Intake

Intake forms

Intake forms are the firm's own. There is no special "lead form": every form is an ordinary intake the firm names and frames through the form's own title and description. What differs is purpose, not kind.

• A short public form on the firm's site collects just enough to open a matter and start the conversation, never a deep questionnaire.
• A matter-type questionnaire (estate plan, prenuptial, and so on) collects what drafting actually needs. A firm publishes the forms its practice uses and edits them in the form editor.

The contact form front door

The short public form doubles as a self-serve front door. A prospect who finds it on the firm's site leaves their name, email, and phone, and, when the firm has chosen to offer services there, answers "What is this about?" by picking one (the choices come from the firm's packages, plus "Other / not sure").

Submitting opens a matter on the funnel board like any other inquiry, and the prospect receives a courtesy email in the firm's name confirming the firm will reach out. When their choice points at a service the firm offers, that email also carries a no-obligation head-start link to the matching questionnaire, so a motivated prospect can begin answering before anyone calls them back. Nothing is lost by ignoring it, and staff can still send an intake manually at any point, exactly as before.

How clients receive an intake

Staff send an intake from the matter's Assembly tab, in the Collect lane, early in the lifecycle to qualify a prospect, or once the client has engaged. The client gets a magic link by email: no account creation, sections presented one at a time, known details prefilled. Returning by the same link, they start from everything already on file rather than a blank form, though answers they typed without submitting aren't kept between visits. Clients of record can also reach their intake as a task in the client portal.

The Collect lane is also where a matter's inbound files gather: a switcher sits the client's intake submissions beside any documents they've uploaded (a deed, a beneficiary statement), so everything the client has sent is in one place before drafting begins.

Joint intakes

On a joint matter both spouses work the same intake. Shared sections are answered once; per-person sections (each spouse's own agents, for example) are answered for each. One spouse submitting never locks the other out.

The review queue

Client-submitted answers don't silently overwrite the record. Each submission lands in the review queue as a set of changes: what was on file before, what the client wrote, grouped by section with the whole submission visible for context. Staff accept, edit, or reject each change, and the decisions with their before and after are kept on the record.

Some questions collect a list rather than a single value, like specific bequests or people to leave out of a plan. These arrive as their own proposed entries in the queue, each accepted onto the matter in a click. Some entries propose a person rather than a fact: a client naming their partner on a prenuptial intake, for example. Staff promote each proposed person onto the matter deliberately, matched against the people the firm already knows so no duplicates are minted. Marking the intake processed is the explicit signal that drafting can begin in earnest, and the matter advances.

New submissions also surface as a Submissions inbox in the top bar, so a staffer sees what's waiting without hunting for it.

Form editing

Intake forms are versioned firm artifacts: editing starts a draft, publishing makes it the version new intakes go out on, and drafts can be discarded. The editor composes a form from sections of questions, and questions come in the shapes drafting actually needs: free text, dates, single choices, check-all-that-apply checkboxes, and list questions that collect an entry per person or item, each entry with its own details (a date of birth per child, say).

Three capabilities do most of the work of keeping forms honest:

• Catalog-bound questions. A question can capture one of the firm's catalog fields directly. Its choices and client-facing guidance then come from that one definition rather than being retyped in the form, and an accepted answer lands on the client record where documents can use it.
• Conditions. A question or section can show only when an earlier answer calls for it. It can also carry a document condition: it appears only when a given document is part of the matter, so the questions that feed an optional document are asked exactly when the attorney opted that document in, and never otherwise.
• The publish gate. Publishing checks the form still captures the identity details the rest of the platform depends on, and keeps those identity questions unconditional so they're collected on every entry point.