Law firm missed-call calculator
Put your firm's own numbers in and see what unanswered calls plausibly cost you per month and per year. No email required, no gate — the numbers update as you type, and the full formula is published below so you can check the arithmetic yourself and argue with it.
Your firm's intake numbers
Adjust the inputs to estimate missed calls per month, how many were viable new-case enquiries, and the fee revenue plausibly leaking out of your intake.
Estimates only, not guarantees. The model assumes an unanswered caller would have signed at the same rate as one your intake team actually spoke to. That assumption is generous in one direction and conservative in another, which is why the number is for sizing the problem, not for forecasting recovery.
How this calculator works
Most missed-call calculators hide their assumptions, which makes the output impossible to argue with — and therefore impossible to trust. Here is the entire model in four lines:
Unanswered calls per month = calls per week × unanswered % × 4.33
Viable enquiries missed = unanswered calls per month × potential-new-case share
Signed cases lost = viable enquiries missed × sign rate
Fee revenue lost per month = signed cases lost × average fee per signed case
Yearly leakage is the monthly figure multiplied by twelve. There are no hidden constants beyond the 4.33 that converts weeks to months.
Unlike calculators that impose an industry conversion rate on you, every variable here is one your own firm can measure. If you disagree with the output, the disagreement will be about one of your five inputs — which is a far more productive argument than one about our arithmetic.
Where to find each input
The calculator is only as honest as what you feed it, and four of these five numbers are commonly guessed when they do not need to be:
| Input | Where the real number lives | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Inbound calls per week | Your phone system or call tracking platform. Use a normal week, not the week after a campaign launched. | Including outbound calls, internal transfers, and calls from existing clients about live matters. |
| Unanswered percentage | Unanswered + abandoned + straight-to-voicemail, divided by total inbound. Almost every phone system reports this directly. | Counting only calls that hit voicemail, and ignoring callers who hung up while on hold or in an IVR menu. |
| Potential new-case share | Sample one week of answered calls and tag each as new-case enquiry, existing client, vendor, or wrong number. Apply that ratio. | Assuming missed calls have the same mix as answered ones without checking. After-hours calls usually skew more heavily toward new enquiries, not less. |
| Sign rate on viable enquiries | Signed retainers ÷ new-case enquiries over the last 90 days, from your case management system. | Using the firm's overall conversion including referrals, which are usually far warmer than an inbound cold call. |
| Average fee per signed case | Total fee revenue ÷ number of resolved cases, over a period long enough to be representative. | Using a single memorable large result. One outlier makes the whole output meaningless. |
How to read the result
The output is a sizing estimate, not a forecast. It answers one question — is this problem worth any attention at all — and it should be read with three caveats:
- Not all of it is recoverable. No system answers every call, and some callers who reach voicemail do call back. Treat the figure as the size of the pool, not as money any vendor can hand you.
- The sign-rate assumption cuts both ways. Missed callers may convert worse than answered ones because they were shopping around — or better, because after-hours callers with a fresh incident are often the most motivated. We do not adjust for either, because we would just be making it up.
- A small number is a real answer. If your leakage is modest, this is not your firm's problem and you should spend the attention elsewhere. We would rather you find that out here than after buying something.
Pull one week of call logs and tag every unanswered call by what it actually was. Most firms discover their missed-call rate and their new-enquiry mix are both meaningfully different from what they assumed — and that single hour of work improves the quality of this estimate more than any change to the model would. It also tells you whether the gap is concentrated after hours, which decides what you would fix first.
What to do with the number
If the figure is large enough to matter, the next question is where the gap actually sits. A firm losing calls at 2pm on a Tuesday has a staffing or routing problem; a firm losing them at 9pm on a Saturday has a coverage problem, and those have different solutions and very different costs.
Measuring your real response time is the natural next step, because it segments the loss by hour and channel rather than reporting one blended figure. From there, after-hours coverage is usually the narrowest fix worth testing, and the personal injury lead response hub covers how the pieces fit together.
Questions about this calculator
Do I have to give you my email to see the result?
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser, the results update as you type, and nothing you enter is sent to us or stored anywhere. There is no gate, no export step, and no follow-up email, because there is nothing to follow up on — we never see your inputs.
Is this a guarantee of recoverable revenue?
No, and any vendor presenting a figure like this as recoverable revenue is overselling. It is a sizing estimate built from your own inputs and a published formula. It tells you roughly how large the pool is, not how much of it any system would actually capture.
What unanswered percentage should I use if I do not know mine?
Rather than guess, pull one week of call logs — almost every phone system reports answered versus unanswered directly. If you genuinely cannot get the data, run the calculator twice at 10% and 25% to see the range you are arguing about, then go and get the real number before making any decision.
Does this work for practice areas other than personal injury?
The arithmetic does. The defaults do not — the pre-filled fee and sign-rate values are shaped around contingency-fee personal injury work. If you run a different practice area, replace all five inputs with your own figures and the model still holds.
Why does it not account for referral sources or marketing spend?
Deliberately, to keep the model checkable in four lines. Adding acquisition cost would produce a more complete picture and a far less transparent one. If you want to layer it on, the useful comparison is your cost per signed case against the fee revenue this shows as leaking.