Anatomy of an 18-Second Intake

Eighteen seconds. That's the average time between a new lead notification appearing in Slack and a fully created case in Filevine — conflict-checked, attorney-assigned, welcome email queued. Here's exactly what happens in those 18 seconds, including the parts that make it hard.

A new lead notification arrives. It could come from your website form, LeadDocket, an email, a referral partner's system, or a call center feed. The intake specialist monitors all of these simultaneously.

The first task: identify what kind of notification this is and extract the structured data. A web form is easy — the fields are labeled. An email from a referral partner requires parsing unstructured text. A call center feed might be a CSV or an API payload. The agent handles all formats.

Before anything else, the agent checks this lead against your existing client and adverse party database. This is the step that manual intake most often skips or does superficially.

The check runs against full names, partial matches, aliases, and associated parties. For common names — Martinez, Johnson, Smith — the agent also checks date of birth, address, and case type to disambiguate.

If there's a clear conflict: the intake is halted, the lead is flagged, and the assigned attorney is notified in #intake-review. If there's an ambiguous match: same process, but with the specific match details so the attorney can make the call. If clear: proceed.

The agent logs into your CMS — Filevine, Clio, MyCase, or whatever you use — and creates a new case. Every intake field is mapped to the correct CMS field based on your firm's specific configuration.

This is where most DIY automation breaks down. CMS field mapping isn't generic — your Filevine instance has custom fields, custom sections, custom dropdown values. The agent's skill is configured with YOUR field map, not a generic template.

The case gets a number, a status (New), a case type, and an assigned attorney based on your rotation or specialty rules. If your firm uses practice areas or teams, the routing logic is built into the skill.

A summary is posted to #intake-alerts: who the lead is, case type, source, assigned attorney, conflict check result, and the new case number with a direct link to the CMS record.

Simultaneously, a personalized welcome email is queued to the lead. The email template is yours — your firm name, your branding, your language. The agent fills in the specifics: the lead's name, their case type, and what to expect next.

The agent logs every action it took: timestamp, source system, action type, result, and any flags. This audit trail is what makes the weekly ROI report possible — and what makes governance reviewable.

A confirmation message appears in Slack: '✓ Processed: Martinez, J. — MVA. Case #2024-1847. Assigned: Sarah Chen. No conflicts. Welcome email queued. Time: 18 seconds.'

Your paralegal's Monday morning just started with zero inbox triage and 12 cases already created.