Before You Add AI, Fix Intake: How Legal Can Move Faster

Before You Add AI, Fix Intake: How Legal Can Move Faster

If your legal intake is noisy, adding AI won’t fix the signal. Most in-house teams are flooded with unstructured requests via email and chat—missing facts, unclear urgency, and no routing. That chaos becomes longer cycle times, higher risk, and frustrated business partners.

This is where foundations matter. Clean, standardized intake and triage is the operating layer that makes automation—and yes, AI—actually work.

What Intake Triage Is (And Why It Sets the Pace)

Intake triage is the front door for legal work. It standardizes how requests arrive, normalizes the data legal needs to start quickly, and routes each matter to the right path. In practice, it means:

- Asking for the right fields up front (counterparty, value, jurisdiction, deadline, template needed).

- Applying SLAs (service level agreements) by request type and risk profile.

- Routing to the right workflow (self-serve NDA, playbooked commercial review, privacy, IP, litigation hold).

- Capturing every decision so knowledge compounds instead of disappearing.

On platforms like Sandstone, an AI intake agent can read email or form submissions, extract key facts, check playbooks, and auto-route to modular workflows. You get strength through layers: structured data, repeatable decisions, and visibility from intake to resolution.

Why Intake Triage Pays Off for Legal Ops

Done right, standardized intake unlocks outcomes Legal Ops cares about:

- Speed: Clean requests cut time-to-first-touch and shrink cycle time by removing back-and-forth for missing info.

- Risk reduction: Required fields and policy guardrails ensure the right templates, clauses, and approvals are applied.

- Visibility: Every matter lands in a system with status, owner, SLA, and audit trail—no more spreadsheet archaeology.

- Cost control: Low-risk work deflects to self-serve flows; high-risk work gets escalated, preserving attorney time.

- Better partner experience: Clear expectations and status updates raise CSAT (customer satisfaction) with Sales, HR, and Product.

If your intake is disciplined, AI can safely accelerate triage, summarize context, and suggest next steps. If it isn’t, AI just automates the chaos.

How To Stand Up No-Code Intake and Triage

You don’t need a six-month project. Sequence the work and implement in weeks:

1) Map the top 5 request types

- Start with commercial contracts, NDAs, privacy reviews, marketing approvals, and product counseling.

- For each, list required fields, owners, SLAs, and approval rules.

2) Design a single front door

- Create one intake form or inbox that feeds everything into a central queue.

- Use conditional logic to keep forms short: show only what’s relevant by request type.

3) Configure routing and SLAs

- Route by request type, region, deal value, and risk answers.

- Set working-hour aware SLAs and escalations. Notify requesters automatically at key stages.

4) Operationalize playbooks

- Encode templates, fallback clauses, and approval thresholds once.

- Let the system suggest the right path (self-serve NDA, standard order form, privacy DPIA) based on answers.

5) Add AI where it’s safe and useful

- Use AI to extract missing fields from attachments, generate intake summaries, and propose routing—not to finalize legal judgment.

- Keep a human-in-the-loop for high-risk or novel matters.

6) Instrument the metrics from day one

- Track time-to-first-response, cycle time by type, deflection rate to self-serve, SLA adherence, and requester CSAT.

- Review weekly; tune forms, rules, and playbooks accordingly.

On Sandstone, this looks like an AI-powered intake agent connected to modular workflows and your knowledge layer—every triage decision makes the next one smarter.

Common Pitfalls (And How To Avoid Them)

- Automating before mapping: Don’t automate chaos. Map request types, owners, and SLAs first.

- Over-customizing forms: Keep the front door simple; use conditional logic to avoid form fatigue.

- No change management: Publish the new path, close side doors, and enable business teams with quick guides.

- Missing ownership: Assign a DRI (directly responsible individual) for intake quality and SLA governance.

- Zero feedback loops: Review metrics and requester feedback monthly; retire unused fields and rules.

One Practical Next Step

Pilot a contract intake and triage workflow for two request types (NDA and Order Form) for 30 days.

- Build a single form with conditional fields for NDA vs. Order Form.

- Route NDAs to self-serve with auto-approval under a dollar/risk threshold; route Order Forms to Legal with required attachments.

- Enable an AI intake agent to extract entity names, dates, and values from attachments and prefill fields.

- Measure: time-to-first-response, cycle time, deflection rate, SLA adherence, and CSAT.

If the pilot beats baseline by 20–30% on cycle time, expand to privacy reviews next.

Close: Make Intake the Bedrock, Then Scale AI

Strong operating models outlast hype. When intake, playbooks, and workflows are layered and connected, AI becomes an accelerant—not a gamble. That’s the Sandstone approach: crafted precision that fits your contours, natural integration with how you already work, and strength through layers so knowledge compounds.

Fix intake. Map it, measure it, then automate it. When you’re ready, see the workflow—and let AI triage help legal move with the business.