Legal intake should be simple: someone needs legal support, they submit a request, and it gets routed to the right person. But in reality? It’s often the messiest, most chaotic part of the legal process.
Intake is the front door to legal operations—and right now, it’s stuck on rusty hinges.
Why legal intake is so gnarly
Legal intake is often overlooked because it seems basic. But when it’s broken, it quietly drains time, creates bottlenecks, and leads to downstream errors that are way harder to fix later. Here’s what makes it gnarly:
1. Requests come from everywhere
Emails. Teams messages. Phone calls. Drive-by desk chats. That shared Google Form someone made two years ago. With no central intake, requests get lost, duplicated, or delayed.
2. Inconsistent information
People submit half-baked requests with missing context—no deadlines, no documents, no background—forcing legal to play detective before they can even start the work.
3. No triage or prioritisation
Is this urgent? Is it even a legal issue? Without intake logic, everything feels like a fire drill—and high-value work competes with low-priority noise.
4. No visibility into workload
Legal teams often have no idea how much work is in the queue, who’s working on what, or what’s getting stuck. There’s no audit trail, no metrics, and no accountability.
5. Rework and repetition
The same issues come in over and over, but there’s no standard way to respond or reuse prior work. Everything is reactive. Nothing scales.
What process automation can do
Workflow and process automation platforms like Autologyx can transform legal intake from a disorganised inbox flood into a smooth, structured, and scalable system. Here’s how:
Centralise intake in one place
Use a single, configurable portal where business users can submit requests. Customise forms based on request type so legal gets the info they need, every time.
Automate triage & routing
Define intake rules that automatically assign or escalate requests based on priority, type, or business unit. No more guesswork or manual sorting.
Standardise request types
Build intake templates for NDAs, marketing reviews, policy questions, etc. Embed checklists, document uploads, and guidance—so requesters self-serve and self-correct.
Track & report everything
Every request becomes a tracked workflow. Legal ops can see what’s pending, what’s overdue, and what’s trending. Want to know how many hours are spent on vendor contracts? You’ll finally have the data.
Build feedback loops
Use intake workflows to close the loop—send automated updates, gather satisfaction scores, and continuously improve based on what’s working (or not).
What this looks like in practice
Instead of this:
“Hey, can you just take a quick look at this doc?”
[2 days later]
“Oh, did you ever get a chance to…?”
[3 days later]
“Never mind, we signed it.”
You get this:
- Requester chooses “Contract Review” from a portal
- Uploads draft, selects urgency, enters business context
- Legal team gets assigned task with everything they need
- Platform logs, tracks, and updates all along the way
The result: A real front door for legal
Automated legal intake means:
- Faster response times
- Less back-and-forth
- Happier business stakeholders
- A legal team that can actually measure and improve performance
And most importantly: fewer gnarly headaches downstream.