Disclosure
Recording, AI, consent — fixed words, the agent's opening line.
How a call runs
One call, start to finish.
This is what happens when someone calls a firm on Intake Gateway — as the intake is written, not as a pitch. Listen to any call afterwards and you should hear this shape.
$149 a month, flat. First month free. Every answered call included. Cancel any time. About 8 hours of a receptionist’s pay (US median, BLS May 2025).
Call the number we give you from your own phone and hear the agent take an intake — up to 15 minutes of test calls, before you add a card. First month free: a 30-day free trial, every answered call included, one trial per firm. Card on file, nothing charged before day 31. No setup fee. Month to month. Everything about billing
At a glance
The whole call, mapped.
Every step below is one this page walks through in full further down — this is the shape of it before the detail.
Names, then conflict check, if you connect Clio
The caller's name and the other side's, searched in your Clio live.
Intake
What happened, injuries, who's responsible.
Urgent, or routine
A live transfer now, in your hours, or a callback promised.
Booked, or requested, for an ordinary case
Onto your real calendar, or as a request where it asks you to confirm.
You get it all
Email after every call except one we are confident is spam; a Clio contact too, if you connect it.
The personal injury intake questions it asks, by kind of case
A call, start to finish
What it actually sounds like.
An invented caller, and a real script. Lines marked “scripted” are word for word what the agent is given — the rest is the model's own phrasing, which genuinely varies. We would rather show you that than a demo that says the same thing twice.
Agent · scripted
Thank you for calling [your firm]. You’re speaking with an AI assistant, not an attorney, and this call is recorded and transcribed for quality, case-evaluation, and legal record-keeping purposes. Talking with me doesn’t make you a client yet — an attorney reviews what you tell me, and the firm will follow up. By staying on the line, you consent to being recorded. If you’d rather not be recorded, you’re welcome to hang up now. Otherwise, let’s get started — can you tell me a little about what happened?
Sent as the agent's opening line, not composed on the call, in every state.
Caller
Yeah — hi. I got hit on the way home from work on Tuesday, and my neck has been really bad since.
Agent
I'm sorry that happened. Take me through it — what happened on Tuesday?
Open question first. The structured part comes after they have told it their own way.
Caller
I was stopped at the light on Park and somebody went into the back of me. The other driver got a ticket. I went to the ER that night and they said soft tissue, but I can't turn my head properly.
Agent · scripted
And are you working with another attorney on this already?
The injury question is skipped when the caller has already said they were hurt. Then one gate: representation.
Caller
No, nobody yet.
Agent · scripted
Thank you for telling me that — I'm going to take this down for the office. Before we get into the details, I need to take a couple of names so the office can run its conflict check — that's routine, every firm does it. Can I start with your full name?
Only when your Clio is connected. Without it, the same two questions are asked for the file instead.
Caller
Dana Whitfield.
Agent
Dana Whitfield. And do you know the name of the other driver?
Read back, every time. The other side's name is what the conflict check is for.
Caller
Yeah — Ray Kessler. I've got his insurance details from the exchange, too. An adjuster already called me this morning, actually — wanted to record a statement and settle it quickly.
Agent
And what's the best number to reach you on?
A number taken down wrong is a case the office never gets to call.
Caller
Six oh eight, five five five, oh one two three.
Agent
Six oh eight, five five five, oh one two three. Based on what you've told me, I'd like to put you through to someone at the office right now rather than book you a time — is that alright?
An adjuster pushing for a recorded statement is a single trigger for a live transfer. It does not wait for a second one, and it does not say why -- and it never transfers without asking first. Abridged: before this, the agent runs the conflict check and asks the city.
Caller
Yes, please.
Agent
Putting you through now.
Not a recording of a real call. A real caller’s first account of their own accident is not marketing material, whatever consent was given for it.
The call
What the caller hears.
The disclosure
Every call opens with the same fixed disclosure: the call is recorded and transcribed, the caller is speaking with an AI assistant and not an attorney, staying on the line is consent, and anyone who would rather not be recorded can hang up. Fixed wording, sent as the agent’s first line rather than composed on the call — printed in full further down this page.
The caller’s story
One open question — what happened? — and the agent listens. The rest of the call follows what the caller said rather than a fixed list, which is the difference between a conversation and a form read aloud.
Two gates
Is this about an injury, and is anyone already representing you on it? A caller who already has a lawyer on that matter is ended politely and is never transferred. Everyone else who was hurt — in a crash, in a fall, by a dog, by a product — goes through the intake, a shorter one when it is urgent or the caller wants a lawyer now. The agent never tells a caller you don’t handle something, because it cannot know that.
The conflict check
The agent reads the caller’s name back, then takes the other side’s if they know it — the other driver, the property owner, the dog’s owner, the employer, or the business behind any of them — and searches your Clio contacts and matters in real time. A match on the other party stops there when Clio marks them as your client, they are the client on a matching matter, or they are an earlier caller whose details Intake Gateway sent to your Clio in the last 13 months: no questions about what happened, nothing booked, just a callback number, and the caller is never told the result. Any other match on the other party, such as a business you once sued, is flagged to you and the intake carries on. A match on the caller alone is flagged to you and the intake carries on, because that is what a returning client or a referral looks like. If Clio cannot be reached, the call continues and the intake is flagged for your review rather than guessed.
