Chatbot for Lawyers: Intake, Not Legal Advice

A chatbot for lawyers does the work of a good front desk on your firm's website. It answers the general questions people ask before they call, says plainly that it is an AI assistant and not a lawyer, and moves anyone needing an attorney toward a consultation. The hard part is the line between information and advice. Here is where one state bar's 2026 opinion draws it, which rules to give the agent, and how Mo files each inquiry in your intake system.

What is a chatbot for lawyers?

A chatbot for lawyers is an AI agent on a law firm's website that answers prospective clients' general questions from the firm's own content, takes their contact details when they want an attorney, and offers a consultation, without giving legal advice. It works for the firm; a consumer legal chatbot that promises free answers to anyone has a different job.

Ultimo Bots is an AI agent that answers your website visitors from your practice-area pages, fee notes and FAQs, forwards consultation requests to your team with the whole conversation, and lets an attorney or paralegal take over the chat when someone is online. It installs on Wix, WordPress, Webflow or any site that takes a short snippet, and the same agent can answer Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp messages.

Most of what people ask a firm before they call is not advice at all. Do you handle custody changes? What does a first consultation cost? Can I meet by phone? Those answers already sit on your website; an agent that gives them at once gives people a reason to stay.

What is the best chatbot for a law firm?

The best law firm chatbot answers from your content, never strays into advice, and puts consultation requests in front of an attorney fast. Three common setups, as read on their official pages on October 27, 2026:

Answering Legal offers its AI webchat to law firms for free and shows its answering-service prices after a contact form. MyCase lists intake forms and a legal CRM on its Pro plan at $100 per user a month billed yearly ($120 monthly), and no website chat.

Ultimo Bots is priced per agent in AI credits, and teammates are free, so three attorneys and a paralegal pay what a solo practitioner pays. As of October 2026, Smart is $29 a month ($19 billed yearly) with 500 AI credits, Boost is $59 a month ($39 billed yearly) with 2,000 and Ultimo is $149 a month ($99 billed yearly) with 10,000. A standard answer uses 1 AI credit. Building with Mo uses the same balance: a quick question a few credits, building a skill more (pricing).

Where does the ethics line run for a law firm chat?

As of October 2026; practical guidance, not legal advice. In Formal Opinion 2026-208, approved by its Board of Governors in February 2026, the Oregon State Bar asks whether lawyers may use automated chat on their websites to talk with clients and prospective clients. Its answer: "Yes, qualified." The opinion speaks to Oregon lawyers and draws on the Florida Bar's Opinion 24-1 of January 2024; check what your own state bar has said. Its conditions, in our words, next to what you set in Ultimo Bots:

• Say it is not a lawyer. Clear disclaimers, so nobody believes an attorney-client relationship has formed. The website chat shows "You are chatting with an AI assistant" above the first message on every plan; a behavior adds "not a lawyer". Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp show no fixed notice, so there the behavior does the whole job.
• No legal advice, nothing misleading. No advice and no overstated expertise or results. A second behavior tells the agent to stick to general information.
• A lawyer reviews promptly. A responsible lawyer notified automatically, able to review the conversation. Every request the agent forwards lands in Leads with the full transcript and sends the new-lead email by default. A chat that ends with a Calendly link sends no alert, so have someone read the Inbox daily.
• Protect what prospective clients say. Duties apply even when no relationship forms; enter them into your conflict system promptly. Ask for little in the chat, and let Mo file each forwarded request where your conflict check starts.
• Know the tool. Understand how it stores information and whether it trains on it. Ultimo Bots keeps each conversation and lead in your account and does not use them to train its own models. Visitors' messages go to its providers for AI answers and knowledge search, and lead e-mails and service logs can carry message text. It names its main sub-processors in the help center, confirms the current list on request and offers a data processing agreement.

For AI agents, the opinion calls it prudent to put autonomous actions under a lawyer's approval. Your agent acts only through its skills, the built-in Lead Generation skill and the ones you add, so give it none that sends engagement letters or fee agreements. That step stays with a lawyer, after the conflict check.

Which questions should the agent answer?

Draw the line with two behaviors: short rules of up to 250 characters that the agent follows on every channel, above its defaults. In the AI Studio, open the Behaviors tab in the "Your agent" panel, click Add Behaviors, paste the rule and click Add. Or describe it to Mo, who writes it for you. The first says what the agent is:

If none of your replies so far has said you are an AI assistant and not a lawyer, say so briefly in this reply. If asked whether you are human or a lawyer, say plainly you are an AI assistant.

The second keeps it on the information side:

Never give legal advice, predict an outcome or say whether someone has a case. Answer general questions about the firm, its practice areas, fees and process. For a person's own situation, offer a consultation with an attorney.

The agent answers from your content, not from guesses about your business. It reads the text on your pages, images only by their alt text and embedded frames not at all, so a fee schedule posted as an image stays invisible. Upload your fee and consultation notes as PDF, DOC or DOCX files, and add a Q&A pair for each question your site leaves open (knowledge sources).

From first question to consultation

Take Okafor Reyes Law, an example firm with two attorneys in family law and estate planning, on a WordPress site. On a Tuesday at 10:20 am both attorneys are in court and nobody is online in the portal. A visitor named Marisol asks whether the firm handles custody changes when the other parent has moved to another state.

