The Law Firm Intake System

The intake gap sits at predictable hours: the call that comes in between 6 p.m. and 9 a.m., or while the front desk is on lunch, or while reception is on the other line walking a slip-and-fall client through medical history. The voice agent answers immediately. It introduces itself by firm name. It captures the same intake form a paralegal would, in conversational language, and it never tries to practice law.

What the agent actually does

• Greets by firm name and case type. If the inbound number is the PI line, it greets “Thanks for calling [Firm], personal injury intake.”
• Captures eight core data points. Caller name, callback number, date of incident, location, injuries claimed, currently treating with a physician, currently represented by counsel, source of referral.
• Screens for urgency. If the caller mentions an incident date and the matter type has a known statute of limitations window approaching, the agent flags it inside the system (see Module 03).
• Schedules the consult. Either books a next-day attorney call onto the firm’s shared calendar, or warm-transfers if the on-call attorney is available now.
• Sends an immediate SMS confirmation. Caller gets a text with the consult time, what to bring, and a single “Reply STOP to opt out” line at the bottom.
• Notifies the intake paralegal. Email + SMS summary of the call goes to the intake desk inside 30 seconds of hangup.

Sample script: after-hours PI call

What the AI does not do

Where it integrates

The agent writes a contact and matter record into the firm’s practice management system (Clio, Smokeball, MyCase, PracticePanther, or the system you already run) the moment the call ends. It books the consult slot into the attorney’s calendar (Outlook, Google Workspace, or the PMS-native calendar). It triggers Module 02 (conflict check) and Module 03 (statute of limitations check) automatically. No paralegal touches anything until the morning standup.

The intake call ends. Forty seconds later, every name captured (caller, adverse driver, adverse business, prior counsel, treating physician where relevant) is matched against the firm’s existing client database, including closed matters, conflicts-only entries, and the firm’s ethical-wall list. If the system finds a hit, it pauses the consult booking and pings the firm’s designated conflicts attorney by SMS.

The conflict-check flow

1. Extract parties. The intake agent’s transcript is parsed for every named entity: caller, adverse parties, witnesses, prior counsel, treating providers, employers.
2. Normalize. Names are normalized (e.g. “Bob” → “Robert,” “USAA” → “United Services Automobile Association”).
3. Match. A query runs against the firm’s PMS contact and matter records, plus any standalone conflicts-only database the firm maintains.
4. Decision tree. Clean → consult auto-confirms. Possible match → consult is marked “Conflict Hold,” SMS goes to conflicts attorney with the matched record and the new lead context.
5. Audit. Every match attempt is logged with timestamp, parties checked, result, and the human who cleared it. This is the record you keep if a bar complaint ever asks how you screened.

Sample SMS to conflicts attorney

Why this matters more than firms realize

Most firms run conflicts checks the morning of the consult, by hand, against a static spreadsheet, in a 90-second flip-through. That works at 5 cases a week. It does not work at 25 cases a week. The miss rate goes up, the IOLTA-trust risk goes up, and the time to clear a clean case goes up too. Automating the screen lets the firm run a fuller, more thorough check on every single lead without adding paralegal headcount.

The single most expensive intake mistake a firm can make is to let a viable case sit in the nurture queue past its statute of limitations window. Once SOL runs, the case is dead. No nurture sequence recovers a time-barred claim. The SOL watcher prevents this in three ways: at intake, in nurture, and at handoff.

How the watcher works

1. Date-of-incident at intake. The voice agent captures the date as a required field. If the caller is unsure, the agent asks for an approximate week or month.
2. SOL lookup. The matter type and jurisdiction are matched against a per-state SOL table the firm configures during onboarding (e.g. Arizona PI = 2 years from date of incident; California PI = 2 years; medical malpractice and government-entity claims have shorter windows).
3. Urgency tag. Three tiers. Green = more than 6 months remaining. Amber = 60 to 180 days remaining. Red = under 60 days.
4. Amber alert. Lead is flagged on the intake dashboard. Nurture sequence is escalated. SMS reminders to follow up are sent to the assigned attorney every 14 days.
5. Red alert. Lead jumps the queue. Managing attorney is paged by SMS. The case must be signed, declined, or referred out inside 7 days.

