The field guide to AI intake for plaintiff firms

Intake is where a firm wins or loses most of its cases, and it is the part of the practice least likely to have a process anyone could write down. A call comes in at 7:40 pm, someone takes notes on whatever is nearest, and whether that person becomes a client depends on who calls back first. This guide is a practical way to route every new lead through an agent without losing the human judgement that decides which cases to take.

1. Write down what a good intake actually collects

Before automating anything, list the facts your attorneys need to decide on a case: date and place of the incident, how it happened, injuries and treatment so far, insurance on both sides, prior representation, and how the person found you. If your best intake specialist would ask it, it belongs on the list. If nobody uses the answer, it does not.

This list becomes the agent's script and the CRM's intake form at the same time. One list, kept in one place, is what stops the phone, the web form and the walk-in from collecting three different things.

2. Decide what the agent may do, and what it may not

An intake agent should gather facts, answer questions about the firm's process, book a consultation and keep the conversation warm when nobody is free. It should never assess the merits, quote a value, promise representation or give legal advice. Write those limits down plainly; they are the agent's instructions and your compliance record.

The rule of thumb: the agent collects and schedules; a person at the firm decides.

3. Route every channel into one record

Phone, web form, text and referral should all create the same kind of record in the CRM, with the source attached. In CasePro that is the intake record — the answers, the documents the person uploaded, and where they came from — so the attorney reviewing it in the morning sees one file, not four fragments in four inboxes.

Source tracking is not a marketing nicety. It is how you learn which referral partners send cases you sign and which send calls you decline.

4. Keep a person on the decision

Every intake the agent completes should land in a review queue with a clear owner and a time by which it must be looked at. The agent can flag what it noticed — a statute-of-limitations date approaching, treatment that stopped, a possible conflict — but a person signs the case or declines it.

5. Close the loop with the person who called

Most leads are lost in silence, not in a no. Whatever the decision, the person who reached out should hear it quickly and in plain language. For declined matters, a courteous message and, where appropriate, a referral elsewhere protects the firm's name with the people who will tell their friends how they were treated.

6. Measure, then adjust the script

Review a sample of agent conversations every week for the first month: what it asked, what it missed, where people dropped off. Adjust the script, not the limits. The goal is a process you could hand to a new hire on day one — which is exactly what an agent needs, too.

A checklist to start with

One written list of intake facts. One page of what the agent may and may not say. Every channel creating the same CRM record, source attached. A review queue with an owner and a deadline. A reply to every person who reaches out. A weekly review of transcripts for the first month.