Can a law firm record and score intake calls for marketing?

I’m a marketer, not a lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice. Whether your firm may record a call, and with which vendors, is a decision for your ethics counsel. I run these checks before I score a firm’s calls.

Consent: one party or all parties

Federal law allows a call to be recorded with the consent of one party. A group of states requires the consent of everyone on the call. The list most often cited is California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. Connecticut requires all-party consent for recorded phone calls under its civil statute, and Michigan and Oregon are treated differently depending on the situation. Confirm against your own state’s statute rather than a list, this one included.

California’s rule is Penal Code section 632, which bars recording a confidential communication without everyone’s consent and carries a criminal fine of up to $2,500 per violation. Section 637.2 lets the person recorded sue for $5,000 per violation, and section 632.7 separately covers recording calls from cell phones. Counsel should confirm how each applies to your intake line.

A firm that takes calls from more than one state, which includes many firms running Google Ads, should plan for the strictest one. The usual approach is an announcement at the start of the call that it may be recorded. Ask counsel whether that announcement is enough in your states.

What Google records without asking you

Two Google features record calls on their own:

• Call ads in Google Ads. Call recording is on by default for most advertisers. Google’s page names healthcare and financial services as examples of exceptions and doesn’t mention legal, so assume it’s on until you check the setting. Callers hear an automated notice. You can turn it off under Admin, then Account settings, then Call ads.
• Local Services Ads. Calls through the LSA forwarding number are recorded by Google in the US and Canada. I haven’t found a documented setting to turn this off.

Neither of these is the firm’s own recording, but both create a recording of a conversation with a prospective client. Counsel should know they exist.

Confidentiality duties to prospective clients

Consent law decides whether you may record. Confidentiality is a separate professional duty, and it covers where the recording goes. ABA Model Rule 1.6 protects information relating to a representation, and Rule 1.18 extends that duty to prospective clients, which covers most people who call intake about a possible matter.

The ABA’s opinions on technology are the closest guidance I’ve found:

• Formal Opinion 477R (2017) asks for reasonable efforts to secure client information when using technology and vendors.
• Formal Opinion 498 (2021) covers supervising vendors in a virtual practice.
• Formal Opinion 510 (2024) advises limiting the information gathered from prospective clients to what’s needed to decide whether to take the matter.
• Formal Opinion 512 (2024), on generative AI, says some tools need the client’s informed consent before confidential information goes into them.

The New York City Bar’s Formal Opinion 2025-6 addresses using AI to record and transcribe client conversations directly. I haven’t found an ABA opinion on sending intake data to an ad platform, so counsel has to apply the general duty.

Ask three questions of every tool in the path: who stores the recording, who can listen to it, and whether any of it trains someone else’s model.

What a marketing call score measures

A call score for marketing answers one question: did a prospective client with a matter the firm takes call, and did the call move toward a consultation? It isn’t an assessment of the case. Keep the rubric short enough that two people would score the same call the same way.

On one law firm account I manage, the first rubric counted a call as good only if a consultation was booked. Checked against calls the firm’s own team had labeled by hand, it agreed on 7 of 12. The disagreements showed the firm’s own “yes” also covered callers retained on the call and some warm callers who needed a follow-up. So the rubric became three outcomes: booked or retained, warm but unclosed, not viable. On the next benchmark it matched all six clear rejections. The scoring ran on one machine, and the audio never left it.

Write the rubric from how intake already labels calls, then test it against those labels before any score reaches Google. And don’t score with keyword searches. In one intake analysis I ran, a search of transcripts for “call back” missed more than half of the calls where the prospect was left to make the next contact.

What goes to Google afterward

The score stays with the firm. Google receives a conversion: the caller’s phone number or click id for matching, the call time, and a value for the matter tier. No transcript, no notes, no description of the matter. Value only goes on qualified calls, and one caller counts once a month, so a client who calls five times doesn’t look like five leads.

That setup is covered step by step on tracking Google Ads leads to signed cases.

My checklist

1. Recorded-line announcement at the start of every intake call, approved by counsel.
2. Google’s own call recording reviewed: off in Google Ads if counsel prefers, and LSA recording understood.
3. Every vendor that stores or hears calls listed, with where the data lives and who can access it.
4. A scoring rubric about marketing fit, not case merit.
5. Nothing but an identifier, a time and a value sent to Google.

When to bring me in

Bring me in when the account reports leads that never sign, when intake can’t tell you which calls came from ads, or when cost per signed case keeps rising.

I'm Conner Crowe, and I write every audit myself. Send the free audit request and add me as a read-only user, and within 24 hours of access you'll have a written read on what your account counts as a conversion and what to fix first. No call needed, and nothing in your account or store changes.

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