Why professional services intake is different

Most intake forms carry no risk. You collect some details, you get them wrong, you ask again.

Law firm intake has less room for that. Three things can go wrong in the first conversation: you take instructions that conflict you out, a limitation clock starts running without anyone noting it, or the caller leaves believing you now act for them. Each one starts at intake, and none of them surfaces until much later.

What we published

Personal injury intake form. The incident, witnesses and injuries come first, followed by a treatment table, financial loss, insurance and any prior advice. One field asks specifically about pre-existing conditions in the same body area. Clients rarely mention them unprompted, and learning about them from the opposing party's medical evidence is a bad afternoon for everyone.

Legal client intake form. For any new matter, whatever the practice area. Who the client is, a five-row table for the other parties, the conflict check and how it was resolved, the matter itself, then the basis on which you would act and a recorded intake outcome.

Legal intake form. The same form again, this time with the process written around it: who should take the enquiry, what has to be done before instructions, and how declined enquiries are handled.

Run the conflict check before the story

Every one of these forms runs against the grain of a normal first call. The caller wants to explain what happened, and letting them feels like good service.

Once you have taken detailed instructions from a prospective client, you may be unable to act for the other side. So the other parties table sits inside the conflict section, ahead of the incident. Take the names, clear the check, and only then hear the account.

Record the limitation date on the first call

Limitation periods are strict, and they differ by claim type and by jurisdiction. The way firms miss them is dull and familiar. An enquiry waits three weeks for someone to decide on it, and the period keeps running throughout.

Writing down the incident date and the earliest possible limitation date during that first contact takes a minute. No other field on the form is worth as much.

Send a letter to every enquiry you decline

Firms get this part wrong more often than any other, which is why each form records the intake outcome as a field instead of leaving it assumed.

Accepted matters are usually well documented. Declined ones often leave no trace. A caller who explained the problem and then heard nothing can easily assume the firm is handling it, and if the limitation period runs out, what that person was entitled to assume becomes a question the firm has to answer.

The answer is a non-engagement letter to every enquiry you turn down, for any reason: a conflict, no capacity, weak merits or the wrong practice area.

How to use them

Complete a template online and keep the finished PDF, or download it blank in PDF or Word. There is no account to create, nobody asks for your email, and nothing is watermarked.

All three sit side by side on the client intake template hub.