Answering Legal pricing starts at $360 a month for 100 minutes on its Solo plan, then $676 for 200 minutes on Essential and $936 for 300 minutes on Growing, with custom plans above that. Every feature is included, there is no setup fee and no contract. At the four-minute average call time Answering Legal publishes itself, one intake call costs $12.48 to $14.40, and the overage rate is set in each firm's agreement rather than printed on the card.
We read Answering Legal's plans page and its help center billing articles on October 20, 2026. Every price below comes from those pages. The cost per minute, the cost per intake call and the bills at real call volumes are our arithmetic on those numbers, and the rival figures come from each vendor's own pricing page.
How much does Answering Legal cost per month?
Answering Legal costs $360 to $936 a month on its three published plans, which include 100 to 300 receptionist minutes. Firms that need more get a custom quote. The company says every plan carries the same features: 24/7 live answering, custom legal intake scripts, bilingual receptionists, appointment scheduling, call transfers, the mobile app and integrations with Clio, MyCase, LeadDocket and other legal software.
| Answering Legal plan | Monthly price | Minutes | Cost per included minute | About how many intake calls | Cost per intake call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | $360 | 100 | $3.60 | 25 | $14.40 |
| Essential | $676 | 200 | $3.38 | 50 | $13.52 |
| Growing | $936 | 300 | $3.12 | 75 | $12.48 |
| Custom | Quote | Set per firm | Not published | Not published | Not published |
The call counts use four minutes per call, the figure Answering Legal's own return-on-investment calculator is "based on". That is much longer than the 2.5 minutes PATLive prints for general business calls, and it is realistic for intake, where the receptionist collects the caller's name, contact details, type of matter, the other party for a conflict check and how they found the firm. The practical meaning is simple: a 100-minute legal plan covers about 25 new-client calls, not 40.
Why is Answering Legal's pricing hard to find?
The Pricing link in Answering Legal's main menu opens a form that asks for your name, firm, email and cell phone before it shows any plan. The plans themselves are public on a second page, which is where the Solo, Essential and Growing prices above come from. If you only want to compare numbers, you do not need to hand over a phone number to see them.
Two things are still missing from the public card. The first is the overage rate. Answering Legal's help center says that if you go over your minutes you pay "a per-minute overage rate, detailed in your agreement", so the price of minute 101 on the Solo plan is something you learn on the sales call. The second is how calls are rounded, which the card does not state. Ask for both in writing, because on a per-minute plan they decide most of the difference between the quote and the invoice.
You will also find other numbers online. Older Answering Legal blog posts and third-party guides quote different per-minute ladders, overage protection percentages and trial lengths of seven or ten days. None of those appear on the plans page read today, so we do not repeat them.
Does Answering Legal have a free trial?
Yes. Answering Legal's plans page offers 400 minutes of answering free, with no credit card, contract or commitment, and same-day setup after a call with its sales team. At four minutes per call that is about 100 intake calls, which is enough for most small firms to see a full month of real traffic before paying anything. Service after the trial is month to month and can be canceled without a penalty.
What should you ask Answering Legal before signing?
Ask for five numbers in writing before the trial ends, because the card leaves them to the sales call:
- The overage rate per minute on the plan you are buying, and whether it changes on a custom plan.
- The billing increment: whether a call of 2 minutes 10 seconds is billed as 2:30, 3:00 or exactly 2:10.
- Which seconds count. Time on hold while a call is transferred to you, and time spent writing up the message after the caller hangs up, are billed at some services and not at others.
- Whether spam, robocalls and wrong numbers use up minutes, and how you flag them.
- How much notice cancellation takes, and whether unused minutes roll over.
The answers decide whether the Solo plan really holds 25 intake calls or closer to 20. A firm that knows its numbers can compare the quote line by line with Smith.ai, whose card answers most of these questions in public.
How does Answering Legal compare with Smith.ai, Ruby and PATLive?
