Call tracking for law firms

How new-client calls reach a firm

For many firms the phone is one of the ways a potential client first reaches them, whether the matter is a car accident, a divorce, an arrest, an immigration case or a will. Those calls come from different places, and the places differ by practice area:

• Google’s pay-per-lead local ads. Google’s United States list of Local Services Ads categories includes lawyers by specialty, among them bankruptcy, business, criminal, estate, family, immigration and personal injury lawyer services.
• Search ads and your Google Business Profile. Both can put a phone number in front of someone who is searching.
• Your website. Practice-area pages and a contact page that show a phone number.
• Billboards, transit, radio, television and print. A number that appears only there shows what the placement produced.
• Referrals. Other lawyers, past clients and professional contacts who pass your number on.
• Directories and other paid listings. Any listing that lets you choose the phone number it shows.

Every source on that list that lets you choose the number can have a VereTel number of its own. The places where Google supplies the number come next.

Where Google supplies the number

Google’s help pages say what happens to the phone number when you advertise there. That decides which calls VereTel can count.

• Local Services Ads. The number displayed on the ad “is a Google forwarding number,” and calls to it are forwarded to your business number. Google’s help page also says: “There is no way to choose your tracking number.” It adds that in the US and Canada all inbound calls that arrive through the Google forwarding number are recorded by Google, and that your lead inbox holds a record of your leads.
• Google Ads call reporting. An ad with a call asset can show a Google forwarding number, which Google says is assigned when call reporting is on. Google’s help says that to show your own business number or use third-party call tracking you can turn call reporting off in your account settings, and that turning it off “prevents Google Ads from tracking calls.” Decide which system will count those calls before you change the setting.
• Your Google Business Profile. A Profile can carry up to 2 more phone numbers besides the primary one, and Google’s guidelines say: “The phone number must be under the direct control of the business.” A VereTel number sits on VereTel’s carrier account, so read the guidelines before you change a Profile.

VereTel logs calls to VereTel numbers only. It does not see or report on calls that arrive through a number another company provides.

What the desk holds, and what it does not

Each call to a tracking number becomes a row in the desk: when it started, the caller’s number, the tracking number dialed and its label, whether the call was answered or missed (where the carrier reports it), and how long it lasted. You can filter the list by date range, and to answered or missed calls.

That is the whole record. VereTel does not record calls or transcribe them and has no AI features, so no recording, transcript or note of what was said is kept. It also cannot tell you whether a caller became a client: intake and matter records stay in your own systems, and you can match them to the desk by the caller’s number and the date.

Each customer signs in to its own desk with an email address and a password, and can sign out of every session at once. Each customer’s calls are separated from other customers’ at the database level, using PostgreSQL row-level security; the page on data separation explains how. The service is hosted in the United States, and traffic to it is encrypted over HTTPS and served through Cloudflare. The security page lists what VereTel does and does not claim.

VereTel is a call-logging tool, not a compliance product. It makes no claim about what any bar, privacy or consent rule requires of a firm.

Lawyer advertising rules apply to what you publish

This page does not interpret any rule and is not legal advice. It points to the sources.

The American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct are a model: the ABA says they “serve as models for the ethics rules of most jurisdictions.” Rules 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 are titled “Communications Concerning a Lawyer’s Services,” “Communications Concerning a Lawyer’s Services: Specific Rules” and “Solicitation of Clients.” Rule 7.1 begins: “A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services.” Its first comment says the rule “governs all communications about a lawyer’s services, including advertising.”

State bar rules on lawyer advertising apply to what a firm publishes, and in most jurisdictions they are based on the ABA’s model. The ABA keeps a page of legal ethics resources that links, state by state, to each state’s rules of professional conduct (it is listed under Sources below). Read your state’s rules, or ask your state bar or your own ethics counsel, before you publish a phone number in an ad.

A tracking number is a phone number on a piece of marketing. VereTel changes nothing about what the rules require of that marketing, and it cannot tell you whether an ad complies.

Counting the calls that come from a referral relationship is one thing; what a firm may give for a referral is another, and your state’s rules set it. The model version, Rule 7.2(b), begins: “A lawyer shall not compensate, give or promise anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer’s services except that a lawyer may:” and then lists exceptions.

A practical set-up for a firm

Start with the sources that cost the most. A number for every source in every practice area adds up quickly, so let the money decide how many you need.

1. Give each paid placement that you can print a number on its own number, labeled with the placement and the practice area, such as “Billboard · Highway 35” or “Search ad · Car accident.”
2. Point each number at the line that answers new-client calls: your intake line, your front desk or a call-handling service you already use. Each number forwards to one line, and you choose the line for each number. A Spanish-language ad, for example, can use a number that forwards to the line where a Spanish speaker answers.
3. For your website, use website number insertion, included in every plan and set up with you. It shows a different tracked number on each site or page you register, for example one on your family law pages and another on your criminal defense pages. It works per site and per page, never per visitor, keyword or ad.
4. Open the desk each morning and filter to missed calls. The list shows who called and which source they called, so someone can call back the same day. A person with a legal problem who reaches voicemail may call the next firm.

VereTel has no schedules or phone menus, so a number rings the same line at every hour. If an answering service takes your after-hours calls, point the number at a line where your phone system or that service makes the switch. A call that someone dials straight to your main number does not pass through VereTel, so the desk does not list it.

Also not part of VereTel today:

• reports and dashboards, lead statuses and notes: the call list is the whole record;
• keyword or ad-click attribution: a call is credited to the number dialed, so to a source, a site or a page, but not to a keyword, an ad or a visitor;
• call routing beyond one line per number: no phone menus, no routing by practice area, no ring groups;
• text messages and outbound calls;
• alerts to you when a number goes quiet: VereTel monitors its own call pipeline, and those alerts go to VereTel’s team;
• bringing an existing number to VereTel, which is not available at launch: a number you already publish stays where it is, and tracking numbers forward to the line behind it.

Starting with a free account, and sizing a plan for a firm

Create a free account first. It asks for your email address, not a card, and it needs no demo and no approval. It gives you a desk with sample calls (labeled as samples), a test tag for your website that only your own test link switches on, and the ROI calculator. It has no phone number, so it has no real calls: a free account is not a trial of calls.

You pay when you choose a number, and not before. Numbers are local, in an area code you choose where one is available. Toll-free numbers on Starter and up are on request: talk to us, and we will tell you what is possible. Numbers are not on sale yet. Create a free account and ask to be told when they are.

As guidance, not a promise, this is how the plans tend to match a firm’s sources:

• Solo $19.99 (1 number, 250 minutes) suits a solo practitioner who wants to learn whether one source makes the phone ring.
• Starter $79 (3 numbers, 1,000 minutes) suits a small firm with a website, search ads and one other placement.
• Growth $199 (10 numbers, 3,000 minutes) suits a firm with several practice areas, each with sources of its own.
• Scale $399 (25 numbers, 7,500 minutes) suits a multi-office firm, or one that runs many placements across practice areas.

A new account can hold up to 3 numbers during its first 30 days; an order for more is held for review. After that, the full count of its plan applies.

Minutes matter more when calls run long. A minute is one started minute of a forwarded call, counted on the inbound leg: a call that lasts 2 minutes and 10 seconds uses 3 minutes. Minutes are pooled across all your numbers. To size them, multiply the calls you expect in a month by their average length.

Prefer to talk first? The Talk to us form is optional, and it creates no account. What each plan includes is on the pricing page.