Updated October 2026
Connect the Outlook or Office 365 calendar your firm already keeps, and Clientping texts each client before their appointment from your firm's own number. The client answers YES or NO, and the event on the attorney's calendar changes to CONFIRMED: or DECLINED:, so anyone at the front desk can see which of Thursday's consults are on without making a round of calls. Staff keep booking in Outlook the way they do now, with one habit added: the client's cell number goes in the event title.
Below, we follow one consult at a fictional firm from the first phone call to a confirmed YES, with the exact texts Clientping sends, and then cover the setup that makes it work. If you'd like a figure for the hour a forgotten consult leaves empty, we worked out what a missed consult costs.
Acme Law is a made-up two-attorney family law firm on Central time. On Tuesday, October 6, the paralegal, Maria Lopez, takes a call from a prospective client named Jane Roe who wants to come in Thursday. Maria gets Jane's cell number and tells her the firm will text her a reminder. Then she adds this to the attorney's Outlook calendar for Thursday at 2:00 p.m.:
Jane Roe consult (605) 555-0142
Acme uses the default rule, one reminder the day before, so during one of Wednesday's hourly checks Clientping picks up the appointment and Jane gets this text from the firm's number:
Acme Law: you have an appointment Thursday, October 8 at 2:00PM. To confirm text YES. To decline text NO. To end alerts text STOP.
That's 131 characters, a single SMS. The Outlook event now reads REMINDED: Jane Roe consult (605) 555-0142, so anyone glancing at the calendar can see Jane has been contacted.
About an hour later, Jane writes back Yes. Capitalization doesn't matter, and a bare YES confirms without sending the firm any email. Replies like yes. or Yes! also confirm, and they send the firm a "Client Message" email with her full reply. Clientping replies "Your appointment is confirmed!" and updates the Outlook title to CONFIRMED: Jane Roe consult (605) 555-0142. On Thursday morning, Maria sees the confirmation on the attorney's calendar without opening Clientping, and the Calendar events list on the Clientping dashboard shows the same CONFIRMED: title.
If Jane had replied NO, Clientping would have answered "Thank you. We will give you a call.", switched the title to DECLINED: Jane Roe consult (605) 555-0142, and emailed the appointment details to the calendar's notification address. You can also let declining clients pick a new time themselves from a link to your open slots. Clientping checks your Outlook calendar for busy times when it shows the open slots, and again before it saves the new time.
A question or note from the client, like "running late, can we do 3?", lands in Messages and gets emailed to the calendar's notification address, so a person reads it and can text or call back.
Court dates can get their own wording. Acme adds a rule that matches *court in the title, so an event like John Doe first appearance (605) 555-0177 *court gets the court message the day before. If you also want a heads-up four days out, add a second *court rule set to four days. Only one reminder day per calendar can ask for a YES or NO, so turn confirmation off on the early one. The reminder rules page shows how, and our post on court date reminders works through the wording. For joint appointments, like a couple signing wills together, our post on appointment reminders for lawyers follows two clients on one Outlook event to ALL CONFIRMED:.
Clientping connects through the Microsoft account the calendar lives in. That covers Microsoft 365 work and school accounts as well as personal Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live addresses, so a solo attorney who has run the practice off a Hotmail calendar for years can use it too. If your organization doesn't let staff approve apps on their own, your Microsoft 365 administrator has to approve Clientping first, though if they've turned on Microsoft's admin consent workflow, you can send that request from the sign-in screen. Once you're signed in, you pick the calendar to watch and check that the next five days of appointments show the right times. The Microsoft Outlook setup guide walks through each screen, and the other calendar connection guides sit alongside it.
From then on, Clientping checks the calendar every hour from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central and reads the client's number from the event title, in any common US format with the area code, so (605) 555-0142 and 605-555-0142 both work. Contact sync can bring in your Outlook contacts to save looking numbers up, but the reminder still goes to the number in the title. Texts come from a local number that belongs only to your firm, and calls to it can forward to your front desk.
Each calendar also has a box labeled "Only process events created by the calendar owner", which starts out checked. If your paralegal books appointments from her own Outlook and invites the attorney, or you're watching a shared calendar, uncheck it in calendar settings, or Clientping will skip those appointments. The same page holds the calendar's "Notification email", where declines and client replies arrive.
Plans and what each includes are on the pricing page. The fastest way to see it working is to connect and activate your calendar, create a timed appointment for tomorrow (not an all-day event) with your own cell number in the title, and wait for the reminder to reach your phone. Do this before 6 p.m. Central so today's hourly checks can pick it up. For an overview of the integration itself, see Clientping for Outlook and Office 365.
