Legal operations foundations
How to Set Up a Legal Request Intake Form
A practical, field-by-field guide to designing a legal request intake form, including request types, conditional fields, and routing rules.
Direct answer
Setting up a legal request intake form means choosing the request types it should cover, such as contract, notice, or compliance questions, then designing fields that capture what legal actually needs to triage the request, such as urgency, counterparty, and value. Add conditional fields per request type, define routing rules by category and priority, and test the form against real historical requests before publishing it.
Definitions
Request type
A category of incoming legal work, such as contract review, notice intake, or compliance question, that determines which fields and routing rules apply.
Conditional field
A form field that only appears based on an earlier answer, such as showing counterparty fields only for contract-related requests.
Routing rule
Logic that sends a submitted request to the right reviewer or queue based on request type, priority, or value.
Field-level triage data
The specific pieces of information, such as urgency or deadline, that let legal assess a request without a follow-up conversation.
Practical workflow
List the request types the form must cover
Identify the distinct categories of work legal receives, such as contract review, notice response, or compliance questions.
Design core fields for triage
Add fields legal needs to assess urgency and ownership, such as requester, deadline, value, and a short description.
Add conditional fields per request type
Show additional fields, such as counterparty name for contracts or notice source for legal notices, only when relevant.
Define routing rules
Set rules that send each request to the right reviewer or queue based on type, priority, and value thresholds.
Test against real historical requests
Run past requests through the draft form to confirm fields capture what is needed and routing sends them correctly.
Comparison
| Intake approach | What happens | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Email-only intake | Requests arrive in free text with inconsistent detail. | Legal spends time following up before it can even triage the request. |
| Generic single-purpose form | One form with the same fields regardless of request type. | Irrelevant fields for some request types and missing fields for others. |
| Field-designed intake form | Fields and routing adapt to the request type selected. | Legal gets what it needs upfront and requests route to the right owner. |
Limitations and exceptions
- This guide covers form field design and routing rules; it is not a buyer's guide to intake software, which is covered separately in the legal request intake software guide.
- A well-designed form still needs a maintained owner to update fields and routing rules as request types or teams change.
- Conditional logic works best with a small number of clearly distinct request types; too many branches can make the form harder to maintain than useful.
Primary sources
Methodology
This guide sequences intake form design around request type identification, core triage fields, conditional fields, routing rules, and testing against real historical requests, focused on field and routing design rather than software selection.
FAQs
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