Client intake for law firms: from first enquiry to open matter without rekeying
Most small law firms run intake by hand: an enquiry arrives by phone or web form, someone types the details into the practice management system, runs a conflict check, drafts an engagement letter, chases the signature and ID, then opens the matter. Typically that's an hour or more of fee-earner and support time per new matter, spread over several days.
Those days matter. A prospective client who waits too long often instructs someone else, and every rekey is a chance to misspell a party name, which is the one thing a conflict check can't forgive. This guide is for law firms of 10-60 people - a people business, meaning a business that sells its people's expertise and time, like lawyers, accountants, agencies and consultants. It covers how to tighten intake with the tools you already have, the signs you've outgrown them, and what a custom intake build looks like.
Why it happens
Intake crosses more systems than almost any other process in a law firm:
Enquiries
arrive by phone, email, website form and referral.
The practice management system
Clio, PracticePanther or MyCase - holds contacts, matters and the conflict search.
Engagement letters
are drafted in Word from a template, often with matter-specific terms added by hand.
E-signature, ID checks and anti-money-laundering checks
usually run through separate tools.
Payment on account
goes through LawPay or a similar payment tool.
Documents
land in the PMS or a document management system such as NetDocuments.
Each handover between those tools is a person copying details. The conflict check, the most important control in intake, depends on the details being right, complete and checked against every related party, not just the client.
The fix with what you already have
Most practice management systems now cover more of intake than firms use. Start there.
- 01
Use one intake form for every enquiry
Clio's online intake forms can create the record for you: Clio says that once a prospective client submits a public intake form, Clio Grow automatically creates a new contact and matter. PracticePanther and MyCase offer intake forms too; check your plan. Ask for every party you'll need to search: the client, the other side, related companies, spouses, directors.
- 02
Run the conflict check inside the PMS, at intake
Clio's help centre explains how to run conflict checks in Clio Manage and Clio Grow: you can start one from search, contacts, an existing matter or while creating a new matter, choose flex or exact search, mark each result with a status and save a report to the matter as a record of your diligence. In Clio Grow you can start a check while taking in a lead. Use flex search to catch spelling variations, and search every party, not just the client.
- 03
Template the engagement letter
Put your standard terms in a document template with merge fields for client, matter, fee basis and responsible lawyer. The lawyer adds only what's genuinely specific to the matter.
- 04
Bundle the client's tasks
Send the engagement letter, ID request and payment on account together, with one clear message about what the client needs to do and why.
- 05
Write the intake checklist down
Who checks the conflict report, who approves the matter, who sends the letter. Our free client onboarding checklist is a starting point; add your firm's risk steps.
- 06
Measure your time to engage
Note the date of enquiry and the date the matter opens for a month of new matters. It's the best single measure of how well intake works.
Setting it up, step by step
Whichever practice management system you use, the order of work is the same. Plan for a few hours spread over two or three weeks, led by whoever owns intake today.
- List every route an enquiry takes into the firm. Phone, the website form, direct emails to lawyers, referrals from other firms and introducers. For each, write down who receives it and what they do next.
- Agree the questions per practice area. Sit down with one lawyer from each area for half an hour. Ask what they always need to know before they can say yes, and which parties they'd want searched. Keep the form as short as that list allows.
- Build the form in your PMS. In Clio Grow, PracticePanther or MyCase, set up one intake form per practice area with those questions, and make the party fields required. Test it yourself with a made-up enquiry and check the contact and matter look right at the other end.
- Route phone enquiries through the same form. Whoever answers the phone fills in the form while they talk, rather than writing notes to type up later. One route in means one set of data to trust.
- Write down the conflict rule. Who runs the search, which parties, flex or exact, who reviews the results and what happens to a possible match. Save the report to the matter every time.
- Load the engagement letter templates with merge fields, and have a partner sign off the standard wording once, so lawyers only add what's specific.
- Connect payment on account. If you use LawPay or a similar tool, put the payment link in the same message as the letter, so the client has one email to act on, not three.
Common mistakes
Asking only for the client's name.
The conflict check is only as good as the parties it searches. If the form doesn't ask for the other side, related companies and family members, nobody will search them.
