Glossary
One entity per entry. Each definition is built from dated source captures, states who said what and when, and ends where the evidence ends.
Conversational intake
Conversational intake is a legal software archetype in which the first thing a prospective client meets is a dialogue rather than a form: the product asks questions, adapts what it asks next to the answers already given, and hands the firm a structured record of the exchange.
Form and document automation
Form and document automation is a legal software archetype in which a structured questionnaire is the input and a finished document is the output: the product collects answers from a client, and the same answers populate the documents the matter needs, without anyone retyping them.
Intake CRM
An intake CRM is a legal software product whose defining job is to hold prospective clients as a pipeline in their own right, separate from the firm's open matters, from the moment of first contact until the matter is either opened or declined.
Schedule rate, show-up rate and close rate
Schedule rate, show-up rate and close rate are intake funnel measures, each attached to one stage boundary on a firm's path from inbound inquiry to signed client.
Intake tier gating
Intake tier gating is the packaging pattern in which a legal software vendor advertises a low entry price and places the client intake capability above it, on a higher plan, behind a paid add-on, or behind a sales conversation, so that the advertised entry price is not the price of a configuration that performs intake.
Lead qualification
Lead qualification is the step in law firm intake at which an inbound inquiry is screened against the firm's own criteria for fit and either advanced toward a consultation or declined.
Lead response time
Lead response time is the elapsed time between a prospective client's inbound inquiry to a law firm and that firm's first personal reply to it.
Matter handoff
Matter handoff is the transition at which a signed prospective client stops being an intake record and becomes an opened matter in the firm's case management system, passing from the intake function to a case manager and crossing the boundary between two pieces of software.
Practice-management suite
A practice-management suite is a legal software product that offers one system of record from first contact through the life of the matter, so that intake, the matter itself, documents and billing are functions of a single application rather than separate purchases that have to be connected.
Workflow automation
Workflow automation is a legal software archetype whose product is sequence: it runs the follow-up messages and the internal routing that happen between a prospective client's first contact and their signature, according to rules the firm itself defines rather than rules the vendor ships.