary says shoppers who spoke to a person were nearly eight times as likely to recommend the firm as shoppers who got only a voicemail follow-up. That cuts two ways. Speed counts. So does a person who takes over from there.
Firms are also using AI. Clio's 2026 Solo and Small Legal Trends Report says 75% of small firms use AI, and 55% of small firms have no AI policy in place. Clio also found that fewer than a third of firms increased revenue with AI, according to Law360. Those figures are about AI use in general, mostly general-purpose tools. They say nothing about intake agents, and nothing in them suggests one raises revenue.
What the intake agent does
An AI client intake agent handles the first conversation when someone reaches out to your firm. It does four jobs.
- Capture the inquiry. It takes the call, the web form, or the text, and writes down who is asking and what they say happened.
- Qualify it. It asks factual questions: the practice area, how urgent it is, the state, and whether the person already has a lawyer. Florida's ethics opinion suggests screening questions that stop the conversation when the person is already represented.
- Book a consultation. It offers open times on the calendar.
- Follow up after a missed call. It contacts the caller so the inquiry doesn't sit unanswered. Texting a missed caller has its own rules, which the missed-call follow-up post covers for home services. Check how they apply to yours.
Booking is the odd one out: neither the Oregon nor the Florida opinion addresses it by name. Scheduling is an administrative step, though that's a plain reading, not a cited rule. The confirmation message should not read like an engagement, and the attorney should be the one to decide that wording.
Vendor pages for these tools cite conversion lifts and lost-call percentages. Those are marketing claims, not independent findings.
What the attorney keeps
The main source here is Oregon State Bar Formal Opinion 2026-208, approved in February 2026. It asks whether lawyers may use chatbots to communicate with potential clients on their websites, including for client intake and AI agents. Its answer is yes, with conditions. It is one state's opinion, not a national rule. Here is what it leaves with the lawyer.
- Whether a relationship has formed. A prospect's reasonable belief can create an attorney-client relationship, so the opinion says a lawyer or trained staff member should be notified of each interaction and review it. That review decides whether a relationship formed, whether other duties arose, and whether to proceed or tell the prospect no relationship will follow.
- Conflict checks. What a prospect tells a chatbot can disqualify the firm from adverse work. The opinion says lawyers should promptly enter the prospect into the conflict management system. An agent can log every contact for the conflict check. The sign-off is the attorney's.
- Legal advice. A chatbot that gives legal advice can implicate the lawyer in unauthorized practice of law and misstate what the firm offers. The agent should gather facts and leave the assessment of the case alone.
- The decision to take the matter. The opinion's own example is an autonomous agent that sends an engagement letter on its own. A prospect may well take that as the start of a relationship. The opinion recommends lawyer approval of autonomous actions, and says the lawyer interviews each prospect before a relationship begins.
- Noticing a person in distress. The opinion points out that a bot may not notice a distressed or impaired prospect the way a person would.
What the firm owes before the agent goes live
That opinion and Florida's put duties on the firm itself:
- Say it is an AI. Florida Ethics Opinion 24-1 says a lawyer must tell prospective clients they are talking to an AI program, not a lawyer or an employee. The Oregon opinion adds that a chatbot that doesn't identify itself as one may violate the rule against false or misleading communication.
- Post clear disclaimers on the website and in the chatbot. Both should say outright that talking to the bot does not create an attorney-client relationship.
- Know where the data goes. The Oregon opinion expects the lawyer to understand how the tool stores data, whether prompts train the product, and which other vendors sit underneath it.
- Be able to see and change what it says. The lawyer has to be able to watch what the chatbot tells prospects, and change it. The opinion treats the bot's vendor as a third-party provider that the lawyer supervises.
The American Bar Association's Formal Opinion 512 is its first formal opinion on generative AI. According to The Florida Bar News, it applies existing rules on competence, informed consent, confidentiality, and fees. The same article reports that Florida's Opinion 24-1 lists client intake among uses that carry risks like relying on inexperienced nonlawyer assistants, and recommends informed consent before confidential client information goes into a third-party AI tool. Separately, a 2010 ABA opinion on websites, 10-457, is described in secondary summaries as treating a form that invites details about a possible matter as triggering the prospective-client rule, and a conspicuous disclaimer can limit that duty. See the ABA Journal's write-up.
Your state's rules control
These opinions are advisory, and each one comes from a single state. The prospective-client rule is numbered differently in some states, and whether other state bars have addressed intake chatbots is unconfirmed. Before you deploy anything, read your own state bar's opinions and rules. This post is general information, not legal advice, and nothing in it says that any setup is compliant with your rules. Have an attorney review the design before it goes live.
Where Tarsus fits
Tarsus Growth Company builds for law firms, among other businesses, and works inside the firm's own tools. For a law firm that includes client intake that captures each inquiry the same way and sorts it by practice area and urgency, so the attorney has a clean summary before the first call, and missed-call follow-up that collects the basics of the matter and sends urgent ones to the right person. Confidentiality rules apply to every message. The ethics decisions stay with the attorney. To talk through how your firm handles first contact, contact Tarsus.
