Client communication and calls: what is known and what is not

The Illinois disciplinary commission publishes yearly figures on the grievances it receives. These are allegations, not proven violations, and they cover Illinois only. They should not be read as a picture of the whole country.

• Complaints or discipline records, by state

  Illinois ARDC, 2025 Annual Report Highlights, 2025 (https://www.iardc.org/Files/AnnualReports/AnnualReport2025Highlights.pdf): 5,586 grievances were reported against 3,964 lawyers, which is 4% of the lawyers registered in Illinois.

• Complaints or discipline records, by state

  Illinois ARDC, 2025 Annual Report Highlights, 2025 (https://www.iardc.org/Files/AnnualReports/AnnualReport2025Highlights.pdf): neglect, incompetence and poor communication was 45% of the allegations, the largest category. Fees and billing were 8%. 50% of the complainants were clients or former clients.

• Reported by the source

  American Bar Association, Protect yourself from common disciplinary complaints, 2022 (https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/youraba/2022/0307/protect-yourself-from-complaints/): the article, which summarizes a seminar of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility, lists lack of communication and neglect among the most common disciplinary complaints against lawyers.

Clio ran a mystery-shopper experiment with the agency Lux, contacting U.S. law firms by email and by phone. It was an experiment, not a nationally representative sample.

• Mystery-shopper experiment, not a national sample

  Clio, Highlights from the Legal Trends Report 2024, 2024 (https://www.clio.com/blog/highlights-from-2024-legal-trends-report/): 40% of the calls were answered, compared with 56% in 2019. Counting call-backs, 52% of the firms could be reached by phone, so 48% were essentially unreachable.

The grievance figures show what people alleged, not what happened. The call figures describe the firms contacted, in that experiment. Neither tells us what a firm would gain by changing how it communicates, and we do not claim it.

No primary figures on physical mail in law firms were found for this article, so it gives none. We do not cite vendor material on mail handling.

That does not mean mail is unimportant. It means we have nothing measured to report, and we prefer to say so.

A good flow does not depend on a statistic. It depends on knowing what arrives, who is responsible for it and where it is recorded.

• List the kinds of calls and letters the firm receives
• Decide who is responsible for each kind
• Record every call and letter in the case record with its date and status
• Use providers connected to the firm's systems for the physical handling
• Review the log regularly to see what is missed

Providers can answer calls and receive and scan letters. The firm decides the rules, and the work of designing, connecting and keeping the flow running is described in our article on handling mail and calls.