At a time when anxiety about artificial intelligence is rippling through professional industries, Colleen Joyce, CEO of Lawyer.com, has built a profitable legal tech platform that uses AI to deepen, not replace, the human connection.
“AI is not going anywhere,” she said. “How are you going to use it to be better at your craft?”
She recalled, “When we started Lawyer.com 14 years ago, we realized that consumers were coming to us on their worst day, when they didn’t know what to do or where to go.”
The company curates a free online directory of millions of lawyer listings and helps match potential clients with a lawyer who fits their needs. On the legal side, Lawyer.com helps lawyers increase visibility and generate client leads.
Today, Joyce and her team serve more than 4,000 firms and have responded to more than six million legal inquiries.
Connecting Consumers with Attorneys
Joyce primarily uses AI to match clients with legal representation through the company’s intake service. She developed LawyerLine, under the umbrella of Lawyer.com, to answer calls 24/7, qualify cases and route “real clients to real attorneys,” she said.
“AI is the support engine,” she said. “We’re not replacing lawyers.”
In practice, an AI agent answers the phone, identifying itself as AI, and asks the potential client to describe their legal need. The system responds to keywords; phrases such as “emergency hearing” or “car accident” automatically connect the caller with a live agent. By using AI to filter and route calls, Joyce said, “The humans, then, are focusing their time on converting that call into your client.”
She added, “It’s extremely important to keep the human in the loop. But if you can put AI in front, you’ll get better information faster.”
Turning Missed Calls into Clients
Joyce believes firms lose 30%–50% of potential revenue from missed client calls. “Because when do people call? At lunchtime, in the evenings, on weekends, and no one is there to answer the phone,” she said. “Later, when the lawyer follows up on a Tuesday morning on a message left on a Friday, the caller has already talked to 10 others.”
She urged firms to evaluate their intake processes. “How many calls are you getting a day, and who is answering them? If you measure it, it will improve.”
Using AI to Support Operations
Joyce encouraged lawyers to explore AI beyond intake. “You should be demonstrating and testing because I guarantee your competitors are,” she said.
She pointed to EvenUp, Eve and Supio as AI platforms designed to assist lawyers. “These are built to help you run a better business, from document review to prelitigation and post-litigation,” she said. “Every part of the legal journey can use some sort of AI to become more efficient.”
Expanding Access to Legal Services
AI’s ability to “increase access to justice without dehumanizing clients” matters to Joyce as much as operational efficiency.
“AI will help level out access to justice,” she said. “Information is power. It doesn’t mean we’re going to replace the lawyer, but you’ll connect with the lawyer who is the best fit for what you need.”
Balancing Innovation with Compliance
Joyce is a “big fan of AI with guardrails.” While President Trump signed an executive order in December 2025 to centralize AI policy at the federal level, some states, including Colorado, have enacted their own guidelines. Colorado’s AI law is currently scheduled to take effect in June.
“I want to make sure that you’re doing things in the most responsible way, to include everyone, but also to have some serious guardrails,” she said. Although Joyce worries restrictive state laws could drive away AI-friendly businesses, she believes broad federal legislation may be too sweeping.
“It’ll be very interesting to watch,” she said. “What companies will survive or consolidate, and how will laws still to be written impact all of this growth?”