How To Automate Legal Intake Without Losing Control: The Triage Ladder

Turn messy intake into a predictable, AI-assisted workflow that scales legal without adding headcount.

Across in-house teams, 20–40% of legal’s week disappears into triage and context chasing. That’s time spent before any judgment is applied. When demand rises and headcount stays flat, manual intake becomes the bottleneck that slows the whole company.

The Cost Of Manual Intake Adds Up

Every Slack ping and ambiguous email creates hidden work: clarifying scope, hunting attachments, routing to the right lawyer, and finding the last position on term caps. Multiply that across sales, procurement, and product—and you get long cycle times, inconsistent decisions, and a reputation for being slow.

The fix isn’t a bigger inbox. It’s a layered, AI-powered intake that captures the right context once, routes instantly, and applies your playbooks at the edge. That’s how legal becomes connective tissue rather than a queue.

The Triage Ladder: Four Levels Of Automation

Use this progression to dial in automation with control.

- Level 0 — Inbox Chaos: Requests arrive everywhere; no standard fields; tribal knowledge rules.

- Level 1 — Structured Forms + Routing: Standardized intake (matter type, counterparties, business owner, deadline) with rules-based routing to the right queue.

- Level 2 — AI Pre‑Triage: An AI agent summarizes the request, extracts key terms, classifies risk, and proposes next actions—before a human touches it.

- Level 3 — Playbooked Decisions: Low-risk matters are resolved automatically using your approved positions (e.g., mutual NDA ≤12 months; standard DPA addendum). Exceptions escalate with context and a draft response attached.

You decide where each workflow sits on the ladder. The goal isn’t full autonomy; it’s the right automation for the risk and volume.

Apply It In Two Weeks: An NDA Pilot

Start small, prove value, then scale.

1) Scope and guardrails

- Select mutual NDAs under a revenue or data threshold.

- Define what auto-approves vs. escalates (term length, governing law, venue).

2) Codify your playbook and positions

- Convert your standard fallbacks into structured rules (what’s acceptable, negotiable, never).

- Store examples of approved redlines and email language.

3) Build intake and routing

- Use a short form to capture requester, counterparty, use case, urgency, and contract file/link.

- Route to "NDA – Standard" and "NDA – Exception" queues.

4) Turn on AI pre‑triage in Sandstone

- The agent ingests the NDA, extracts key clauses, checks against your positions, and drafts either an approval packet or a redline with commentary.

- It generates a clear summary for the business and a decision log for legal.

5) Review and release

- Legal reviews the first 20 matters; approve, edit, or escalate.

- Lock playbook tweaks based on real exceptions.

6) Expand

- Roll to vendor DPAs or sales order form reviews once cycle time and quality stabilize.

Tools And Workflows That Make It Stick

- Playbooks + Positions: A living library of what’s acceptable, negotiable, and never—mapped to clauses.

- AI Intake Agent: Converts unstructured requests into structured data, summaries, and first drafts.

- Knowledge Layer: Every intake, decision, and exception strengthens the model and refines guidance.

- Natural Integrations: Meet requesters where they work (Slack, email, CRM) without duplicate entry.

- Audit Trails: Every automated decision includes rationale, sources, and responsible approver.

Sandstone is built for strength through layers: modular workflows that build on each decision, crafted to your contours, and designed to blend into how you already work.

Metrics That Matter

Track a few leading and lagging indicators to prove impact.

- First-Response Time: Minutes from submission to acknowledgment.

- Cycle Time: Submission to resolution per workflow and risk tier.

- Auto‑Resolve Rate: Percent resolved at Level 3 without attorney drafting.

- Rework Rate: Matters reopened due to missing context or incorrect routing.

- Playbook Coverage: Percent of issues with a documented, automated position.

- Requester CSAT: Simple 1–5 rating in the closure email.

Aim for a 30–50% cycle-time reduction on NDAs within 30 days.

Common Pitfalls

- Automating a Broken Process: Fix fields and routing before you turn on AI.

- No Guardrails: Define thresholds and must‑escalate triggers up front.

- "One Form To Rule Them All": Keep forms short and tailored by matter type.

- Poor Change Management: Tell the business what’s changing, why, and how to use it.

- Decisions Not Captured: If you can’t log the rationale, you can’t scale the decision.

Take One Action This Week

Pick one high‑volume, low‑risk workflow—NDAs or standard vendor DPAs. Implement Level 2 pre‑triage with an AI intake agent in Sandstone. Set two success metrics (cycle time, auto‑resolve rate), and run a two‑week pilot with daily reviews. Then lock the playbook and move up the ladder.

When intake is structured, triage is automated, and playbooks are living code, legal stops being a gate and becomes the foundation—speed, alignment, and trust layered into every transaction. That’s the promise of modern legal ops, and it’s exactly what Sandstone was built to deliver.