The facts of the case
When and where, and what happened in the caller’s own words. Who they believe is responsible — the other driver, the property owner, the dog’s owner, the maker of a product. Injuries and treatment — the ER, ongoing care, surgery. Whether an insurer is involved, whether the caller is missing work, and whether an adjuster has already called and asked for a recorded statement.
Urgent, or routine
Some signals mean now, not next week: a fatality or life-threatening injury, a government vehicle (short notice deadlines), evidence about to disappear, an adjuster pushing for a quick settlement. Any one of those, or an unclear picture, and the agent asks the caller whether it may put them through to you live, in the hours you allow transfers. Routine callers are told your office will call them back, and asked what time suits them — or, for an ordinary case with a calendar connected, offered a consultation from your real availability and booked on the call, or requested where your calendar asks you to confirm.
The close
The caller is told your office will call them back, and asked what time suits them, or — for an ordinary case with a calendar connected — what was booked and, if they gave an email address, that a confirmation is on its way, or that the time is requested where your calendar asks you to confirm. No retainer or engagement letter is ever sent: the agent does not have one.
Word for word
The first thing the agent says, on every call.
Not a paraphrase of it. This is the text, and it is the same on every call your firm takes.
Thank you for calling [your firm]. You’re speaking with an AI assistant, not an attorney, and this call is recorded and transcribed for quality, case-evaluation, and legal record-keeping purposes. Talking with me doesn’t make you a client yet — an attorney reviews what you tell me, and the firm will follow up. By staying on the line, you consent to being recorded. If you’d rather not be recorded, you’re welcome to hang up now. Otherwise, let’s get started — can you tell me a little about what happened?
Your firm’s own name stands where [your firm] is. Nothing else about it is configurable, by you or by us: it is sent as the agent’s opening line rather than composed on the call, so it cannot be shortened on a busy night or improvised into something a bar complaint is written about. It opens every call, in every state. A caller can talk over it, as on any phone call, and the agent does not start it again; after each call we check the transcript for it and show the result on the call’s page.
If you have turned Spanish on, one more sentence follows it, offering to continue in Spanish. A caller who takes that offer then hears this same disclosure again, in full, in Spanish — a caller who did not understand the English one has not consented to anything.
If your account is set up as a home-services, towing or other small business, the agent opens with this instead, in English, on every call:
Thank you for calling [your business]. You’re speaking with an AI assistant, and this call is recorded and transcribed so the team can follow up on your request. By staying on the line, you consent to being recorded. If you’d rather not be recorded, you’re welcome to hang up now. Otherwise, let’s get started — how can we help today?
We print it here because your state bar’s rules are yours to read it against, and that review should take two minutes rather than a support ticket.
The other callers
Your line is not only new cases.
An adjuster, a court clerk, opposing counsel, a client asking about their own case — they all dial the same number. A message-taker treats them all as leads.
- The agent never confirms or denies that anyone is a client of your firm, and never says anything about any matter — not to an adjuster, not to a spouse, not to someone who names the case. It says it cannot discuss a case, and takes a message.
- It asks whether it can wait. For your own client, or a court, who says it cannot wait, the agent tries to put them through to you live, in your transfer hours, without asking them first.
- Anyone else who calls it urgent — an adjuster, opposing counsel, a vendor — has the message marked urgent instead. You decide who interrupts you; “it can’t wait” is the first thing a salesperson says.
- No conflict check and no intake runs on any of these calls. They are messages, and they reach you as messages.
After the call
What you have when it ends.
Four places, none of them a voicemail.
In your inbox
The summary and the structured intake, after every call except one we are confident is spam — with an urgent call named in the subject line and the conflict check’s result, if you connected Clio, spelled out rather than reduced to a tick.
Never the recording or the transcript: those are in your dashboard, behind your sign-in.
Subject Hot case: Dana Whitfield — transferred to your line
Your firm: a call handled by Intake Gateway
Call
Received: Thursday, October 8, 2026 at 10:48 PM CDT
Duration: 2 min 18 s
Outcome: transferred live to your line
HOT CASE
adjuster pushing for a recorded statement
Caller
Name: Dana Whitfield
Phone: (608) 555-0123
Consultation
No booking is recorded for this call.
Conflict check
Clear: no matching contacts or matters in your Clio for “Dana Whitfield” or “Ray Kessler”.
Summary
Rear-ended while stopped at a red light on Tuesday; the other driver was ticketed. ER the same night, soft-tissue neck injury, still cannot turn her head properly. Not represented. An adjuster is already pushing for a recorded statement.
The accident
When: Tuesday, on the way home from work
Where: At the light on Park
What happened: Hit from behind while stopped at a red light.
Injuries: Neck pain since; she cannot turn her head properly. The ER said soft tissue.
