The form comes in at 22:40. Someone has been served a notice, read three websites and found yours. They type two paragraphs and press send. By the time you see it at 08:15 it is behind four other emails, and the first thing you do is reply with the same six questions you ask everyone.
That reply is the piece that goes first. The moment the form lands, the system sends your intake questions back. Yours, in your words, in the order you ask them. Which party are they. Who is on the other side. What has already been said in writing. Is there a deadline. The prospect answers from their phone that same evening, while the problem is still on their mind, and the answers come back as a one-page note. Name, matter type, the other side, the dates that matter, what they want, and a line on how they sound.
Then the conflict check. The note has the names, so the names are run against your client list and your closed matters before you have read a word. A clean result is one line at the top of the note. A hit is a line in red with the matter number it hit on, and the matter is held until a human looks.
Then the matter itself. If you work in Clio or LEAP, the contact and the matter are created with the intake answers attached. If you work out of folders, a folder is made with your standard subfolders and the note dropped inside. Either way it exists before the first call.
What you get is the note, in your inbox, when you sit down. You read it, you decide whether this is one you want, and you ring them or you do not. Nobody at the firm typed a client record.
This is the kind of thing we build. It runs in your own accounts, your form, your inbox, your practice system. How many of last month's enquiries got a reply before lunch?