How to Run Legal Ops Intake Like an Air Traffic Tower: The Key to Visibility, Ownership, and Impact

How to Run Legal Ops Intake Like an Air Traffic Control Tower: The Key to Visibility, Ownership, and Impact

Dek: Turn noisy, unstructured requests into a predictable, no-code runway with AI agents that route work, enforce SLAs, and compound institutional knowledge.

More than half of in-house legal work starts as unstructured intake—emails, Slack pings, and hallway asks that hide risk and drain focus. The result: constant context-switching, unclear priorities, and cycle times no one can explain. If legal operations is the operating system of the legal function, intake is the kernel. Get it right, and everything downstream accelerates. Get it wrong, and your team becomes air traffic control with no radar.

This is where legal operations and workflow automation converge. With Sandstone, a modern legal ops platform and knowledge layer, AI agents transform playbooks, positions, and workflows into a living system. Every intake, triage, and decision strengthens your legal foundation—so knowledge compounds instead of disappearing.

What It Is: Intake as a Control Tower for Legal Operations

An AI-powered intake and triage layer is the single front door for legal. It sits across Slack, email, forms, and procurement tools, capturing requests with structured fields, classifying them by matter type, and routing them to the right owner—automatically.

In practice, the control tower does five things:

- Standardizes intake with no-code forms and Slack/email capture.

- Auto-classifies matters (e.g., NDA vs. MSA vs. privacy review) using AI trained on your playbooks.

- Routes to the correct owner, applies SLAs, and triggers approvals.

- Creates auditable records with layered data (requester, region, risk, contract value, status).

- Feeds outcomes and decisions back into your knowledge layer for future self-service.

Sandstone is built for strength through layers—each request adds data, each decision sharpens guidance. Crafted precision means the workflow matches your contours. Natural integration means it lives where your teams already work.

Why It Matters: Visibility, Ownership, Impact

- Visibility: Real-time dashboards show intake volume, cycle time by work type, SLA adherence, and blockers by stakeholder. Legal operations can prioritize with data, not anecdotes.

- Ownership: Clear routing, defined approvals, and documented decisions reduce handoffs and ambiguity. RACI stops being a slide and becomes the workflow.

- Impact: Faster cycle times, fewer interrupts, and a rising self-service rate. Track metrics like first-response time, legal touch minutes per request, and percent auto-routed.

Target benchmarks many teams hit within one quarter:

- 50–70% of matters auto-classified and routed

- 30–40% reduction in cycle time for standard contracts

- >90% SLA adherence on priority requests

How to Do It: A 5-Step, No-Code Rollout

1) Map Demand and Unify the Front Door

Inventory the top 10 request types and where they originate (Salesforce, Slack, email, procurement). Stand up a single intake form per type and a Slack command (e.g., /legal-intake). Forward inboxes like legal@ to Sandstone’s intake address to capture email-driven work.

2) Codify Playbooks and Required Data

Document the minimum viable fields for each request (counterparty, value, region, data types, deadline) and the approval path. Define SLAs by risk tier. Upload these playbooks to Sandstone so AI can classify and suggest next steps.

3) Deploy an AI Triage Agent (Human-in-the-Loop)

Enable Sandstone’s AI to summarize requests, identify missing details, and recommend the workflow (NDA fast-path vs. MSA with DP addendum). Keep a human gate for the first 2–3 weeks to calibrate predictions; accept, edit, or override with one click.

4) Route, Enforce, and Escalate

Use no-code rules to assign owners by matter type, region, or business unit. Apply SLAs, due dates, and reminder cadences. Escalate automatically when SLAs risk breach. Log status changes to keep requesters informed in Slack and email.

5) Close the Loop and Compound Knowledge

On completion, capture outcomes (approved, redlines sent, blocked) and link to templates or guidance used. Promote repeatable decisions into self-service articles or auto-responses. Each resolution strengthens Sandstone’s knowledge layer and raises your self-service rate.

Examples and Use Cases You Can Automate Today

- Contract Approvals: Sales submits via Salesforce or Slack. AI classifies as NDA, applies fast-path template, routes to a contracts ops queue, and tracks SLA. If order form >$250k or includes DPA, it forks to finance/legal approvals automatically. [Explore the workflow]

- Privacy Reviews and DPAs: Product or vendor teams trigger a standardized privacy checklist. AI flags personal data categories, suggests a DPA or SCCs, and routes to privacy counsel. Outcomes generate reusable guidance for similar vendors.

- Marketing and Trademark Review: Marketing uploads creative. AI detects claims requiring substantiation, suggests the right substantiation doc, and routes to brand/legal. Approved assets and rationale become searchable precedents.

Pitfalls and Best Practices

Common pitfalls:

- Over-automation without playbooks: AI needs guardrails. Codify your minimum fields and SLAs first.

- Ignoring exceptions: Build “escape hatches” for novel issues; don’t force them through a standard path.

- No change management: If Sales and Procurement don’t know the front door, they’ll keep DMing lawyers.

Best practices:

- Start narrow: Launch with 3–5 high-volume request types, then expand.

- Measure weekly: Track intake volume, first-response time, legal minutes per request, and auto-route rate.

- Train the system: Feed accepted/edited AI decisions back into Sandstone; accuracy improves quickly.

- Keep humans in the loop: Use review queues for high-risk tiers and tune rules before expanding scope.

TL;DR + Your Next Step

- Unify intake across Slack, email, and forms.

- Codify fields, SLAs, and approvals per request type.

- Let AI classify and route; keep humans in the loop early.

- Measure, learn, and promote repetitive decisions to self-service.

Actionable takeaway: Run a one-week intake baseline. Count request volume by type, average first-response time, and top three blockers. Use that data to scope your first three no-code workflows in Sandstone. [Get the checklist]

Legal shouldn’t be a bottleneck; it should be the connective tissue that helps companies grow with clarity and confidence. With Sandstone’s layered data, crafted precision, and natural integration, your intake becomes a control tower—so the business lands work safely, quickly, and at scale. [See the playbook] | [Book a demo]