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"). A follow-up box invites them to say more in their own words, which is often the sentence that tells a staffer what the inquiry actually is. It arrives on the matter with the rest of the answers.

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.

An inquiry can also arrive through a short form embedded on the firm's website: the prospect leaves a few details there and is emailed a secure link into the firm's contact form, with what they gave already filled in. That route is set up on its own tab and has its own page: website inquiries.

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. The invitation names the forms it carries, so a client who gets two knows what each one is for. Returning by the same link, they start from everything already on file rather than a blank form, and from whatever they had typed last time: the form saves as they go, so a client who runs out of time picks up where they stopped. Clients of record can also reach their intake under Intake in the client portal.

Sending starts with who, then what. On a joint matter the dialog opens on the matter's clients, each pre-checked, above the list of forms, so sending to both spouses is the default and sending to one is a deliberate uncheck. Each recipient gets their own link, and the dialog carries each one's send history so you can see who was already invited and when. A client with no email address on file shows as a row you can't check, with a link to add one; a solo matter skips the checklist entirely and looks exactly as it always did.

The forms the matter is actually waiting on open already ticked, so the common send is a look and a click rather than a hunt through the library. It's a starting point and not a restriction: every published form is still listed and you can tick or untick whatever you like. Where a questionnaire on the matter is about somebody other than the person answering it, the dialog lists that ask as its own row, about and the name, apart from the plain form, and Planning for someone else? beneath the list points a whole send at one person. See sending a questionnaire about someone.

Wherever the platform is about to email someone, an address the firm's mail has previously bounced off is flagged next to the recipient. The warning never blocks the send, since a bounce can be temporary, but it stops a firm from sending into a dead address for weeks without knowing.

The Collect lane lists what's still outstanding, one row per form per person who owes it, and each row says two different things. One chip describes the client's progress on it, Not started or In progress. The other describes the firm's: Sent with the date of the most recent invitation that actually covers this ask, or Never sent where no invitation has gone to that person for that form since it was added to the matter. Attaching a package adds what it asks for without emailing anyone, deliberately, so "Never sent" is a normal state and not a fault; it just needs to be visible rather than hiding behind "Not started". An invitation sent before the ask existed doesn't count as having asked.

Each outstanding row carries its own Send intake, which becomes Resend intake once an invitation covering that particular ask has gone. It sends that one form to the person who owes it, and the link they receive opens on that form. It's the quick path when one questionnaire needs chasing; the lane's own Send intake button still opens the full dialog for choosing people and forms together. Fill for client, Adjust the ask, and Mark complete sit in the row's menu.

Where a questionnaire is about somebody other than the person answering it, the row says about and that person's name, so a matter carrying a second plan for a parent doesn't present two identical-looking rows. See planning for someone else.

Where a package asks for a form the client already has out with them, the platform reuses the invitation already sent rather than duplicating it. A prospect who took the head-start link from the contact form and later has the matching package attached is not asked to fill the same questionnaire twice, and a second client on the matter gets their own copy as normal.

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.

Filling an intake for the client

Not every client fills in their own questionnaire. Some sit across the desk and answer out loud, some phone it in, and some hand over a folder. Fill for client, in the menu on the intake's row in the Collect lane, opens the firm's own form for a staffer to work through directly: the same questions in the same order, with everything already on file prefilled and the conditional questions gating as you go. It's a dense single page with a jump rail rather than the client's one-section-at-a-time wizard, because you're working, not being walked.

Wherever a question asks for a person, the people already on the matter are offered by name, and picking one brings their details with them rather than just their name: the date of birth, email, and phone the firm already holds arrive filled in. A pick that leaves nothing required still to answer folds the entry to its one-line summary on the spot, and a pick that doesn't stays open so you can type the rest.

A pick on this surface also says who the person is, not just what they're called. The entry reads Linked with the name, the details that came from the record hold steady while everything else stays editable, and Unlink lets go of the link and keeps the text exactly as it was. The point is that the record doesn't have to work out later, from the spelling of a name, that this is the same person it already knows.

The record says who typed. A staff-entered submission is attributed to you and shows on the matter as entered by you rather than by the client, and it never appears in the client's portal history. What it is, honestly, is the firm's own work product in the shape of the firm's own form.

Answers you enter land on the client record directly, without stopping in the review queue: the review queue exists to put a person between client input and the record, and on this surface you are that person already. Two things still surface rather than passing silently. Where an answer would change a detail the signed engagement letter anchored, you're told. And where a submission proposes something that genuinely needs a decision, like a new person to add to the matter, that still goes to the queue and the count is named for you.

A blank on a first fill means "not asked today", never "erase what's on file". Clearing a stored fact deliberately is what the clear control on a question is for, and it works only in edit mode below.

On a joint matter you do both spouses in one sitting: the shared sections once, then all of one spouse's own sections, then the other's. The second spouse's questions offer to reuse what you just typed for the first, naming them on the button, so a couple who agree on everything is a run of single clicks.