Answering Legal costs more per minute than the general answering services and less than Ruby, and it is the only one of the four that sells exclusively to law firms. This is what each costs for the same intake volume, using four minutes per call for every per-minute service:
| Intake calls a month | Answering Legal | Smith.ai live | Ruby | PATLive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 calls, about 100 minutes | $360 | $300 | $395 | $189 |
| 50 calls, about 200 minutes | $676 | $530 | $720 | $349 |
| 75 calls, about 300 minutes | $936 | $810 | $1,725 | $479 |
Smith.ai's live receptionists are $300 for 30 calls with extra calls at $11.50, and $810 for 90 calls, read on its pricing page today. Ruby's 300-minute row uses its 500-minute plan because Ruby does not publish an overage rate. PATLive's plans of 100, 200 and 300 minutes were read on October 14, 2026, and our PATLive pricing and Ruby receptionist pricing breakdowns cover both cards in full.
Is per-call or per-minute billing cheaper for a law firm?
Per-call billing is cheaper for a law firm whenever its intake calls run longer than about three minutes. Answering Legal, Ruby and PATLive bill every minute the receptionist spends with the caller, while Smith.ai charges a flat amount per call however long it lasts. Since intake calls are long, the per-call model usually wins on price, and it wins by more on complicated matters.
| Length of one intake call | Answering Legal Solo ($3.60/min) | Ruby 100 minutes ($3.95/min) | PATLive 100 minutes ($1.89/min) | Smith.ai Starter ($10/call) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 minutes | $7.20 | $7.90 | $3.78 | $10.00 |
| 4 minutes | $14.40 | $15.80 | $7.56 | $10.00 |
| 8 minutes | $28.80 | $31.60 | $15.12 | $10.00 |
| 12 minutes | $43.20 | $47.40 | $22.68 | $10.00 |
Smith.ai becomes the cheaper option against Answering Legal's Solo plan once a call passes 2 minutes 47 seconds, and against PATLive once it passes about 5 minutes 18 seconds. Smith.ai also does not bill spam or sales calls when your line passes caller ID through, and it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. The trade is specialization: Answering Legal's receptionists only answer for law firms, and its bilingual answering is included rather than priced separately.
Is Answering Legal worth it?
Answering Legal is worth it for a firm that wins cases by booking the consultation on the first call and wants receptionists who already know legal intake. Personal injury and criminal defense firms, where a lead calls three firms the same afternoon, get the most from it. It is harder to justify for a practice whose calls are mostly existing clients asking for status, because you pay $3.12 to $3.60 a minute for messages a paralegal could return.
The useful question is how many of your calls are new clients. Count a month of calls, split them into new clients, existing clients, urgent matters and everything else, and price only the share that truly needs a person. Our legal answering service page does that sort by practice area and puts six services side by side at 25, 50 and 75 intake calls.
How can a law firm lower its Answering Legal bill?
The cheapest minute is the one the receptionist never spends. Put a phone menu in front of the firm's number so that only new-client calls reach the answering service, while existing clients go to their paralegal's voicemail as text and vendors go to the general inbox. With business call forwarding, the new-client option rings your intake coordinator by day and forwards to the live service at night or when nobody picks up.
Take a firm with 60 calls a month, 20 of them new clients. If every call goes to Answering Legal, that is about 240 minutes and the Growing plan at $936. If only the 20 new-client calls go there, that is about 80 minutes and the Solo plan at $360, plus $51 for three users on Phoner Team for the menu, the routing and the transcripts. The firm pays $411 instead of $936, and every potential client still reaches a person. Once the consultation is booked, the drafting and research work begins, and firms adding AI software for law firms to that side of the practice can price it separately from the phones.
What is the best alternative to Answering Legal?
The best alternative to Answering Legal depends on why you are leaving. For lower cost on long intake calls, Smith.ai's per-call plans start at $300 for 30 calls and connect to Clio. For the lowest published price per minute, PATLive starts at $189 for 100 minutes with a 14-day trial. For a firm whose new clients accept a fast callback, a routed line with voicemail to text costs $51 a month for three users. Our Smith.ai pricing page and the answering service cost guide list every published tier.
What Phoner does and does not do for a law firm
Phoner is a business phone system, not a live business phone answering service. On Team, at $17 per user per month billed yearly, it answers every call with your greeting, routes new clients, existing clients and urgent matters to different people, rings the on-call attorney for the emergency option and sends every voicemail to the inbox as text. It does not run intake scripts, book consultations or create records in Clio or other legal software, and it does not sign a HIPAA business associate agreement. Most firms that use it alongside a live service keep the number on Phoner and forward only the calls that need a person.
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