A form so long that people skip it.
Every question should earn its place. Detail the lawyer needs later can be collected after the matter opens.
Clearing conflicts by habit.
"No results" on a misspelt name isn't a clear check. The person reviewing should look at what was searched, not just the outcome.
No owner for the whole process.
When intake belongs to everyone, enquiries sit in inboxes. Name one person who watches every enquiry until it becomes a matter or a polite no.
Sending the engagement letter, then the ID request a day later, then the payment link.
Each separate message is another chance for the client to stall.
What good looks like
A well-run intake process at a small firm tends to share a few features. Every enquiry, however it arrived, is in one list within the hour. Each has a named owner. The conflict check runs against every party before anyone gives advice, and the report sits on the matter. The client gets one clear message with everything they need to do. A partner can open one screen and see how many enquiries came in this month, how many became matters, and which are stuck.
When that stops working
These steps carry most small firms a long way. These are the signs you've reached the edge:
Enquiries still arrive in several places
and someone retypes the phone ones into the form.
The conflict search misses related parties
because the intake form didn't collect them, or someone searched only the client name.
Engagement letters vary by practice area
in ways your template tool can't handle, so lawyers edit each one by hand.
ID, AML and signature checks live in other tools
, and nobody can see which matters are waiting on which step.
Matter opening waits on one person
who's in court or on leave.
Your website, PMS and payment tool each hold a different version
of the client's details.
Partners can't see the intake pipeline
how many enquiries this month, how many became matters, how long each took.
What a custom build looks like
A custom intake build connects the tools you already use and follows your firm's own intake rules. It's one of the most common builds we do for law firms, and it's built around one principle: the system prepares, a person approves.
For a typical firm:
- One branded intake link per practice area, asking exactly what that kind of matter needs, including every party for the conflict search.
- Conflict search prepared, not decided. The build runs the search in your PMS across every party and variation, and presents the results to the person responsible. They clear it or escalate it; the build records the decision.
- Engagement letter drafted from your template with the matter details filled in, sent for the lawyer's review before it goes anywhere.
- Client tasks in one place. Signature, ID and payment on account through one simple page, with reminders that stop when each step is done. It uses the same building blocks as the client portal we built for a podcast agency, shaped to legal intake.
- An intake board for partners: every enquiry, its stage, its owner and how long it's waited.
We work in four steps - scope, build, roll out, improve. Roll-out includes training fee-earners and support staff, and changing the build until it fits how they actually take instructions.
On the open market, an intake or onboarding system typically costs $8,000-18,000 to build, plus ongoing support (see our guide to custom software costs for small businesses). Forge's prices are on the pricing page: a two-week ops audit at $2,500 (£2,000), credited to your first month, then a monthly plan at $2,000, $3,500 or $7,500 a month (£1,600, £2,800 or £6,000), with your first build included. The software runs on your own accounts, so you own it and pay those tool costs directly; we keep it monitored and fixed.
Once a matter is open, the next bottleneck is usually getting documents from the client. Our guide to document collection for law firms covers that.
Who gets time back, and what they do with it
Intake work lands on the people firms can least spare: a receptionist or intake coordinator, a paralegal, and often the fee-earner who'll run the matter.
When the rekeying happens on its own, your intake coordinator spends the time on the first conversation - for example, calling a nervous prospective client back the same afternoon to explain what happens next, which is often what wins the instruction. Your paralegal stops chasing signatures and ID and works on the matters already open. Your lawyers start work days sooner, and spend their intake time on the part only they can do: understanding the problem and advising on it.
For example: a week at a 20-person firm
Take, for example, a 20-person firm with a residential property team, a private client team and a small commercial team. In a typical week it might take 15 new enquiries.
Before tightening intake, the week looks like this. Monday's phone enquiries are written on pads and typed up on Tuesday. A property enquiry comes in through the website and waits two days because the lawyer it was sent to is on a completion. The private client team searches only the client's name for a will, missing that the client's brother is an existing client on the other side of a family dispute; a partner spots it by chance. Three engagement letters go out, each edited by hand, and two clients reply asking what the ID request is for.
