What Your AI Intake Tool Can and Can’t Say to a potential client

Last reviewed 31 July 2026  ·  Regulation and rule text checked against the linked sources on the date shown.

What can an automated intake message safely say?

Four things. That the message arrived, who it arrived at, one or two questions that move the matter forward, and how to reach a human or stop the messages. Everything past those four starts drifting toward advice, advertising or a promise, and each of those is regulated separately and by a different body.

The following is an example for firm review, not a legally approved template:

Name of the firm, confirmation, one question, an exit. No assessment, no timeline, no number. It takes about eight seconds to read and it does not require anyone to defend it later.

What must an automated intake message never say?

Anything that contains a conclusion or a promise. No view on whether there is a claim, no estimate of value, no deadline, no prediction of outcome, and nothing that implies an attorney-client relationship has formed. If a sentence would need a licence to say out loud, it does not belong in a script that runs unattended at three in the morning.

• “You have a case.” A legal conclusion, and the firm has not seen a single document yet.
• “This is worth about…” A conclusion and an advertising claim in one sentence.
• “You have two years to file.” Legal advice, and wrong answers here end careers.
• “We will get you compensated.” A prediction of result, restricted in every state.
• “We are now representing you.” No system should be able to form a relationship.
• “We cannot take your case.” Declining is a lawyer’s decision, not a script’s.

Use fixed text where exact wording matters, restrict the information the model can use, and test the handoff for advice-seeking questions. Generated replies can vary; no prompt alone guarantees compliance. A lawyer at the firm should approve and supervise the process.

Does texting back a web form count as solicitation?

Requested replies and unsolicited marketing need different analysis. An inquiry-based established business relationship may affect federal telephone-solicitation rules; it is not blanket permission for automated marketing or an override of state rules and opt-outs.

The federal regulation defines a telephone solicitation as a call or message initiated to encourage the purchase or rental of, or investment in, property, goods or services, and excludes calls made with the person’s prior express invitation or permission and calls to a person with an established business relationship.¹ A person who filled in your form and asked to be contacted is not in the same position as a stranger on a purchased list.

That does not settle the bar question. The state rules we have written up in detail are California, Texas and Florida and Arizona, and they do not agree with each other.

Does the first message need an advertising label?

In some states, yes, and the label has to be in the message itself rather than somewhere on your website. Texas requires the word ADVERTISEMENT on covered written communications under its Rule 7.03(c). California has its own labelling requirement for solicitations. Neither is satisfied by a disclaimer the recipient never sees.

The traps are practical rather than conceptual. A label that only appears in the English script and not the Spanish one is a label that does not apply to half your messages. A label that lives in a signature block your SMS provider strips is not present at all. And a state filing requirement does not care that the message was generated automatically.

Each of the three state guides on this site walks the actual rule numbers, the filing obligations and the exemptions. Start with the state your firm is licensed in, not the state the lead is in.

What about confidentiality before anyone is a client?

Confidentiality duties can apply before representation, but not automatically to every message. Rule 1.18 and Comment [2] distinguish a prospective-client consultation from certain unilateral communications.

Design the form and questions with the firm’s counsel. Collect only what is needed at this stage, and do not treat an automated acknowledgement as confirmation that representation has begun.

Name, callback number, language, what happened, roughly when. Not a social security number, not a date of birth, not an insurance policy number, not photographs. The full version of that argument, including what to require of a vendor, is in the confidentiality guide. ABA Formal Opinion 512, issued 29 July 2024, is the AI-specific reading of the same duty.⁵

How should a firm write and approve the script?

In a document, signed off by a named lawyer, before the tool is switched on. Not in a vendor dashboard, not verbally on a call. The approved text is the thing you will be asked to produce if anyone ever queries a message, and a screenshot of a chat window is not it.

• Write every message the system can send, in every language, in one document.
• Have one lawyer approve it in writing and date the approval.
• Add the state label to every covered message, in both languages.
• Test it from an outside number, after hours, before launch.
• Re-read it every quarter, and re-date the approval when it changes.

Firms that do this find the script gets shorter each time rather than longer. That is the correct direction. The measure of a good intake message is not how much it accomplished; it is how quickly a real person took over — which is what prospective clients told Clio’s researchers they wanted, three in five saying they would use an automated first touch only with the option to switch to a human.⁶