Where SOL trips up firms

• Government-entity notice of claim. Many jurisdictions require formal notice within 180 days (or shorter) for claims against a public entity. The agent flags any mention of a city / county / state employee, public vehicle, or government property at the scene.
• Discovery-rule cases. Medical malpractice, latent-injury, defective-product matters where the clock starts on discovery, not on the act. These flag for attorney review, not auto-classification.
• Minor tolling. Cases involving claimants under 18 typically toll until majority, but the firm still wants the date captured.
• Out-of-state defendants and venue questions. If the captured details suggest a multi-jurisdiction case, the system tags it for venue analysis at the consult.

Sample red-flag SMS to the intake attorney

In the model, of every 100 qualified intakes a PI firm receives, roughly 30 sign on the first consult and the other 70 do not. That is the seventy percent from section 01, an illustrative assumption. A 30-touch sequence across SMS, voicemail-drop, email, and occasional human follow-up is built to win back part of that group inside the first 120 days. The modeling assumption is 22 to 31 of those leads, a target, not a measured result. Those deltas are what turn the system from a tool into a revenue line.

The 30-touch cadence

The cadence is calibrated to PI specifically. Family law and immigration use modified versions. Numbers below are touch-counts across the four-month window.

• Days 0 to 7 (8 touches). Immediate consult confirmation, day-1 SMS check-in, day-3 educational link (“What to expect after a car crash, the first 14 days”), day-5 voicemail drop from the attorney by name, day-7 second consult offer.
• Days 8 to 30 (10 touches). Weekly SMS with a single helpful resource (treating physician network, what to do when adjuster calls, lien basics, MMI primer). One human callback attempt around day 14. One email with the firm’s prior recoveries (anonymized, jurisdiction-appropriate, no improper solicitation language).
• Days 31 to 60 (7 touches). Cadence slows. Bi-weekly SMS. One email on settlement vs. trial decision-making. One personal text from the attorney handling intake.
• Days 61 to 120 (5 touches). Long-tail. Monthly SMS. Final “you have 60 days left on your statute” reminder if applicable, manually triggered by the attorney.

What gets messaged matters as much as cadence

The content rule we apply: every message either helps the claimant (without giving legal advice) or invites them to a no-pressure consult. We do not run “limited time” gimmicks. We do not run scarcity. The firm’s brand is its license. Pressure tactics are the fastest path to a bar complaint, especially in states with strict client solicitation rules.

Sample SMS at day 7

Compliance baseline (A2P 10DLC)

• Consent on record. Every recipient affirmatively opted in at intake or web form. Consent timestamp, source, and IP are stored.
• Brand registered. Nirvani files the firm’s A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration, with its messaging use case (Customer Care, Account Notifications, plus 2FA where applicable).
• STOP keyword. Replies of STOP, END, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT immediately suppress all messaging.
• HELP keyword. Replies of HELP trigger an auto-response with firm name, contact number, and a link to the SMS terms.
• Quiet hours. No sends before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local-to-recipient.
• No third-party sharing. Phone numbers are not shared with third parties for marketing purposes. Period.
• Suppression list inheritance. If a former client opted out historically, they remain on the suppression list for any new campaign.

The cheapest signed case is the referral from a satisfied past client. Almost no firm has a working system for this. They mean to send the “hope you’re doing well, who do you know” note. It never goes out. The referral engine automates it, on a cadence calibrated to the case lifecycle: 30 days after settlement, 90 days after settlement, 6 months later, and annually thereafter. Each touch includes one specific ask (review, referral, or no-ask check-in) and at most one polite reminder.

The post-resolution sequence

• Day +30 from settlement / disposition. A personal SMS from the assigned attorney. “How are you doing one month out?” No ask.
• Day +60. A review request goes out to every client, with the same public-review link whatever their experience. If a client raises a concern, the assigned attorney also gets an alert to follow up personally. Google’s review policy bars selectively asking only happy customers.
• Day +90. First referral ask. “If anyone you know ever needs help after a wreck, here’s a card you can pass along.” Includes a unique referral link the firm tracks.
• Day +180. Holiday or seasonally-relevant check-in. Still no ask.
• Anniversary year 1, 2, 3. Memory-jog message. “One year ago we helped you close out the case. Hope this finds you well.”

Referral attribution

Every former client gets a unique referral code or short URL. When a new intake comes in through the voice agent and the caller mentions a referral source by name, the agent writes that back to the original case’s referral count. Firms learn which past clients are sending the most cases. We do not pay referral fees to non-lawyers (that runs afoul of most rules of professional conduct), but we do help firms create ethics-compliant recognition: handwritten thank-you, charitable donation in the referrer’s name, or simply a personal call from the partner.

Sample message: day +90