Most law firms think of intake as admin. Answer the phone. Ask a few questions. Send it over to someone else. Done.
That mindset is exactly why most law firms are bleeding cases without realizing it.
Here’s the truth: intake is sales. And if that word makes you uncomfortable, fine. Call it trust-building. Call it client confidence. But at the end of the day, intake is where you either close the case – or hand it to another firm that will.
I work with intake teams every day – both the ones sending leads and the ones receiving them. And the biggest difference between good and great firms is mindset. I can tell almost immediately who’s hungry and who’s comfortable. The comfortable ones? I call them fat firms. They’ve had enough success to get lazy. And lazy intake is where good cases go to die.
I once had a firm tell me they needed 72 hours to respond to a lead. Seventy-two hours. Are you fucking kidding me? That lead is gone. Someone else has already signed them. Hell, ten minutes is often too long.
If a client fills out a form on your website, you should be calling them within two minutes. If the phone rings, pick it up on the first ring. Not tomorrow. Not after lunch. Now.
And don’t tell me you tried. If you’re not calling that lead back three times in the first day – spaced out, persistent – then you didn’t try. You gave up. Intake is where you fight to get that person on the phone, make them feel safe, show them you care, and then sign the fucking case.
That’s the job. That’s what intake is for.
You don’t need better forms. You don’t need another intake vendor.
You need the right mindset:
- Be fast – like, obsessively fast
- Be empathetic – people aren’t calling you because their life is going great
- Be focused – your goal is to get the signature, not to screen people out
I get firms all the time that turn away leads with surface-level excuses:
- “Oh, there might be disputed liability.”
- “Oh, the medicals are low.”
- “Oh, there’s a gap in treatment.”
Okay. But what don’t you know yet? What else could make this a good case?
The best firms don’t go hunting for reasons to say no. They ask better questions. They try harder. They want the case.
If your intake team isn’t thinking like that, you don’t have an intake problem – you have a mindset problem.
And that’s the hardest one to fix, because it starts at the top.