The agent replies that it is the firm's AI assistant, not a lawyer, and answers from the family law page: yes, including cases with a parent in another state. Marisol then asks whether a judge would let her move with her children. That is advice, so the agent says an attorney has to answer it and offers a consultation.

Here the ready-made Calendly skill Recommend the right meeting takes over. The firm has two Calendly meeting types, a 30-minute family law consultation and a 20-minute estate planning intro. The agent recommends the family law consultation in one sentence and, when she agrees, sends a single-use Calendly link. She picks a time on Calendly's page, and Calendly confirms the booking; the skill tells the agent never to claim a booking.

Calendly

Okafor Reyes Law

Family law consultation

Estate planning intro

Agent recommends

Had Marisol asked for a call, the built-in Lead Generation skill would have run. It asks for name and email by default; Okafor Reyes added phone and practice area in the AI Studio. It asks only for what is missing, sums up the request in one sentence and forwards it, and the agent confirms in its own words: "Thanks, Marisol. The team has your request." There is no read-back, so a mistyped number reaches you as typed, with the transcript beside it.

The agent also offers this on its own. When it cannot answer reliably from your content, or a visitor wants something only your team can give, such as personal advice, it offers once to forward the request and asks for contact details only after the visitor says yes (leads; more in our lead generation guide).

Prefer booking inside the chat? Connect Cal.com by signing in on the Apps page and add the ready-made skill Book meetings in chat: it shows free times, sums up type, date and time and asks for a clear yes before it books, and Cal.com sends the confirmation email. More booking setups in our appointment guide.

Build it with Mo: file forwarded requests in your intake system

Answers, leads and a booking link are the floor. The bigger win is each forwarded request landing where your conflict check starts, without anyone copying it over. Open the AI Studio and tell Mo, the builder there, what the agent should do. If your firm tracks new matters in Airtable, the message could read:

Whenever the agent forwards a contact request, also create a record in our Airtable intake base (base ID <your base ID>, table "Intake"): name, email, phone, practice area, a one-sentence summary, source "Website chat" and status "New, conflict check pending". Send nothing to the visitor from it. Airtable's API docs: https://airtable.com/developers/web/api/create-records

Filed by the agent

Intake

Grace L.

Practice areaEstate planning

SummaryWill for a blended family

StatusNew, conflict check pending

AttorneyConflict check

Mo reads Airtable's API documentation, asks for an Airtable personal access token in a secure field and builds the skill. The token is stored encrypted and never sent to the AI. Mo tests each call, the create call as a dry run, but its test chat and your own tests afterwards can write real records, so delete your test rows. From then on, every request the agent forwards appears in your intake base as a row waiting for a conflict check, and in Leads with the whole conversation.

When this works: a public HTTPS API that accepts an API key, a token or a username and password, answering each call within 20 seconds. Software that only connects through its own sign-in flow, or runs behind your firewall, does not fit. Clio Manage is one: its developer documentation, read on October 27, 2026, describes OAuth 2.0 authorization only. There, a skill can send the details by webhook to Make or n8n, or to Zapier, which only receives data and never sends anything back into the chat.

Keep the skill to new records: a skill on your own API cannot check who a visitor is, so it must never look up a client's matter or invoice. New skills per plan: Free 1, Smart 3, Boost 10, Ultimo 30, so the Calendly skill and this one fit in Smart (AI Studio).

What happens while you are in court?

The "Talk to a human" button appears only while someone on your team has switched themselves online in the portal's Live Chat section. While both attorneys were in court, it stayed hidden and the agent took Marisol's request. When their paralegal Ana switches online at noon, it returns: a visitor asks for a person, Ana clicks Join, the visitor sees "Ana has joined the chat." and the AI stops replying until she leaves (live chat).

Some messages should not wait for a consultation slot. Oregon's February 2026 opinion notes that automated chat may miss an emotional or mental state a human would notice. Give the agent a third rule:

If someone mentions an arrest, a court date within two days or a risk to anyone's safety, give our urgent line, (503) 555-0142, right away. If anyone is in danger, tell them to call 911 first.

New inquiries and requests for a person reach you in the portal and by email by default; add Slack under Notifications if that is where you look between hearings.

Is there a ChatGPT for lawyers?

Yes, in the sense that general AI assistants and legal research tools help lawyers draft and research. An AI chatbot for a law firm website works for prospective clients, in public and in your firm's name, so it answers from your content and stops at advice. It replies in 80+ languages, so a Spanish-speaking parent gets the custody answer in Spanish. Every chat is kept as a transcript, so treat your chat history like any other client record.

Test it like a prospective client would

1. 1

   Install it where your site lives

   Sign up in the portal. On Wix, use our Wix app; WordPress has a plugin, Webflow a Marketplace app, other sites a three-line snippet.

2. 2

   Give it your practice pages

   Add practice-area, fee and FAQ pages, then a Q&A pair for each open question.

3. 3

   Add the three behaviors

   Paste the rules above into the Behaviors tab, with your own urgent number.

4. 4

   Add the consultation skill

   Connect Calendly or Cal.com, add its ready-made skill, then ask Mo for the intake skill.

5. 5

   Ask the hard questions

   In a private window, ask "Will I win custody?" and "Do you handle wills?" Case questions should end with an offer to forward them, never an answer. Test chats use AI credits, and test requests are real.

Questions and answers