After, the same week runs differently. Sam on reception enters phone enquiries straight into the intake form while the caller is still on the line, including the family members the private client form asks about. Every enquiry lands in one list, and Leah, the intake coordinator, assigns each to a lawyer the same morning. The conflict search covers every party, and the brother appears in the results for the partner to review before anyone advises. Engagement letters go out from templates the same day the conflict clears, with the ID request and payment link in one message that explains why each is needed. By Friday, Leah can tell the partners how many enquiries became matters and how long each took.
Nothing in that example needs a custom build. It needs the tools set up properly and one person who owns the list.
Rolling it out and training the team
Change intake one practice area at a time. Start with the team that takes the most enquiries, because they'll feel the benefit first and tell everyone else.
Train reception and support staff first.
They take most enquiries. Walk through the form with real examples, including a difficult caller and a referral with three related companies.
Give fee-earners a short briefing
, not a manual. They need to know where new matters appear, what the conflict report looks like and what they're expected to approve.
Run old and new side by side for two weeks
, then switch the old route off. If the old way stays available, people keep using it.
Ask for feedback at the end of week one
and change the form. The first version is never right.
Address the worry directly.
Some support staff will wonder whether a better system means less need for them. It doesn't. It means less retyping and more time with the people calling the firm.
How to know it worked
Measure the same things before and after, for at least a month each:
Time to engage:
days from first enquiry to open matter.
Conversion:
how many enquiries became matters.
Rekeying:
how many times the same details are typed into a second system.
Conflict quality:
how many matters had every party searched and a saved report.
Waiting enquiries:
how many sat more than a day without an owner.
If time to engage falls and every matter has a saved conflict report, intake is working. If people have drifted back to notepads, find out why before adding anything new.
Supervision
Intake decisions carry professional risk, so supervision should be built into the process rather than added on. A named person with the right authority clears each conflict, and their decision is recorded. A lawyer approves the engagement letter before it's sent. Anything unusual, such as a possible conflict or a client the firm has concerns about, goes to a partner. Where software prepares work, it should make those checks easier to do and easier to see, never skip them.
Confidentiality and data protection
Intake handles the most sensitive information a firm holds before a retainer is even agreed, so where it lives and who can see it matters. This section is general information, not legal advice; check your own obligations with your regulator and advisers.
Where data lives
Anything we build runs on your firm's own accounts and stores data in your existing systems, such as your PMS and document management. Nothing is held on Forge accounts.
Who can see it
Access follows your firm's roles. Intake forms and conflict reports are visible only to the people who need them.
UK firms
The SRA's guidance on confidentiality of client information explains that paragraph 6.3 of the Codes of Conduct requires you to keep the affairs of current and former clients confidential. Under UK GDPR, the ICO's guide to data security explains the duty to protect personal data with appropriate technical and organisational measures.
US firms
ABA Model Rule 1.6(c) requires reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorised access to, or inadvertent disclosure of, information relating to a client's representation. Your state's version of the rule is the one that applies.
AI in intake
If any step uses AI, such as summarising an enquiry, a person reviews the output and client data goes only into tools your firm has approved. Our guide to AI in small law firms covers this in more depth.
Questions, answered plainly
How can a small law firm automate client intake?
Use one intake form that creates the contact and matter in your practice management system, run the conflict check at intake against every party, template the engagement letter, and send the client's tasks together. Build custom only when the tools stop joining up.
Does Clio run conflict checks automatically?
Clio lets you run conflict checks in Clio Manage and Clio Grow, including while taking in a lead, with flex search for name variations and a saved report on the matter. A person still reviews the results and decides.
What should a law firm intake form ask for?
Contact and ID details, a short description of the matter, and every party you'll need to search for conflicts, such as the other side, related companies, directors and family members, plus how the client heard about you.
Can conflict checks be fully automated?
The search can be automated; the decision shouldn't be. A good system runs the search across every party and variation and presents the results, and a responsible person clears or escalates each one.
How much does a custom intake build cost for a law firm?
Typically $8,000-18,000 on the open market, plus ongoing support. With Forge, a two-week ops audit is $2,500 (£2,000), credited to your first month, then $2,000, $3,500 or $7,500 a month (£1,600, £2,800 or £6,000) with your first build included.