How to Automate Legal Intake and Triage Without Losing Control

In many in-house teams, 30–40% of legal time vanishes into intake and triage—emails, Slack pings, and incomplete forms that force lawyers to chase context. The result: slow cycle times, frustrated business partners, and risk exposure from work that starts without the right guardrails. The good news: with a clear framework and AI assistance, you can turn intake into a predictable, data-driven front door that gets the right work to the right place—fast.

Sandstone was built for this moment: layered data, modular workflows, and natural integration with how your team already works. Here’s a pragmatic blueprint to get from chaos to clarity.

Define the Outcome: Faster Answers, Lower Risk, Better Data

Start by declaring what “good” looks like. Be specific and measurable so you can tune the machine as you roll it out.

- Service levels: target first-response time under 2 business hours and matter routing within 1 business day.

- Quality gates: 95% of requests enter with required context and documents.

- Automation rate: 50%+ of standard requests resolved through self-service or fast-track playbooks.

- Visibility: 100% of requests logged with standardized metadata (requestor, business unit, contract type, value, region).

Translate those goals into a small KPI set you can actually instrument:

- First-response time (FRT)

- Cycle time by request type

- Auto-resolution rate

- Rework rate (returns for missing info)

- SLA adherence (service-level agreements you publish to the business)

These metrics become your governance layer and your narrative to the C-suite. If legal wants a seat at the growth table, it should report like a growth function.

Design a Front Door the Business Will Actually Use

Adoption is everything. If intake feels heavy, people will go around it. Keep it lightweight and embedded where work already happens.

- Meet them in their tools: Slack, email, CRM, and a simple web form. Sandstone collects from all channels without forcing behavior change.

- Ask for the minimum set of fields that drive triage: business unit, counterparty, contract type, value/risk band, jurisdiction, due date, and attachments. Progressive disclosure adds fields when risk or value increases.

- Bake in self-service: surface approved templates, playbooks, and guidance as the user types. If it’s a mutual NDA under a threshold, let them proceed with guardrails.

- Use smart defaults: pre-populate requestor info, standard term sets, and commonly used clause positions.

A “crafted precision” intake is short for simple matters and expands for complex ones. The goal: the right information, the first time.

Triage With AI Agents, Not Shared Inboxes

Replace manual sorting with policy-driven, AI-assisted routing that mirrors how your team thinks.

- Classification: an AI agent reads the request and attachments to tag request type, jurisdiction, value, and required playbook.

- Risk scoring: apply your positions (e.g., data privacy red flags, indemnity shifts, unusual governing law) to produce a risk score and recommended path.

- Routing: standard work goes to self-service or fast-track queues; medium-risk items to a specialist; high-risk to a senior reviewer with required escalation notes.

- Next actions: auto-generate a matter in your tracker, attach the right template, suggest clause packages, and tee up a counterparty questionnaire when data is missing.

On Sandstone, the agent learns from every decision—layered data makes the next triage smarter. Your playbooks aren’t PDFs; they’re a living operating system that guides intake, redlines, and approvals.

Measure, Learn, and Tighten the Loop

Instrumentation turns automation into a compounding asset.

- Dashboards: monitor FRT, cycle time, auto-resolution, and rework by business unit and request type.

- Bottleneck analysis: identify workflows that stall (e.g., privacy review, security questionnaires) and add targeted intake fields or pre-approvals.

- Content health: track which templates and playbooks drive the most self-service and where users abandon.

- Feedback: collect a two-click CSAT after closure to validate whether faster equals better.

Governance doesn’t mean heavy. It means reliable. When your intake data is clean, forecasting bandwidth, sizing the team, and communicating trade-offs become straightforward.

A 30-Day Rollout Plan You Can Start Today

Week 1: Map the work. Identify your top 10 request types and the 6–8 fields that determine routing and risk. Draft SLAs and publish them.

Week 2: Build the front door. Configure a single intake form, Slack shortcut, and email alias. Attach self-service NDAs and a fast-track playbook.

Week 3: Wire the agent. Set up classification, risk scoring thresholds, and routing rules. Pilot with one sales region or product line.

Week 4: Measure and iterate. Review KPIs, adjust required fields, and expand self-service. Roll out to a second function (e.g., procurement) once FRT and rework stabilize.

Actionable next step: pick one workflow—commercial NDAs—and implement the Week 1–2 steps. In most teams, you’ll cut NDA cycle time by 50%+ within the first month.

Why This Matters: From Bottleneck to Bedrock

When intake becomes a living system, every request strengthens your foundation. Knowledge compounds instead of disappearing. Business partners get faster answers. Risk is visible and managed. And legal stops being a queue and starts being connective tissue—moving in harmony with the business.

Sandstone brings strength through layers (data, playbooks, decisions), crafted precision (workflows carved to your contours), and natural integration (no forced change). If you want to see this in action with your data and your playbooks, book a demo. Legal moves faster when the foundation is sound—and that’s how you build trust and growth at scale.

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