Why Intake Triage Automation Matters for In‑House Legal (and How to Get It Right)

On most in-house teams, 30–50% of inbound legal requests are routine. They don’t always need a lawyer, but they still sit in the same queue, slow the same deals, and drain the same attention. That’s the paradox: legal wants to accelerate the business, yet intake becomes a bottleneck.

Triage automation breaks that loop. When requests are classified, routed, and resolved at the edge with policy-backed guidance, your lawyers spend time where judgment truly matters—and the business sees legal as a force multiplier, not a waiting room.

What We Mean by Intake Triage

Intake triage is the structured process of capturing requests, classifying them by type and risk, and directing them to the right path—self-serve, automated, or expert review—with clear SLAs.

Common request types:

- Contracts: NDAs, order forms, SOWs, MSAs, renewals

- Procurement/vendor diligence: security questionnaires, DPAs, supplier onboarding

- Privacy & compliance: data access questions, incident notifications, policy queries

- Day-to-day guidance: policy interpretations, playbook-based approvals

Each type gets a decision path. For example: approved NDA → instant self-serve; non-standard vendor DPA → privacy review; high-risk commercial terms → senior counsel. The key is applying consistent rules, not ad hoc triage in email or Slack.

Why It Matters Now

- Demand keeps rising while headcount stays flat. Without triage, everything becomes a priority and nothing is.

- Work is fragmented across email, Slack, and ticket tools, which hides the real queue and obscures risk.

- Risk tolerance needs to be encoded, not implied. If your positions live in people’s heads, you can’t scale safely.

- Business speed is the expectation. Sales, procurement, and product teams need predictable answers and timelines.

Done right, triage automation shortens time-to-first-response, increases first-contact resolution, and creates a searchable record of decisions. It turns institutional knowledge into a living system.

How to Get It Right (A 5-Step Playbook)

1) Map Demand and SLAs

- Inventory where requests come from (portal, Slack, email, Jira/ServiceNow) and what’s asked most often.

- Define SLAs by category (e.g., NDAs within 2 hours, standard renewal within 1 business day, net-new MSAs within 3–5 days).

- Identify the “happy path” targets for deflection or auto-approval (e.g., approved NDA; low-risk vendor with no personal data).

2) Standardize Intake Forms

- Use dynamic forms that collect the right inputs upfront: counterparties, value, data types, region, deadlines, attachments.

- Make fields conditional so low-risk asks stay lightweight while higher-risk triggers collect more context.

- Tie every field to a purpose—if you don’t use it in routing or decisioning, drop it.

3) Encode Your Decision Logic

- Translate playbooks and positions into a triage matrix: risk bands, thresholds, and routing rules.

- Example rules: “If NDA = approved template + no edits, auto-generate and self-serve.” “If contract value > $250k or processing special categories of data, route to senior counsel + privacy.”

- Store the rationale with the rule. Decisions should be auditable and explainable.

4) Automate With AI Agents (Human-in-the-Loop)

- Classification: read the request and attachments to tag type, jurisdiction, product, and risk signals.

- Extraction: pull key entities (parties, term, value, data types) and pre-fill fields in your system of record.

- Knowledge lookup: answer FAQs with approved positions and link to policy pages.

- Drafting: generate first-pass NDAs or redlines aligned to your playbooks; surface deviations for review.

- In Sandstone, agents operate on your layered knowledge—playbooks, positions, and workflows—so every decision improves the system. You keep humans in control where judgment or escalation is required.

5) Instrument the Metrics That Matter

- Time to triage: minutes from request to classification and pathing.

- First-contact resolution rate: share of requests resolved without escalation.

- Deflection rate: percent of intake handled via self-serve or automation.

- SLA adherence and queue health: visibility by category, owner, and risk band.

- Feedback loops: quick thumbs-up/down on automated answers to refine rules and content.

What Good Looks Like in Practice

- NDAs on autopilot: Sales requests an NDA, Sandstone generates the approved form, sends for signature, logs the record, and updates the CRM—no lawyer required.

- Vendor diligence without ping-pong: Procurement submits a questionnaire; an agent classifies scope, fetches the latest policy responses from the knowledge layer, flags gaps for privacy, and assembles a draft package for review.

- High-risk contracts routed with context: A new MSA hits the queue; key terms and risk triggers are extracted, relevant playbook positions are attached, and the matter routes to the right counsel with a concise brief.

The result: fewer handoffs, cleaner data, and faster outcomes that still honor your risk posture.

Risks and Safeguards

- Guardrails: constrain generation to approved templates and positions; log decisions and rationale.

- Permissions: ensure sensitive playbooks and matters respect role-based access.

- Sampling and QA: review a subset of automated actions weekly; tune rules where exceptions cluster.

- Privacy: keep data processing compliant and auditable; minimize retention where appropriate.

Actionable Next Step (60 Minutes)

- List your top 10 request types and mark which should be self-serve, automated-with-review, or specialist-only.

- Define green/yellow/red thresholds for two high-volume flows (e.g., NDAs and vendor DPAs).

- Write 10 if–then rules that reflect those thresholds.

- Pilot with a small group in Sandstone: turn the rules into a triage workflow, enable the intake form, and activate an agent to classify and extract.

- Track two metrics for 30 days: time to triage and first-contact resolution rate.

The Bottom Line

Triage automation isn’t about replacing judgment; it’s about reserving it for the moments that matter. When your intake, playbooks, and decisions live in a single, AI-powered operating system, every request strengthens your foundation. That’s Sandstone: layered knowledge, crafted workflows, and natural integration with how legal already works—so legal becomes the connective tissue of the business, compounding trust and speeding growth.