The Ultimate Guide to Legal Intake Automation: Triage, SLAs & AI Agents

Legal inboxes aren’t broken—your intake is. Across many in-house teams, 40–60% of inbound requests are repetitive and policy-driven, yet they still queue behind bespoke matters. That drag shows up as slower deals, frustrated stakeholders, and a reputation for being a bottleneck.

Intake is where legal work starts and where speed compounds. Get this layer right and the entire machine runs cleaner: better data, faster routing, fewer back-and-forths, and improved trust with the business.

Why Intake Is the Highest-ROI Automation

Intake concentrates three problems: missing context, misrouted work, and invisible cycle time. Automating intake tackles all three.

- Structure: Forms capture the minimum viable data (contract type, counterparty, value, deadline) instead of free-text email.

- Triage: Work is categorized (e.g., NDA, vendor DPA, marketing review) and routed to the right lane: self-serve, AI-assist, or attorney.

- Visibility: Every request becomes a trackable matter with timestamps for time-to-first-response and SLA adherence.

The result is a measurable drop in handle time and fewer interruptions. For lean teams, even modest deflection—say 25% of NDAs to self-serve—reclaims dozens of attorney hours per month and makes room for higher-value advisory work.

The Playbook: Triage, SLAs & Routing

Start with your highest-volume workflows. For most teams: NDAs, sales order forms, and vendor onboarding.

- Standardize intake: A short, role-specific form embedded in Slack/Teams or a portal. Ask only what drives a routing decision.

- Define lanes: Self-serve (pre-approved templates/playbooks), AI-assist (summaries, risk flags, redlines within guardrails), and Expert (escalate to counsel).

- Set SLAs: Time-to-first-response in hours, and cycle-time targets by lane (e.g., NDA self-serve instant; AI-assist < 4 hours; Expert < 2 business days). Publish them.

- Automate handoffs: Create a procurement ticket, ping sales in Slack, push to CLM (contract lifecycle management) when ready, and notify finance if thresholds are met.

In Sandstone, these decisions are layered: each rule adds precision without breaking the flow. You can add a field, tweak a route, or tighten a playbook without rebuilding the system.

What AI Agents Do Now—Safely

Today’s AI agents are powerful in the narrow, high-volume zones legal sees every day. With guardrails and approvals, they:

- Classify requests and extract key facts (counterparty, term, value) from uploads and emails.

- Generate first-pass summaries and risk flags aligned to your policy (e.g., data transfers, indemnity, auto-renew).

- Recommend the right path: self-serve template, quick-turn negotiation, or privacy/security review.

- Draft redlines within a playbook, then hand off for attorney approval.

- Answer common questions with citations to your playbooks and past decisions.

On Sandstone, every agent is powered by your positions and playbooks—the knowledge layer. That means consistency by design: the more you decide, the smarter it gets. Approvals, audit trails, and role-based access keep you firmly in control.

Metrics That Matter

Track a small, reliable set of KPIs to show impact:

- Time-to-first-response (TFR): How fast legal acknowledges work.

- Cycle time by lane: Self-serve, AI-assist, Expert.

- Deflection rate: % of matters resolved via self-serve or AI without attorney time.

- First-time-right intake: Requests that proceed without rework due to missing info.

- Satisfaction: Lightweight, one-click CSAT from requesters.

Report these monthly. Improvements at intake ripple downstream into CLM velocity, procurement throughput, and sales win rates.

A 30-Day Intake Launch Plan (Sandstone)

Week 1: Pick one workflow (e.g., NDA). Map the minimal fields and define lanes. Import your template and playbook.

Week 2: Connect channels (Slack/Teams, email). Enable AI classification and summary. Configure SLAs and notifications. Pilot with a small sales or procurement group.

Week 3: Add guardrails: required approvals, fallback to attorney for edge cases, and clear exception paths. Turn on audit logs and a simple requester dashboard.

Week 4: Roll out broadly. Publish SLAs. Launch a two-slide internal guide. Start your KPI dashboard and set a 60-day review.

This is strength through layers: each step compounds knowledge—no big-bang rebuild, just crafted precision aligned to your process.

Try This Next Week

Choose a single, high-volume path—NDAs or vendor intake. Stand up a short form, enable AI summarization and routing, and set two SLAs (TFR and cycle time). Measure deflection and time saved for two weeks. If it works, clone the pattern to the next workflow.

Closing: Legal as Connective Tissue

When intake is structured and augmented by AI, legal stops being a queue and starts being a system. The business gets clarity and speed; legal gets focus and data. Sandstone turns playbooks, positions, and workflows into a living operating layer—so every request, triage, and decision strengthens the foundation. That’s how trust and growth scale together: a streamlined legal ops core that compounds knowledge instead of losing it.