What Does a Legal Intake Specialist Do?

Legal intake specialists play an important role in forming the foundation of an efficient and error-free legal process.  

Acting as the first touchpoint for employees and clients seeking legal assistance, they ensure that requests are addressed promptly and that the legal team has all the necessary information to proceed effectively.

And with the right tools in place, such as a matter management and legal intake platform, legal intake specialists can streamline workflows and perform their duties with accuracy and confidence.

What Does a Legal Intake Specialist Do?

For in-house teams, legal intake specialists bridge the communication gap between legal professionals and employees from other parts of the business, ensuring a smooth flow of legal requests and matter details.  

They act as the:

• First point of contact for internal clients seeking legal assistance,

• Request coordinator who gathers, organizes, and prioritizes legal requests, and

• Conductor of preliminary assessments to evaluate legal requests and identify their relevance and complexity.

These specialists ensure seamless legal request management by providing clear solutions to legal intake challenges such as handling high volumes of matters and capturing information accurately.

Main Responsibilities of a Legal Intake Specialist

1. Legal Request Intake and Prioritization

• Serve as the first point of contact for employees submitting legal requests.

• Collect and organize essential details (i.e. personal details, case specifics, and relevant legal documents), ensuring requests are complete and ready for review.

• Assess and prioritize requests based on urgency and alignment with team capabilities.

2. Communication and Client Interaction

• Act as a bridge between the legal team and internal clients (employees or departments) seeking legal support.

• Maintain clear and professional communication to gather additional details or provide updates.

3. Documentation Management

• If operating manually, input request data into the legal intake database.

• Ensure all legal requests and accompanying documents are securely stored and compliant with confidentiality standards.

• Create and maintain an organized and up-to-date repository for tracking requests and their statuses.

4. Scheduling Consultations

• Coordinate initial meetings, consultations, or follow-ups between clients and legal professionals to discuss case details.

• Optimize schedules to minimize delays in addressing high-priority matters.

5. Process Optimization and Reporting

• Analyze intake and triage trends to identify recurring issues or bottlenecks in the intake process.

• Provide regular updates and reports to the legal team on request volume, matter types, and resolution statuses, enabling data-driven decision-making.

How Legal Intake Software Can Help

Legal intake software helps legal teams manage intake by providing a centralized portal—also known as a legal front door—to automatically capture and route matters to the appropriate legal professionals.

For example, an employee submitting a contract review via email request can have it automatically prioritized and assigned to the appropriate legal team member using AI-powered platform features. Intake automation like this eliminates repetitive tasks, such as data entry, freeing up time for more strategic legal operations.

To improve document management and task allocation, we recommend using software with integrated matter management tools. This provides a single source of truth—one of the key features of matter management systems—allowing all matters to be stored, managed, and viewed in one place. With real-time tracking of case statuses, updates, and workloads, the system helps optimize legal operations and supports better resource allocation.

So, it’s fair to say that legal intake specialists are essential to ensuring a well-organized and responsive legal operation by effectively managing how requests are received, prioritized, and processed.  

They form the foundation for effective matter management and with tools like Checkbox’s intake and matter management system, these specialists can streamline the legal intake process, reduce administrative burdens, and set the stage for smooth handling of legal matters.

Ready to optimize your legal intake process? Book a call with one of our technology consultants to see how Checkbox can help.