Published by Smith.ai

An unanswered phone is only part of the problem. What happens next is where firms win or lose clients.

Four years of data on how law firms win and lose qualified leads. A public benchmark for legal intake, so you can see exactly where your firm stands.

“Intake is a sales funnel, and every stage loses potential clients. Answering the phone solves a coverage problem. It doesn’t solve the one underneath it — qualified callers who get through and still leave with no next step.”

How data was measured

Built entirely from Smith.ai’s own call data

• 3,252,754 answered calls analyzed
• 4,265 U.S. Law Firms

Every call in the data set was answered, so the report analyzes what happens after that critical first step. Full definitions, exclusions, and caveats are in the report.

A qualified caller:

a viable potential client, as determined using the firm’s own criteria.

Connected with the firm:

booked a consultation or were transferred live.

Findings

The ask gap
Simply asking a qualified caller to book a consultation, live on the call, has a tremendous impact.

77.3% of qualified callers say yes when a firm asks them to book, but more than half of firms never ask.

Look at just the callers who never became clients, and the pattern holds: 89% were never asked. Only 11% said no.

The conversion gap
The industry connects 1 in 3 qualified callers.

But that number is skewed by a handful of high-volume firms — the typical firm connects closer to 1 in 5, and that gap hasn’t moved in five years. Close it and convert 70% more new clients from the calls you’re already answering, with no added marketing spend or new hires.

Inside the report

The numbers that close the intake gaps

This report uncovers the specific mistakes costing firms qualified callers — and exactly how to fix them.

• See what these numbers mean for firms like yours — broken down by practice area and state.
• The simple additions to your intake flow that can supercharge your booking rates.

The full picture

Get the complete report — findings and intake gaps, plus the full methodology behind the numbers.

Download the report