Why professional services intake is different
Most intake forms carry no risk. You collect some details, you get them wrong, you ask again.
Professional services intake is not like that. Every enquiry you take detailed instructions from is a potential conflict, a potential limitation problem, and a potential client who believes you are acting for them when you are not. All three of those failures happen at intake and none of them are visible until much later.
What we published
Personal injury intake form. Incident, witnesses, injuries, a treatment table, financial loss, insurance and prior advice. Plus a specific field for pre-existing conditions affecting the same body area, because clients rarely volunteer it and finding out from the other side's medical records is considerably worse.
Legal client intake form. General new matter intake across practice areas. Client identity, other parties in a five-row table, the conflict check with its resolution, the matter, the engagement basis and a recorded intake outcome.
Legal intake form. The same document, with the process around it: who should take the enquiry, what must happen before instructions, and what happens to the ones you decline.
Conflict check before instructions, not after
The order on these forms is the opposite of how an intake conversation naturally runs. Someone calls, they want to tell you what happened, and the instinct is to listen.
But once you have taken detailed instructions from a prospective client, you may be conflicted out of acting for the other side. That is why the other parties table sits in the conflict section rather than the incident section. Get the names, run the check, then take the story.
Diarise the limitation date at intake
Limitation periods are strict and they vary by claim type and jurisdiction. The failure mode is well known and it still happens: an enquiry sits in a pile for three weeks while someone decides whether to take it, and the clock runs the whole time.
Recording the incident date and the earliest possible limitation date at first contact costs nothing and is the highest-value field on the form.
Send a letter to every enquiry you decline
This is the part firms handle worst, and it is why the intake outcome is a recorded field rather than an assumption.
Most firms record accepted matters well and declined enquiries barely at all. Someone who called, explained their problem and heard nothing back frequently believes it is being dealt with. When the limitation period expires, what they were reasonably entitled to believe becomes a live question.
A non-engagement letter goes to every declined enquiry, whether you declined for conflict, capacity, merit or practice area.
How to use them
Fill one online and download the finished PDF, or take the blank PDF or Word file. No account, no email address, no watermark.
Browse the whole set on the client intake template hub.