Missed Call Cost Calculator for Law Firms.

How the math works

The calculator runs five steps, all plain arithmetic on your inputs:

1. Missed inquiries per month = calls per week × % missed × 4.33 (52 weeks ÷ 12 months).
2. Lost consults = missed inquiries × % who would have booked.
3. Lost retained matters = lost consults × your consult-to-retainer rate.
4. Revenue at risk per month = lost matters × average fee per matter.
5. Revenue at risk per year = the monthly figure × 12.

The one judgement call is step 2. It assumes a missed caller would have booked at the rate you enter. Some missed callers try again, some leave a voicemail you return in time, and some were never a fit. That is why the field asks you to lower your normal booking rate, not copy it.

The example numbers loaded on this page (15 calls a week, 25% missed, 40% booking, 35% retained, $3,000 fee) are placeholders to show how the tool works. They are not averages for Canadian firms, and they are not a benchmark. The practice-area presets work the same way: rough starting points you should overwrite.

Find your real numbers in 20 minutes

You probably have most of what you need already:

• Calls per week and % missed: export last month's call log from your phone system or VoIP provider. Count unanswered and voicemail calls from numbers not already in your client list. Split them into business hours and after hours.
• Booking rate: of the inquiry calls your team did answer last month, how many booked a consult?
• Retainer rate: from your practice management software, consults held versus new matters opened over the last quarter.
• Average fee: total fees billed on matters opened in the last 12 months, divided by the number of those matters.

If you have never checked your miss rate, do it before you trust any result. For context, when Clio had a research firm secret-shop 500 US law firms for its 2024 Legal Trends Report, only 40% answered the phone and 48% neither answered nor called back, according to a summary by the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism. That is a US sample, not your firm. Your log is the only number that counts.

How to use your result

Treat the yearly figure as the size of the leak, not money in the bank. It is a ceiling on what better phone coverage could recover, before conflicts, fit and capacity.

• Run it twice. Once with after-hours calls only, once with busy-signal and over-the-lunch misses only. The bigger number tells you which fix to start with.
• Compare it to the cost of the fix. If a missed-call text back or after-hours answering costs a fraction of one retained matter a month, the decision is easy.
• Watch lost retained matters, not dollars. "Two or three matters a month" is easier to sanity-check with your partners than a big annual total.
• Re-run it after a change. Pull a fresh call log 30 days after any fix and see whether your % missed actually moved.

What to fix first

Most of the revenue at risk comes from three gaps. Fix them in this order.

1. After-hours answering

Calls that arrive at night or on weekends usually have no one to pick up. A live answering service or an AI receptionist can answer, take the caller's name and contact details, and book a consult into your calendar. See how this works in our guide to AI receptionists for law firms, the comparison of a virtual receptionist for law firms in Canada, and local notes for Ottawa and Toronto firms.

2. Missed-call text back

When a call does slip through, an automatic text within a minute or two tells the caller you saw it and offers a time to talk. It is the cheapest fix on this list. Keep the text short, name the firm, and never discuss the matter by text. Start from our missed-call text back templates.

3. Intake screening

Answering is only half the job. Your intake should collect the caller's name, the other parties' names, the type of matter and any deadline, then hold the full story until conflicts clear. The AI never gives legal advice and never decides a conflict; a lawyer does. Our guide to law firm intake automation in Ontario walks through a two-stage script.

General estimate, not financial advice. This page is general information, not legal advice.