Legal client intake is the process a firm runs between a stranger's enquiry and a signed engagement letter, and what distinguishes it from every other trade's intake is the gate in the middle: a firm must positively decide it can and should act before it agrees to anything. Run in order, the stages are capture, questionnaire, conflict check, decision, and engagement or declination, each leaving a record. Firms that run them in order protect themselves twice over: the conflict surfaces before the confidences are received, and the declined enquiry leaves paper instead of a grudge.
Capture and questionnaire: get the facts while they are fresh
The enquiry gets captured in structured fields at first contact: the caller, all parties they can name, the matter in a sentence, the referral source. Then the questionnaire goes out and gathers the substance at home: timeline, documents, the parties' full names and roles, the outcome sought. Between them these two steps decide the quality of everything after, because a conflict check can only search the names somebody wrote down.
The conflict check and the decision are the firm's, on the record
With the parties captured, the firm checks the new matter's names against current and former clients and adverse parties, under its jurisdiction's professional conduct rules. Then it decides: take the matter, on what fee basis, with which lawyer, or decline it. Neither the check nor the decision belongs to software; what belongs to process is that both happen before the engagement and both leave a dated record of who decided what.
Engage or decline, in writing, then open the file
Acceptance becomes an engagement letter: scope, fee basis, the terms your jurisdiction requires, signed before the work starts. Declination becomes a short dated letter that closes the loop and, where appropriate, notes any deadline the enquirer should not sleep on. Either way the intake record is kept: matters declined today have a habit of returning as conflicts, references and repeat enquiries years later, and the firm that kept its record answers in minutes.
Questions people ask about legal client intake
How long should legal client intake take end to end?
Days, not weeks: capture same day, questionnaire back within a few days with one chase, the conflict check and decision inside the week where the matter allows. Urgency cases compress the same stages; they never skip them.
What goes in the engagement letter?
Scope, the fee arrangement, responsibilities, and whatever else your jurisdiction's rules require. The letter's content is legal judgement and your bar's rules; intake's contribution is that every detail it needs was captured once and flows in without re-typing.
Why document a declination at all?
Because the declined enquirer heard something, and memory is a poor witness. A dated letter records that no engagement arose and flags any looming deadline honestly. It is the cheapest protection intake produces.