At the end the surface names what your documents still need but the form never asked, grouped by the document that wants it, so one sitting can reach document-ready without a second trip through Resolve. It exits on Produce, with generation left as a deliberate click.

Editing answers after they're in

Once a party's intake is submitted, the same surface reopens as Edit answers: the whole form as a lens over what the record currently says, including anything changed elsewhere since. Change what needs changing and click Apply changes; only what you touched is written. Nothing about it is a second submission, so no stage moves, no client is notified, and the original submission stays exactly as it was.

This is the difference worth holding on to. The client's questionnaire is a submission, a record of what they said at a moment. The staff form is an instrument, a familiar view of the matter's facts you can come back to. They share a look, not a nature.

In edit mode the clear control on a question means what it says: it erases the stored fact. That's the one place a blank is an instruction rather than a silence.

Marking an item complete

Sometimes the answers arrive as a conversation and there's nothing to type in. Mark complete closes out an intake item without a submission, with a required note saying why. The client's outstanding task clears and the matter moves on. The label stays honest wherever it appears afterwards, reading marked complete rather than submitted, so nobody later mistakes a judgment call for a form the client filled in.

A mark isn't a wall. Where the client had started typing before the item was marked, the card offers View answers, a read-only view of what they'd saved, so nothing a client entered becomes unreachable. On a live matter the card's menu also carries Reopen the ask: the item returns to outstanding, the client's task comes back to their portal, and whatever they'd saved resumes as a live draft. The original mark and its note stay in the record.

Adjusting the ask for one matter

Occasionally a published form is wrong for one client and right for everyone else. A question the firm marked required is unanswerable for this person; a question makes no sense for this situation. Republishing the form for a one-off is the wrong size of fix, and working around it leaves the client's own copy still nagging them.

Adjust the ask, from the intake work item, changes the form for that matter only. Two things are adjustable per question: whether it's required, in either direction, and whether it's asked at all. The firm's published form is untouched and no other matter changes.

Adjustments are visible and attributed. The work item carries an Adjusted for this matter marker summarizing each change against the published form, who made it, and when, and every adjustment can be reverted. The client just sees the firm's questions; nothing on their side announces that a question was dropped. A question you drop stops counting as covered by intake, so if a document still needs that detail it reappears honestly in Resolve for the firm to fill in.

If a form is later republished and a question you'd adjusted no longer exists, the adjustment is flagged as orphaned on the work item rather than being applied to the wrong question or dropped without a word.

A note on what this isn't: it changes what a matter asks, not what a template prints. Wording, options, and which fields a document uses are properties of the firm's published artifacts, and the levers for a one-off there are inline values at generation time and revising in Word.

Joint intakes

On a joint matter each spouse has their own questionnaire to complete, and the matter isn't done collecting until both are in. Per-person questions (each spouse's own agents, for example) are asked of each of them. Facts about the marriage itself, like marital status and who the spouse is, are one fact rather than two, so whichever of them answers first settles it and the other doesn't get asked to agree with themselves.

Where the platform can already tell what a spouse's answer will be, it fills it in for them and says where it came from, reading "From Alice's intake" beside the answer. It's a prefilled answer, not a confirmation gate: leaving it alone submits it as agreement, and editing it clears the note and sends the change to review like any other. Only a closed set of facts works this way, the marital ones and the shared address; nothing else is guessed on a client's behalf. If the two of them genuinely disagree, neither answer wins automatically. Both land in the review queue for staff to reconcile.

Either spouse can complete the other's questionnaire. The offer appears at the end of their own, and on the other spouse's outstanding task in the portal, and it runs both directions: neither of them is the one who has to be at the keyboard. The lane stays open until the other spouse submits their own sitting, so the filler can go back and correct something in the meantime, and the spouse whose questionnaire it was sees a card inviting them to review what was entered rather than a task that has silently vanished. Couples who share one inbox reach the same place by the older route, signing in and finding both forms waiting.

Whichever route was taken, the form states plainly whose answers are being given, and the record keeps who typed as well as whose answers they are. Staff see that attribution on the matter, reading "Bob · via Alice", so a submission is never mistaken for one the other spouse sat down and made themselves. A question that belongs to the other spouse, shown for context on this one's sitting, is read-only and labelled with whose it is; it can't be typed over from the wrong side and doesn't count toward either of their progress.

When you send an intake, the dialog also lets you address a spouse's form to the other spouse's inbox deliberately, which is the honest way to reach a client who has no email address of their own. Client-side, none of this asks a client to type a spouse's email address: whatever address the firm has is the one that gets used, and correcting it is staff work.

Filling for a couple in one sitting at the firm works the same way from the staff side: opening the fill surface on a joint matter puts both spouses in front of you together, question by question, and routes each answer to the right spouse's questionnaire. Overlapping details are entered once and carried across rather than typed twice.

