Intake Automation for a 40-Person Firm
14 hrs
Reclaimed per fee earner weekly
90%
Cases handled without intervention
8 wks
Audit to production
The challenge
A 40-person legal firm was losing 14+ hours per fee earner each week to intake admin — manual qualification, data entry, client communications, and scheduling. The process was inconsistent across teams and entirely dependent on individual effort. Partners knew the problem; nobody had time to fix it.
The approach
- 01
Audited the full intake workflow: intake forms, email chains, CRM entries, calendar booking, and follow-up sequences.
- 02
Mapped decision logic for qualification — what makes a lead worth pursuing versus declining.
- 03
Designed an AI-assisted intake pipeline: automated classification, data extraction from intake forms, CRM population, and client-facing communication sequences.
- 04
Built and deployed on existing infrastructure — no new tools required.
- 05
Ran parallel live testing for two weeks before full cutover.
The outcome
The system now handles the full intake workflow without manual intervention for 90% of cases. Edge cases escalate automatically with full context. Fee earners reclaimed 14 hours per week each and redirected that capacity to billable work. Client experience improved — faster responses, consistent communications. The firm is now expanding the system to document review.
"They diagnosed the exact bottleneck in the first call. Six weeks later we had a fully automated intake and qualification system running in production. Our team stopped drowning in admin overnight."
Managing Partner — Legal Services, UK