Your Next Client Asked AI First
More prospects now call with an answer AI already gave them. The firms that sign them change the first minutes of the call.
Full issue
Your next client asked AI first. Here is what that changes at intake.
Your intake process was built for a prospect who calls with a question. A growing share now call with an answer they got from an AI tool. The firms that sign those clients are the ones that adjust the first few minutes of the call to deal with that answer, rather than running the script as if the prospect knows nothing.
The number: 42%
That is the share of US adults who would use ChatGPT to research an attorney, up from 28% a year earlier, according to a 2026 study of 1,110 US adults by iLawyer Marketing. Over the same period the share using Google fell from 87% to 72%, and half of respondents said they would use at least one AI answer engine in their search.
Separately, a SurveyMonkey poll of 1,002 US adults, run for Rev in December 2025, found that 65% had already used an AI chatbot for legal help. Their trust is limited: only 20% trust AI a great deal for legal advice, and 34% trust it only for very simple or general information.
So the typical prospect has done some homework with a tool they half trust, and now wants a person to confirm, correct or complete what they were told.
Why this hits intake harder than marketing
Most firms will read this as a marketing question about where to show up online. The bigger effect is on the first call.
A prospect who has already been given an answer anchors on it. If your intake script runs as though they know nothing, they hear a firm that isn’t listening. If the answer they got was wrong, about a deadline, fault or what a claim is worth, your team is delivering bad news before it has earned any trust. And if nobody asks what they read, the firm never finds out why a promising call went quiet the next day.
Most intake scripts were written when the firm was the first source of information. For a growing share of enquiries, it is now the second.
Three changes worth making
Before the call: make the basics about your firm easy to find and consistent. AI tools summarise what is already published. Clear practice-area pages that answer the questions clients actually ask, accurate business listings and recent reviews give those tools better material. This is housekeeping, not a campaign, and it is usually the cheapest of the three.
During the call: ask what they have already read. One early question, such as “Have you looked anything up about this yet?”, tells you what you are correcting. Then explain plainly what a general tool could not know about their situation. People remember the person who took their research seriously.
After the call: put the important correction in writing. If the AI answer was wrong on something that matters, state the correct position in one or two sentences in your follow-up email. It gives the prospect something to reread while comparing firms, and it reads as care rather than selling.
The fix: one thing to try this week
Pull five recent enquiries that did not convert and ask whoever took the call whether the prospect mentioned something they had read online. If the answer is “we didn’t ask”, that is the change to make first.
The First Five Minutes
On Friday 18 December, 10:30 AM EST, I’m hosting The First Five Minutes, a free session for law firm leaders on what happens in the opening minutes of an intake call and why so many good enquiries are lost there. Register here.
If you lead a firm and have a view on how clients are changing, I’d like to have you on the WhoBringsTheBusiness podcast.
Sagar Pratap
Founder and Host, WhoBringsTheBusiness
Frequently asked questions
How many people use ChatGPT to research a lawyer?
In a 2026 iLawyer Marketing study of 1,110 US adults, 42% said they would use ChatGPT to research an attorney, up from 28% a year earlier. Over the same period the share using Google fell from 87% to 72%.
Do people trust AI for legal advice?
Only partly. A SurveyMonkey poll of 1,002 US adults, run for Rev in December 2025, found that 65% had already used an AI chatbot for legal help, but only 20% trust AI a great deal for legal advice and 34% trust it only for very simple or general information.
How should law firm intake change when prospects have asked AI first?
Ask early what the prospect has already read or been told, correct what matters in plain language, and put any important correction in writing in the follow-up email.
Sources
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