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.

The same person turns up more than once in an estate plan, and the queue is built around that. Promote a name once and the later mentions of that person recognize them: the card arrives with the person already selected and says why, reading "Jane Doe is already this matter's Executor. Promoting links that same person." Nothing is attached until you press Promote to roster, and creating a genuinely new person instead is one click away, so the platform's guess is never the last word. Where the name matches but a detail on file disagrees with what was proposed, or where two people on the matter share the name, you get the notice and no selection, because that's exactly the case a default would get wrong. The firm-wide search is always there, and it lists the matter's own people first.

Promoting is also the moment a person on file can gain a detail the firm never had, such as a date of birth or an appointee's address. People lists collect optional street, second address line, city, state or region, postal code, and country details, including partial addresses. Review these when promoting the person. For an existing person, promoting fills only the address parts that are empty and records the addition. It never writes over something already on file; correcting an existing detail is done on the person, where you can see what you're changing.

A proposed spouse carries a second door: Promote and add as second client, beside the ordinary promote. It does both things in one step, putting them on the roster as the spouse and making them a client of the matter, which is the work that would otherwise mean promoting here and then opening Add client in Edit matter. Where the client's own form asked whether they were planning as a couple and they said yes, the card says so, reading Client answered: planning together. That's context rather than permission: the offer is on every spouse proposal, because a client who answered "just me" and then named a spouse is exactly the case an attorney should look at rather than have decided for them. A submission never makes anyone a client by itself; adding a second client is always an attorney's or admin's deliberate act, here as at New matter.

Not every proposal should land. Decline, on a proposed person or list entry, resolves that one card without adopting it: the card folds to what the client wrote with a Declined marker, the words stay readable on the submission, and nothing is added to the matter. A decline is about that one slot, so the same person proposed elsewhere in the submission, or in another role, is still an open proposal to be judged on its own. Undo reopens it, however long ago it was declined, and reopens the submission with it. A submission whose every proposal is accepted, promoted, or declined counts as resolved, and one resolved by declines alone still appears under recently resolved, so the decision is always findable.

Marking the intake processed is the explicit signal that drafting can begin in earnest, and the matter advances.

On a joint matter one submission is not the other, so the queue names whose it is: the submitter's name carries the weight on the row and the other party's is muted, which tells two otherwise identical rows apart without breaking up the matter they both belong to. Open a submission that answers questions about someone else and its header says so, About and that person's name, so nobody reviews a parent's answers as though they were the client's.

The queue itself is two lists: what's still pending a decision, and what was recently resolved. A submission counts as resolved once every change in it has been decided and nothing is still proposed, which is also when it stops counting against the Submissions inbox in the top bar. That inbox is where new submissions surface, so a staffer sees what's waiting without hunting for it, and it empties as the work is actually finished.

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, list questions that collect an entry per person or item, each entry with its own details (a date of birth per child, say), and file uploads.

One intake asks for the same people over and over: a spouse who is also an agent, a child who is also a beneficiary. Wherever a list collects people, the name field offers everyone already named anywhere else in the same sitting, and picking one copies their details across rather than making anyone retype them. Typing a new name is always still there, one step down the same list. Nobody is added to the matter by picking them, and the copies are independent: correcting a detail in one place doesn't reach into another. Entries also fold to a single line once they're done, so a list of five beneficiaries stays a list rather than five open cards. This works the same way whoever is filling the form, and on the client's side it never shows them people the firm added that they didn't enter themselves.

A file upload question asks the client for a document inside the questionnaire itself, rather than in a separate email round-trip: the deed, the beneficiary statement, the existing will. What they attach lands with the matter's files, where staff open it like any other upload, and the client can swap a file out before submitting. File questions work only on invitation-only forms, where the client is signed in and the platform knows which matter the file belongs to; the editor says so where you set one up.

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, and the answer can be any of a set you tick rather than a single one, so a spouse question can follow "married" and "registered domestic partnership" alike without becoming two questions. 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. It also checks the conditions themselves still make sense: a condition pointing at a question that has since been removed, or at one that comes later in the form than the question depending on it, is refused rather than published to clients as a rule that can never be met. The editor shows the same question as missing while you're drafting, instead of quietly re-pointing it at whatever else is to hand.

Public forms and invitation-only forms

Every form has a Public entry setting. Left on, the form works as a front door: anyone who reaches its web address can fill it in, which is what a contact or lead form is for. Turned off, the form is reachable only through links the firm sends. A visitor who lands on its address anyway gets a calm branded page saying the form is available by invitation, with the same one-click request so a client whose link lapsed can send themselves a fresh one rather than calling the firm.

Turn it off for the questionnaires that come after engagement. Those forms collect sensitive planning detail, map onto clients the firm already knows, and have nothing to gain from an anonymous walk-in.