Legal services
Intake criteria belong to the attorneys
Legal intake works best when the firm's attorneys write the qualifying questions and the intake team applies them the same way every time.
Ironstark1 min read
Intake teams talk to more potential clients than anyone else at a firm. That makes it tempting to let intake decide which cases are worth pursuing. It is a mistake. Case acceptance is a legal judgment, and the criteria behind it should come from the firm's attorneys.
Write the criteria down
Good criteria are specific: the case types the firm handles, the jurisdictions, the date ranges, the injuries or losses that qualify, and the facts that disqualify. When the criteria live only in an attorney's head, intake applies them unevenly, and the firm loses good cases or pays to screen bad ones.
Apply them the same way every time
Once written, criteria become the intake script and the qualification logic in the intake system. Every contact gets the same questions in the same order. Answers are recorded as structured data, so attorneys reviewing a file see the same fields every time.
Review them on a schedule
Criteria change as dockets move and firm capacity shifts. A short monthly review between intake leadership and the responsible attorneys keeps the script current and catches questions that confuse callers.