Home / Law Firms / Inquiry auto-reply in under 5 minutes, intake form and consult booking (Clio + Calendly)
Law Firms problem 1: Web inquiries wait hours or days for a reply
Inquiry auto-reply in under 5 minutes, intake form and consult booking (Clio + Calendly)
A website inquiry gets a reply within seconds with your intake form and a consult booking link. Urgent matters (a hearing this week) alert the attorney, practice areas you don't handle get a polite decline with the bar referral service, existing clients go to the attorney, and every new inquiry lands in Clio Grow. Calendly bookings are added to the Clio calendar.
The problem
A prospect who hears nothing usually contacts the next firm. The research below measures how often firms don't respond; it doesn't put a dollar figure on it, so neither do we.
- In Clio's 2024 secret-shopper study of 500 US firms, 67% did not respond to an email inquiry. Source: Clio Legal Trends Report 2024, secret-shopper study (500 US law firms) (Industry report by a practice-management vendor; read via search excerpt)
- In the same study, only 40% of firms answered the phone and 48% could not be reached by phone at all. Source: Clio press release on the 2024 Legal Trends Report (PR Newswire) (Vendor press release)
Background reading: Can lawyers text clients? A checklist for automated texts · Law firm web inquiries: a reply in 5 minutes without inviting a conflict
Who it's for
Solo and small US law firms (1-10 people) on Clio that take new clients through a website form and can't watch the inbox all day.
Tools and monthly cost
| Tool | Official price |
|---|---|
| Clio Manage (you probably already pay for it) | Starter from $49 / user / month; Core, Signature and Elite are quote-based. Make sure your plan includes API integrations (third-party guides report the entry plan does not). Matter stages are listed from Signature up pricing page |
| Calendly (consult booking) | Standard $10 / seat / month (webhooks need a paid plan) pricing page |
| Resend (sends the emails) | Free: 3,000 emails / month, 100 / day. Pro: $20 / month for 50,000 pricing page |
| n8n | Community Edition: free if you self-host (you pay for the server). n8n Cloud: from EUR 20 / month (Starter) or EUR 50 (Pro) pricing page |
Example month: Illustrative: 80 inquiries a month = 80 replies + about 80 attorney alerts and booking notes, well inside Resend's free 3,000 emails. Calendly Standard $10. Total about $10 a month plus n8n (free self-hosted or EUR 20 Cloud) and the Clio plan you already pay for.
Setup
- In Clio's developer portal, create an app with read access to Contacts and write access to Calendars, connect it to your account and store the token in an n8n OAuth2 credential (Clio access tokens expire, so let n8n refresh them).
- If you use Clio Grow, copy your Lead Inbox token (Grow > Settings > Inboxes) into GROW_INBOX_TOKEN. Without Grow, delete the 'Clio Grow lead' node.
- Verify your sending domain in Resend (or swap the email node for Gmail / Outlook) and set FIRM_FROM_EMAIL and ATTORNEY_EMAIL.
- Point your website form at the workflow's 'inquiry' webhook (fields: name, email, phone, practice_area, message, and an empty hidden field named website as a bot trap).
- In Calendly (paid plan) create a webhook subscription for invitee.created pointing at the 'calendly' webhook, and put its signing key in CALENDLY_SIGNING_KEY.
- Set FIRM_PRACTICE_AREAS, STATE_BAR_REFERRAL, INTAKE_FORM_URL, BOOKING_URL and FIRM_TZ from .env.example, then send yourself a test inquiry for each practice area.
Download
Download law-firm-inquiry-intake.zip
Contains the n8n workflow, the mock data, the test runner with its last results, and the mock server we tested against. All keys in .env.example are fake.
Test result
Every workflow was imported into n8n 2.45.4 and run end to end on our test machine. Clio Manage (API v4), Clio Grow, the email sender (Resend), Outlook (Microsoft Graph), Twilio and Stripe were replaced by a local mock server built from their official API docs: it checks the same request shapes and required fields, enforces Clio's rate limit (HTTP 429) and records every call. These recipes use no AI model; every decision is a written rule you can read. Matters, clients and invoices are invented. Nothing was sent to a real phone, client or account. The billing recipe was also run once against a real Stripe test-mode sandbox (no money moves).
10/10 scenarios passed (run 2026-10-27)
| PASS | I1 | New family-law inquiry gets the intake form + booking link in seconds, and a Clio Grow lead |
| PASS | I2 | Eviction hearing this week: reply says call now, attorney gets an URGENT alert |
| PASS | I3 | Practice area the firm doesn't handle gets a polite decline + bar referral, no booking link |
| PASS | I4 | Existing client using the web form is routed to the attorney, not into intake |
| PASS | I5 | Bot submission (honeypot filled) is dropped silently |
| PASS | I6 | Same person submits twice in 10 minutes: one reply only |
| PASS | I7 | Clio rate-limits the contact lookup (429): the workflow waits, retries and still replies |
| PASS | I8 | Calendly booking (valid signature) lands on the Clio calendar + attorney heads-up |
| PASS | I9 | Forged Calendly call (bad signature) is ignored |
| PASS | I10 | Calendly re-delivers the same booking: no duplicate calendar entry |
Actual output from the test run
Reply emailed to the inquirer in scenario I1 (0.5 seconds after the form was sent). Names and numbers are invented.
Subject: Next steps with Harbor Point Law Hi Jordan, Thanks for reaching out to Harbor Point Law. Here's how to get started: 1. Fill in our short intake form (about 5 minutes): https://harborpointlaw.example/intake?email=jordan.blake%40example.com 2. Book a consultation with Dana Whitfield: https://calendly.com/harborpointlaw-example/consult Please don't send confidential details by email yet. Contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship; that only starts once we've checked for conflicts and you've signed an engagement agreement. Harbor Point Law +15555550160
Verified with mocks
- Reply to a new inquiry with intake form + booking link and a 'no attorney-client relationship yet' note, measured under 5 minutes (about half a second in the test).
- Urgent wording (hearing, eviction, deadline this week) triggers an URGENT attorney alert and a 'please call us now' reply.
- Practice areas you don't handle get a decline with the bar referral link and no booking link.
- Existing Clio clients are routed to the attorney instead of intake; bot submissions (honeypot) are dropped; a double submit gets one reply.
- Calendly webhook signature is checked; forged calls are ignored; a re-delivered booking does not create a second Clio calendar entry.
- Clio 429 rate-limit replies are retried.
Documented from official API docs only
Built to the vendor's documentation but not run against a live account. Check these on yours.
- Clio Manage API v4 contacts and calendar_entries endpoints, OAuth and rate-limit headers (from Clio's developer docs).
- Clio Grow Lead Inbox API field names (from Clio's docs).
- Calendly webhook payload and Calendly-Webhook-Signature format (from Calendly's docs).
- Resend email API (from Resend's docs).
Limitations
- The urgency check is a keyword list, not AI. It will miss urgent inquiries phrased differently, and the attorney should still read every new inquiry.
- No conflict check is run. The reply says so and invites no confidential details, but someone must run conflicts before the consult.
- The workflow keeps its 'already replied' memory in n8n's workflow data; if you re-import the workflow, that memory resets.
- These workflows are tools, not legal advice. Check your state's rules on advertising, client communication, trust accounting and texting before you turn one on.