What a legal answering service really costs — next to the receptionist you'd hire.
The salary line is the smallest part of an in-house intake desk. Put your firm's real numbers in below and see loaded payroll, coverage gaps, and the case value that rings out after 5 p.m. side by side — before you post the job or sign a contract.
In-house intake desk vs. outsourced 24/7 coverage
U.S. bilingual legal receptionist: typically $38K–$58K base.
One seat covers 40 of the 168 hours in a week. Vacation and sick days are not covered.
Nights, weekends, lunch, holidays, and Spanish callers who hang up on hold.
Sempull plan tiers run from a starter volume up to high-volume firm coverage.
- Loaded cost per in-house seatsalary + 26% taxes & benefits + software, phone, desk
- $62,160
- In-house total, per year
- $124,320
- Week covered by that deskof 168 hours — the rest rings out
- 48%
- Outsourced 24/7, per year
- $17,880
- Cases lost to uncovered hours195 signed cases a year
- $1,170,000
$106,440 less in payroll plus $1,170,000 in case value that currently rings out after hours.
Validate this with our teamDirectional estimate for budgeting, not an audit. Payroll load and overhead vary by state; we replace these assumptions with your real numbers on a discovery call.
The three costs that never make it into the budget
Loaded payroll. A $46,000 base for a bilingual legal receptionist is roughly $58,000 once payroll taxes and benefits are added, and closer to $62,000 once you count phone and CRM licenses, a desk, and equipment. Recruiting and turnover sit on top of that, and legal intake turnover is high because the work is repetitive until it suddenly isn't.
Coverage math. One seat covers 40 of the 168 hours in a week — about 24%. Two seats staggered still leave nights, weekends, and holidays uncovered, and neither seat covers the other's vacation. Every uncovered hour is a caller who reaches voicemail and dials the next firm on the results page. That is what our after-hours intake and 24/7 answering coverage exists to close.
Language coverage. In Spanish-heavy markets a monolingual desk silently drops a large share of qualified callers. Hiring for true bilingual fluency raises the salary band and shrinks the candidate pool, which is why most firms end up with a translator workaround rather than a bilingual legal answering service that answers in Spanish on the first ring.
The number that should drive the decision: cost per signed case
Firms compare monthly invoices. Owners who get this right compare cost per signed case: total annual intake cost divided by cases intake actually signs. A cheaper desk that answers a quarter of the week routinely produces a higher cost per signed case than a 24/7 layer that costs more on paper, because the denominator moves far more than the numerator.
Two other levers move that denominator: qualification discipline, so attorneys spend consult time only on conflict-clean cases inside the statute window, and CRM push latency, because a lead that sits in an inbox overnight converts like a lead you never got.
How to run this decision in one week
- 1. Pull 30 days of call logs. Count calls outside business hours, calls under 30 seconds, and Spanish-language calls. That is your leak.
- 2. Run the calculator above with your real signed-case value and conversion rate.
- 3. Score your current desk against the 42-point intake audit checklist.
- 4. Compare providers on the same terms using our provider comparisons and the legal answering service cost guide.
- 5. Run a 30-day parallel period before retiring anything in-house.
Questions owners ask before they sign
What does a law firm answering service cost per month?+
Legal answering and intake services are typically billed on plan minutes or call volume rather than per lead. Small-firm plans generally start in the several-hundred-dollars-per-month range and scale with volume; high-volume firms running paid campaigns land in the low thousands. Sempull's tiers are published on our pricing page, so you can budget before a call.
Is an answering service cheaper than hiring a receptionist?+
On cash alone, one in-house bilingual legal receptionist runs roughly $58,000–$77,000 a year once you add payroll taxes, benefits, software, phone, desk, and management time to a $46,000 base. That single seat covers about 40 of the 168 hours in a week. An outsourced 24/7 bilingual layer usually costs less than that one seat while covering all 168 hours, which is why the comparison rarely comes down to price alone.
How do I calculate cost per signed case?+
Divide total annual intake cost (payroll or plan fees) by the number of cases intake actually signs in the year. The number that changes the decision is the denominator: coverage hours drive signed cases, so a cheaper desk that only answers 40 hours a week often produces a higher cost per signed case than a more expensive 24/7 layer.
What hidden costs do firms forget when they hire in-house?+
Payroll taxes and benefits (about 26% on top of base), recruiting and turnover, paid vacation and sick days with no backup coverage, training on your intake criteria, phone and CRM licenses, desk and equipment, and the partner or office-manager hours spent supervising the desk. None of those appear on the salary line the firm budgeted.
When does in-house still make more sense?+
When call volume is low and strictly business-hours, when intake requires deep in-person case handling rather than qualification, or when the firm already has an underutilized bilingual staff member. We say so on discovery calls: if the missed-call number is small, intake is not your growth lever.
How long does the switch take?+
Most firms are live within 5 business days: script approval, CRM integration, and agent training on your practice areas and qualification criteria. Firms usually run a 30-day parallel period before retiring the in-house desk.
Get your cost-per-signed-case number, validated.
Send us your current setup — in-house seats, hours covered, monthly call volume — and we'll return a side-by-side cost model against your last 30 days within one business hour. No deck, no pitch.
- Reply within one business hour
- 30-min intake audit on the first call
- Month-to-month, no setup fees