7 Practical Ways AI Agents Streamline Legal Intake for In‑House Teams

Most in‑house legal teams don’t lose time in review — they lose it in the inbox. If requests spend days bouncing between Slack, email, and tickets before anyone can route them, you don’t have a bandwidth problem. You have a routing problem. The fix isn’t more headcount; it’s a smarter front door backed by your playbooks, positions, and workflows.

The Intake Problem Is a Routing Problem

When intake is unstructured, every ask becomes bespoke. Lawyers chase context. Requesters chase updates. Work stalls. The pattern is predictable: unclear scope, missing attachments, no risk signal, and no agreed service levels.

AI agents can convert this chaos into a repeatable system. By mapping requests to known matter types, enforcing data capture up front, and applying policy‑backed decisions, they route the right work to the right path instantly — and keep exceptions visible. On Sandstone, this intake-to-decision flow becomes a living operating system: your playbooks and positions are not static PDFs; they’re executable logic that powers triage, drafting, and approvals.

1) Make a Smart Front Door With Dynamic Forms

Stop “Can you take a quick look?” at the source. A Sandstone intake agent asks tailored questions based on the request type (NDA, vendor review, marketing claim, product change), pulls known data from CRM/ERP, and validates required context (counterparty, jurisdiction, deadlines, risk flags). Fewer back‑and‑forths, faster first response.

2) Auto‑Classify and Route by Risk and Priority

Every request isn’t equal. Agents can classify the matter, detect risk (e.g., personal data, regulated industry, non‑standard terms), and route accordingly: self‑serve guidance for low risk, queue assignment with SLAs for standard, and escalations for high risk. Capacity‑aware routing balances workload across the team.

3) Answer Common Questions With Policy‑Backed Positions

Not everything needs a ticket. Encode approved positions (e.g., “We accept supplier’s DPA if it meets X/Y/Z,” “We don’t agree to unlimited liability”) and let an agent deliver immediate, sourced answers with links to the underlying rationale. Exceptions are captured and surfaced for attorney review.

4) Automate NDAs and Low‑Risk Documents — With Guardrails

Agents can draft standard NDAs, DPAs, and marketing releases using your templates, then compare inbound redlines against playbook‑approved deviations. If changes fall within guardrails, the agent accepts and logs; if not, it marks precise clauses for legal review, cutting review time without compromising control.

5) Orchestrate Vendor Intake and Privacy Triggers

Procurement requests often straddle Legal, Security, and Privacy. An agent can collect vendor details, detect when a DPIA or security questionnaire is required, kick off the right workflows, and keep stakeholders updated. No more shadow spreadsheets; everything is tracked against a single source of truth.

6) Enforce SLAs and Give Real‑Time Status

Agents provide instant confirmations (“We received your request. SLA: 2 business days for first response.”), nudge requesters for missing inputs, and update status in Slack/Teams or your ticketing tool. Transparency defuses escalation and builds trust.

7) Capture Decisions So Knowledge Compounds

Every intake is a chance to strengthen your foundation. Agents log outcomes, rationales, and clause decisions back into Sandstone. Over time, the system identifies new patterns, recommends playbook updates, and raises issues where policy and practice diverge.

The KPIs That Prove It’s Working

If you can’t measure the shift, you can’t scale it. Start with:

- First‑response time: from submission to human or agent acknowledgement. Target minutes, not days.

- Cycle time by matter type: from submission to resolution. Watch low‑risk categories compress first.

- Self‑serve resolution rate: percentage resolved without attorney intervention. Improve by expanding approved positions and templates.

- Exception rate and reasons: which issues break the rails? Use this to tune guardrails and staffing.

- Requester satisfaction (CSAT) and rework: qualitative signal on clarity, speed, and outcome; track revisions avoided via playbooks.

Set a 60‑day baseline, then re‑measure after introducing agents to your top two use cases. Expect visible gains in self‑serve rate and cycle time before headcount changes.

How to Pilot in 30 Days With Sandstone

A successful pilot is small, real, and instrumented.

- Week 1 — Intake audit: Pull 60 days of requests. Identify the top two repeatable flows (e.g., NDAs, vendor reviews) and the top three missing data fields that cause delays.

- Week 2 — Encode the rails: Translate your playbooks and positions into Sandstone. Define guardrails (what’s auto‑accept, auto‑reject, escalate). Connect to Slack/Teams, Gmail/Outlook, and your ticketing tool.

- Week 3 — Launch to a cohort: Route only those two flows through a Sandstone intake agent. Keep the old path as backup, but promote the new front door.

- Week 4 — Measure and iterate: Compare KPIs to baseline. Tighten prompts, update positions, and expand scope once you hit targets.

Sandstone is built for strength through layers: layered data from your systems, modular workflows that fit your contours, and decisions that build on each other. It integrates naturally where your team already works — no behavior gymnastics required.

Actionable Next Step

Pick two high‑volume, low‑risk workflows (e.g., mutual NDAs and standard vendor reviews). Stand up a Sandstone intake agent, encode your playbook positions, and set SLAs. Run it for 30 days and measure the four KPIs above. If cycle time and self‑serve rates don’t move, expand your rails or revisit your intake questions.

The Bedrock of Trust and Growth

When intake becomes a living, AI‑powered operating system, legal stops being a bottleneck and starts being connective tissue for the business. Every request strengthens your foundation; knowledge compounds instead of disappearing. That’s how modern legal teams move with clarity and confidence — and how Sandstone turns legal from reactive support into a proactive force for speed, alignment, and trust.