Treatment: ER the same night.
Police report: The other driver was ticketed.
Other party’s insurance: She has the other driver’s insurance details from the exchange.
Adjuster contact: An adjuster called her this morning wanting a recorded statement and a quick settlement.
The caller is the invented one from the sample call, and every heading and line is exactly what the email says for her call. This firm has Clio connected; without Clio, the conflict check section tells you to run your own conflict check before contacting the caller.
In your dashboard
The recording, the transcript, a summary, the structured intake and — for urgent calls — the trigger that made it urgent, in plain words.
In your Clio
If you connected Clio: a contact with the caller's name, phone, email and address, created after the call — the intake itself stays in your dashboard and email. If Clio is unreachable the write waits and retries for about two days, backing off as it goes, and it is never sent twice. If Clio is still down after that, the write is recorded as failed rather than retried forever. Without Clio, nothing here changes for you — the intake is in the dashboard and the email either way.
On your calendar, if you connected one
The consultation, as a real booking, or a request, on the event type you chose, with the caller’s details attached. Without a calendar there is nothing to book: the caller is promised your callback, and the time they asked for is in the intake.
Guardrails
What it will not do.
An intake agent for a law firm is judged by its restraint as much as its reach.
- It never opens a call without the recording and AI disclosure, in any state.
- It never books a caller when your Clio check finds the other party is your client, the client on a matching matter, or an earlier caller Intake Gateway sent to your Clio in the last 13 months, and never reads a matched name back.
- It never transfers a new caller without asking them first.
- It never sends a retainer or an engagement letter. It does not have one to send.
- It never evaluates the merits, quotes a fee of its own or promises representation.
- It never guesses an answer it does not have: an unclear urgent call goes to you.
Scope at launch
Honest about the edges.
The intake covers personal injury of every kind, in English and — if you switch it on — Spanish, for firms in the United States: crashes, falls and other premises injuries, dog bites, defective products. Wrongful death is taken too, but — like four other kinds below — captured carefully rather than treated as an ordinary case. Everything else gets the same core intake plus the few questions that only matter for that kind of case.
Five kinds it captures carefully and deliberately does not qualify: medical malpractice, any injury at work unless the firm has switched workers’ compensation on, anything with a government body involved, wrongful death, and an injured child, or an adult who can’t speak for themselves. These carry rules and deadlines that differ from an ordinary injury claim, and being wrong about them is expensive, so the agent takes the details, names the kind in the first line of the summary in your email, and asks nothing that would look like an assessment.
What it never does, for any caller: tell them you don’t handle their kind of case. It cannot know what you take. That is your call, made when you read the intake.
Every call is recorded and opens with a disclosure that says so, which suits all-party-consent states as well as one-party ones. Whether the disclosure wording and the intake questions meet your own state bar’s rules is a question for your counsel; we give you the exact wording up front so that review is quick.
Questions about the call
What does the person at my office hear on a transfer?
A short private handoff naming why the call is urgent — “adjuster already in contact”, say — before the caller is bridged. If the transfer is not picked up, the caller is promised a callback — or, for an ordinary case with a calendar connected, offered a consultation — rather than dropped, and the call is flagged for you.
Will it sound like a robot?
No menu, no recording, no “press one”. It is a modern AI voice holding a conversation, and it talks the way the sample call reads: one open question first, then one question at a time, reading names and numbers back before it moves on.
It does not pretend to be a person, either. Its fixed opening tells the caller they are speaking with an AI assistant, and if a caller asks whether they are talking to a real person, it says it is not, straight away.
Can it give legal advice, or quote fees?
No. It gathers facts, screens and schedules. It does not evaluate the merits, quote a fee of its own, or promise representation, and no engagement letter is sent from a call.
What about spam and robocalls?
Repeat spam numbers and robocall bursts are turned away before the call is answered, on your own line’s history with that number and on how fast it is dialling. A number nobody at your firm has heard from before is answered and judged afterwards, from the transcript — we would rather answer a robocall than hang up on a caller. Judged spam on two calls in a week, a number is turned away until those calls are a week old — or after one, if our voice provider itself flags the call as a scam. A spam-flagged call is kept for 7 days so you can look at it, then deleted.
Which practice management systems and calendars?
Clio for conflicts and the contact write, Cal.com for availability and bookings. Cal.com has a free individual plan and syncs with Google, Outlook and Apple calendars, so the agent offers times from what you actually have open.
Does the firm have to answer transfers?
No. You set the days and hours transfers are allowed (all hours by default). Outside them the agent does not connect anyone, and marks the call urgent; only a call already under way when your hours end may still be put through. Inside them, if nobody picks up within about 20 seconds, the caller comes back to the agent and is promised a callback — or, for an ordinary case with a calendar connected, offered a consultation — and the call is flagged for you, so nothing depends on someone being awake.
First month free, then $149 a month
- Confirm your email: we send a link that signs you in, no password.
- Set up your agent: tell us about your firm, then call your number and hear it.
- Forward your calls to your number and add a card at checkout; the first month is free.