# Counsel · Pricing Rationale (Internal) This document is for the operator and the buyer of Counsel. It is not for prospects. It explains the price, the discount logic, the walk-away threshold, the LTV math, and where Counsel sits relative to comparable services in legal intake. --- ## Standard price: $697 / month One firm. All attorneys at the firm. All matters. Unlimited overnight intake by phone, web form, and email. Annual prepay knocks 15% off ($592/mo equivalent, $7,108 prepaid). ### Why $697 specifically Three anchors: 1. **The cheapest legal answering service is around $329 to $499/mo, the better ones are $1,000 to $1,800/mo.** Counsel needs to clearly outprice the better answering services while doing strictly more (drafted retainer, conflict check, calendar booking). $697 lands cleanly between the human-answering floor and the human-answering ceiling. 2. **One captured retainer per quarter pays for the year.** Across personal injury, criminal defense, family law, and estate practice, the lowest plausible retainer/matter value is around $2,400 (a basic family-law uncontested matter). At 4 incremental retained matters per year, the firm has covered the $8,364 annual subscription roughly 1.15 times. In practice, our pilot firms are netting 2 to 6 incremental retained matters per quarter. Math closes hard. 3. **It is a partner-discretion price.** Solo and small-firm partners can authorize $697/mo without convening anyone. Anything north of $1,000 triggers procurement-style scrutiny that does not exist at firms our size, and the conversation slows by 4 to 6 weeks. --- ## When to discount ### Annual prepay: 15% off $7,108 prepaid, equivalent to $592/mo. Cuts month-three churn risk significantly. We will trade margin for cash and locked retention. ### State bar association partnerships Some state bars (CA Lawyers Association, NY State Bar, FL Bar) run member-benefit programs. We will negotiate a 20% to 25% off rate for verified active-member firms. The bar takes a small per-acquisition fee. Predictable inbound is worth the discount. ### Multi-office firms 2 offices: $1,247/mo (10% off second). 3 offices: $1,747/mo (16% off third). The marginal cost is the per-office intake script tuning (jurisdiction, practice areas, fee structures). Voice and text inference scales nearly free. ### Design-partner firm in a new practice area: 50% off for 6 months Only when we are entering a practice area we have not productized for (immigration, IP, employment, etc.) and we need transcripts plus a case study with conversion metrics. Hard cap: one design partner per practice area. After 6 months, list price or they walk. --- ## When to walk We do not negotiate below $497/mo on standard plan. Hard floor. - **Below $497, the support cost eats the margin.** Even fully-AI accounts generate ~5 to 8 hours/month of human escalation review, intake-script tuning, and partner-handoff coordination. At $497 we are still profitable; below that we are paying to acquire a customer who will churn at month three. - **Anyone fighting $697 will fight every retainer template change, every script update, every quarterly check-in.** The discount discussion is a leading indicator of who will be the loudest in support. - **The partner who fights $697 will not become an LTV customer.** The expansion path (multi-office, retained-matter follow-up automation, intake analytics) is all $300 to $700/mo add-ons. If they fight the entry, the expansion conversation never happens. Walk-away script: "I understand. The way Counsel is priced, one captured retainer per quarter covers the year. If that math does not feel realistic for your firm, this might not be the right time. I will follow up in 90 days." Do not chase. --- ## LTV math ### Assumptions (refresh quarterly against Stripe export) - Standard ARPU: $697/mo = $8,364/yr. - Annual prepay penetration target: 32% (legal customers prepay more than trades). - Blended ARPU after annual mix: ~$8,150/yr. - Gross margin: ~76% (LLM inference, voice gateway, conflict-check stack, and ~5 hr/mo of human supervision per firm). - Monthly churn target: ~2.4% (legal customers churn lower than trades because the integration cost into intake workflow is real). [TBD: confirm via cohort tracker.] - Average customer lifetime at 2.4% monthly churn: ~41.7 months. ### LTV $8,150 × 0.76 × (41.7/12) = **~$21,510 LTV** per firm at standard. ### CAC ceiling 3:1 LTV:CAC means we can spend up to ~$7,170 to acquire a firm. We will not approach that, but the room exists for paid + outbound + bar-association partnerships. ### Payback period At $8,150 ARPU and 76% margin, gross profit per customer-year is $6,194. Payback against a $4,500 CAC (realistic blended) is roughly 8.7 months. The annual prepay shortens that meaningfully on the prepay cohort. --- ## Comparable services | Service | Monthly | What you get | What is missing | |---|---|---|---| | Smith.ai (legal intake) | $285 to $1,455 | Human + AI intake, basic conflict-check check-in | Per-call billing inflates fast on volume; retainer not drafted | | Ruby Receptionists | $385 to $1,650 | Human pickup, message-taking | No retainer drafting, no conflict pre-check, no morning docket | | Posh.com | $329 to $1,140 | Human pickup, light scheduling | No legal-specific intake, no draft retainer | | AnswerLegal | $329 to $1,250 | Human legal-trained pickup | No drafted retainer, no integrated conflict check | | Lex Reception | $389 to $1,495 | Human legal-only pickup | Same | | Counsel | $697 flat | Sub-60s attended intake, conflict pre-check, draft retainer, 7 a.m. docket | (Standard) one firm, single jurisdiction set | The cleanest comparison for the prospect call is the docket. Every alternative still requires the partner to read a list of messages in the morning and do the intake themselves. Counsel hands the partner one docket with a retained matter ready to sign. --- ## Prices we will revisit - **Q1 2027:** raise standard to $797 once we have 25 paying firms and a 6-month retention cohort. - **2027:** introduce a "Counsel Pro" $1,297/mo tier with multi-language live-translation handoff and active client matter follow-up automation. - **Never:** a free tier. Free trials are 14 days, no credit card. After day 14, the firm has either captured retainers from after-hours intake or it has not.