A strong legal intake asks a short, deliberate set of questions that do three things: confirm the matter is one your firm takes, surface any conflict of interest before you go further, and gather enough facts for the attorney to walk into the consult prepared. The core questions every firm should ask cover the type of matter and jurisdiction, key dates and deadlines, the opposing party's name for a conflict check, whether the person already has a lawyer, how they will pay, and how they prefer to be contacted. Ask these consistently, and you screen out the wrong matters, protect the firm, and turn a cold inquiry into a booked, prepped consult.
Last updated July 2026.
Intake questions look simple, but the order and the follow-ups are what separate a checklist that converts from a form that leaks leads. Below is a practical set of questions to ask every new client, grouped by what each group is for, plus how to run them so a potential client feels heard rather than interrogated.
The six questions every legal intake must ask
| Question | Why you ask it |
|---|---|
| What kind of legal matter is this, and where did it happen? | Confirms the matter type and jurisdiction so you can screen out cases the firm does not take |
| Is there a deadline, hearing, or important date coming up? | Flags a running statute of limitations or court date so urgent matters are not missed |
| Who is the other party or parties involved? | Drives the conflict-of-interest check before you take the matter further |
| Do you already have a lawyer for this? | A person already represented usually cannot be signed, so you learn it before booking |
| How do you expect to handle the cost? | Surfaces fit on fees early, whether hourly, flat, or contingency, before the consult |
| What is the best way and time to reach you? | Prevents losing a qualified lead to a missed callback |
If you only ask six things, ask these. Everything else is practice-area detail layered on top.
Screening questions: is this a matter you take?
The first job of intake is to decide, quickly and politely, whether the matter fits your firm. That means establishing the type of matter, where it arose, and the basic facts that determine whether it is inside your practice areas and jurisdiction. A firm that does employment law does not want to spend a consult slot on a landlord dispute, and a firm licensed in one state needs to know early if the matter belongs in another.
Ask what happened, when, and where, in the caller's own words, then follow up on the specifics that matter for your practice. Screening is not about turning people away; it is about making sure the consults that reach your attorneys are ones they can actually help with. Done well, it protects both the firm's time and the caller's, because sending someone to a consult you cannot take wastes everyone's day.
Conflict-check questions: protect the firm before you go further
Before a firm agrees to look at a matter, it has to check for conflicts of interest, and intake is where that starts. The essential question is who else is involved: the opposing party, other parties, and any related businesses or people. In adversarial matters, and family law intake is the clearest example, the other side may have already contacted your firm, and booking a consult with the second caller creates a conflict that should have been caught at the door.
So the conflict-relevant questions, the names of the parties involved, belong in intake itself, before you book anything. The intake should surface a potential conflict to the firm; the conflicts determination stays with an attorney. Getting the opposing party's name up front is one of the highest-value questions on the list, because catching a conflict at intake is cheap and catching it after a consult is not.
Fact-gathering questions: prepare the attorney
Once a matter passes screening and clears an initial conflict check, the intake should gather enough for the attorney to be useful from the first minute of the consult. That includes the timeline of what happened, the key dates and any deadlines, the documents that matter, and what outcome the person is hoping for. The exact facts vary by practice area: a personal injury intake needs the mechanism and date of injury and whether the person sought treatment, an immigration intake needs current status and any filing deadline, a workers compensation intake needs the injury date and whether it was reported to the employer, an estate planning intake needs the family situation and whether a death has occurred, a criminal defense intake needs the charges and any court date, an employment law intake needs the adverse action and whether the EEOC clock is running, a real estate intake needs the property, the parties, and any closing date, a medical malpractice intake needs the provider and the treatment and discovery dates, a Social Security disability intake needs the onset date, the appeal stage, and any denial date, a mass tort intake needs the product, the exposure dates, and the diagnosis, and a contract dispute needs the agreement and what went wrong.
The goal is a short brief the attorney can read before the consult, so the meeting starts with substance instead of the first fifteen minutes spent re-asking what the caller already told your intake. Collecting the relevant documents at this stage, rather than at the consult, is what turns a first meeting into real progress.
Logistics questions: don't lose a qualified lead
The last group is easy to overlook and costs firms real clients. Confirm the best contact method and time, and where relevant, the fee expectation and how the person found you. A lead who is a perfect fit still evaporates if you promise a callback and reach a dead phone at the wrong hour. Capturing the preferred channel and time, and booking the consult while the person is engaged rather than promising to call back, closes the gap where qualified leads quietly disappear.
How to run the questions without interrogating the caller
A list of questions delivered as a rigid form or a monotone script gets you thin, defensive answers. People give fuller, more honest information in a conversation that follows what they actually say. Ask an open question first, let them tell the story, and then fill the gaps with targeted follow-ups. If they mention a hearing next week, ask the date. If they name the other party, note it for the conflict check. That is how a good human intake specialist works, and it gathers cleaner facts than any static form.
It is also why many firms have moved from intake forms to legal intake software that runs the conversation itself: it asks these questions in a natural exchange, adapts the follow-ups to the answers, screens the matter, checks for conflicts, collects the documents, and books the consult, at any hour. If you would rather start from a written checklist, our client intake form template lays out the fields to capture. And once a matter is signed, the next step is usually the engagement agreement, where it helps to review the contract terms before they go out.
The guardrail: intake gathers facts, the attorney advises
One rule holds across every question above: intake gathers information and books the consult, but it never gives legal advice. It does not tell a caller whether they have a case, what it is worth, or what they should do. Those are legal judgments that belong to the attorney after a full review. Ask your questions to screen, protect the firm, and prepare the lawyer, and leave the advice for the licensed professional. That is what keeps intake both useful and safe.
See how Consultations runs intake for your field on the use cases page.