How to Standardize Legal Intake and Triage to Speed Deals in 90 Days: A Practical Playbook

If your legal inbox feels like a help desk, you’re not alone. In many in-house teams, the majority of requests still arrive through email or chat with little context—scattering facts, creating manual follow-up, and stretching cycle times by days. The fix isn’t another form for people to ignore. It’s a standardized, AI-assisted intake and triage model that captures the right data, routes work instantly, and surfaces approved positions at the moment of need.

Map Demand and Classify What Actually Hits Legal

Start with a one-week intake audit. Don’t change behavior yet—observe it. Log every request source (email, Slack, Salesforce, ticketing), stakeholder (Sales, Procurement, Product, People), request type (NDA, order form, marketing review, vendor security), jurisdiction, data sensitivity, and urgency.

Then cluster the top 10 request types by volume and business criticality. For each, define:

- Minimum viable context (counterparty, template version, governing law, renewal term, data flows).

- Default decision path (approve, fast-track, escalate, legal review required).

- Ownership and fallback (Sales–Legal, Procurement–Legal, Product–Legal).

You’re building a taxonomy that becomes the backbone for intake fields, automation rules, and SLAs. Keep it pragmatic: start with the 60–70% of high-frequency work you can standardize, not edge cases.

Design the Intake Experience and Service Levels

Great intake feels invisible. Meet stakeholders where they already are:

- Slack/Teams modal for quick asks.

- Email capture for forwards (legal@yourco or tags like #legal-intake).

- Salesforce and procurement portals for deal/vendor-associated work.

For each request type, define a guided form with 6–10 fields that map to the context you set above. Use conditional questions to keep it short. Publish response expectations with clear SLOs:

- Acknowledgment: under 1 business hour.

- Auto-routing decision: instant for standard paths.

- First human touch SLA: same day for revenue-facing, next day for internal.

Post these SLOs where the business lives (Salesforce, wiki, Slack channel topic). Clarity reduces escalations and builds trust.

Automate Triage With AI Agents (Without Losing Control)

This is where a modern legal ops platform like Sandstone pays off. Instead of a static form and a shared inbox, configure AI agents that:

- Classify the request and extract entities (counterparty, amounts, terms) from attachments and threads.

- Validate completeness; if context is missing, the agent asks the requester for just the missing item.

- Match to the right playbook and risk posture (e.g., low-risk NDA → auto-approve; order form within thresholds → fast-track; DPIA flagged → privacy review).

- Generate a next step: route to a queue, open a matter, pre-draft a response, or produce a redline using approved fallback positions.

Example workflow: Sales submits an order form from Salesforce. The agent checks ARR, term, governing law, and DP addendum. If all are within playbook, it returns an approved order form and posts a deal checklist back to Salesforce. If payment terms exceed policy, it applies an approved fallback and routes to the Sales–Legal queue with a pre-drafted rationale. Every decision and exception updates the knowledge layer, so your playbook gets stronger with each request.

Guardrails matter: keep humans in the loop for escalations, and log agent actions with full traceability. The point isn’t replacing judgment—it’s reserving it for what actually needs it.

Route Work by Path, Not by Person

Move from “who’s free?” to “what’s the path?” Create queues for the few canonical flows that cover most work:

- Fast-Track: auto-approve or lightweight check; SLA measured in minutes.

- Assisted Review: standard redlines using playbooks; SLA measured in hours.

- Expert Escalation: subject-matter review (privacy, IP, employment); SLA measured in days.

Define intake-to-queue rules in your platform, not someone’s head. Include cross-functional owners for each queue (e.g., Sales–Legal for commercial, Procurement–Legal for vendor) and a visible backlog so the business can self-serve status without pinging counsel.

Instrument the System and Iterate Weekly

What you measure shapes behavior. Track:

- Time to acknowledgment and time to routing decision.

- Percentage auto-approved/fast-tracked.

- First-contact resolution rate.

- Legal cycle time per request type and per queue.

- Rework drivers (missing info, exception clauses, unclear policies).

Review these in a 20-minute weekly standup with ops and queue owners. Each week, retire one intake field, one manual step, or one redundant exception. Each month, promote one recurring exception into an updated playbook position.

Actionable Next Step

Run a 5-day intake audit. Use a simple spreadsheet to log request source, type, missing info, and time to first response. On day 6, define the top 5 request types, the minimum context fields, and your SLOs. On day 7, pilot a guided intake in Slack/Teams for just those five and enable auto-acknowledgment via an agent.

Why This Standardization Becomes Your Strategic Advantage

Standardized intake and AI-enabled triage don’t just speed deals; they create a living record of how your company makes decisions. In Sandstone, each request strengthens a layered knowledge base—playbooks, positions, and workflows that compound rather than disappear. The result is crafted precision that matches your contours, natural integration that meets teams where they work, and a legal foundation that scales with clarity and confidence.

When legal stops being a bottleneck and becomes connective tissue, the business moves faster—and trusts the path. That’s the bedrock of growth.