# Legal Matter Intake and Triage: [Legal department or team]

> A front door for an in-house legal team: the intake form, the risk
> tiers, the routing rules that send each request to the right
> resource, the service levels by tier and the reporting that shows
> whether the process works. Structure informed by the Service Delivery
> Models and Practice Operations areas of the CLOC Core 12 (Corporate
> Legal Operations Consortium, What is Legal Operations guide, August
> 2020). Replace every `[bracketed]` value and every row marked
> *Example*. This is a documentation format, not legal advice.

<!--
Guidance: How to use this template
- Publish section 2 (the intake form) to the business through one
  channel: a form, a ticket queue or a shared mailbox. Requests that
  skip the channel are logged into it by whoever receives them.
- Fill section 3 (tiers) and section 4 (routing) with the general
  counsel before launch. The tiers decide the service level, so they
  must match the team's real capacity.
- The worked example is fictional: Quillmere Systems Ltd, a business
  software company with a legal team of nine. Delete it before use.
- Related documents: Contract Review Playbook
  (`legal-ops/contract-review-playbook`), Legal Hold Notice
  (`legal-ops/legal-hold-notice`), Outside Counsel Guidelines
  (`legal-ops/outside-counsel-guidelines`), Legal Spend Budget
  (`legal-ops/legal-spend-budget`), Whistleblowing Policy
  (`compliance/whistleblowing-policy`), Personal Data Breach Assessment
  (`compliance/personal-data-breach-assessment`).
- Common pitfall: a form so long that people email lawyers directly
  instead. Ask only what triage needs; the lawyer collects the rest.
-->

## Document control

<!-- Guidance: Owned by legal operations, approved by the general counsel. Review the tiers and service levels every six months using the data in section 6. -->

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Document ID | [LEG-OPS-INT-001] |
| Version | [1.0] |
| Status | [Draft / Approved] |
| Owner | [@legal-operations-manager] |
| Approved by | [@general-counsel] |
| Intake channel | [Form URL / ticket queue / mailbox] |
| Last updated | YYYY-MM-DD |
| Next review | YYYY-MM-DD |
| Classification | [Internal] |

### Revision history

| Version | Date | Author | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 *(Example)* | 2026-10-30 | Legal operations manager | First issue |

## 1. Scope and principles

<!-- Guidance: Say which requests go through intake and which never do. Urgent and confidential routes must be clear, so that no one waits in a queue during a crisis. -->

All requests for legal work from the business go through intake,
including contract reviews, advice questions, disputes, regulatory
contacts, policy reviews and corporate actions.

Separate routes, not the general queue:

- **Emergencies** (dawn raid, arrest, regulator on site, serious
  incident): call [duty lawyer number] at once.
- **Whistleblowing reports** go to the confidential channel in
  `compliance/whistleblowing-policy`, never to the general queue.
- **Suspected personal data breaches** go to the incident process and
  privacy counsel (`compliance/personal-data-breach-assessment`).

Principles: one channel; one owner per matter; tier by risk, not by
seniority of the requester; tell the requester what happens next;
measure and adjust.

Privilege: requests for legal advice should be addressed to the legal
team and marked as such. Whether a communication with in-house counsel
is privileged depends on the jurisdiction and the forum; ask legal
before sharing advice outside the team.

## 2. Intake form

<!-- Guidance: Keep the form to the fields below. Mandatory fields are marked. The requester's answers drive tiering in section 3. -->

| Field | Mandatory | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Requester name, team, cost centre | Yes | Cost centre feeds spend reporting |
| Request type | Yes | Contract, advice, dispute or claim, regulatory, employment, IP, corporate, policy, other |
| Short description | Yes | What do you need and why |
| Counterparty or people involved | Yes for contracts and disputes | Used for conflicts and sanctions checks |
| Value at stake | Yes | Contract value or amount in dispute, best estimate |
| Deadline and reason | Yes | Business deadline, external deadline, or none |
| Documents | For contracts | Latest draft in editable format |
| Regulator, court or government body involved | Yes | Yes or no |
| Personal data, safety or reputational impact | Yes | Yes or no, with one line |
| Business approver | For contracts above [USD 50,000] | Named sponsor |

## 3. Risk tiers

<!-- Guidance: Score impact and urgency, then map to a tier. Any single red flag sets the tier on its own. Figures are examples; set thresholds that reflect your business. -->

| Tier | Criteria (any one is enough) | Typical examples |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 Critical | Regulator, court or law enforcement involved; threatened claim above [USD 250,000]; safety or serious reputational risk; external deadline within 2 business days | Regulator letter, claim form served, product safety issue |
| Tier 2 High | Contract value above [USD 250,000] or off playbook; new market or product; employment dispute; deadline within 5 business days | Enterprise deal on customer paper, grievance with legal claim risk |
| Tier 3 Standard | Contract within playbook; advice question with internal impact; value [USD 50,000] to [USD 250,000] | Supplier agreement on our paper, policy question |
| Tier 4 Self-serve | NDA on our template, signed unchanged; value below [USD 50,000]; questions answered by published guidance | Mutual NDA, FAQ question |

### 3.1 Service levels

| Tier | Acknowledge | First substantive response *(Example)* | Default owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | 1 hour, 24x7 by phone | 1 business day | Duty lawyer, general counsel informed |
| Tier 2 | 1 business day | 3 business days | Specialist lawyer |
| Tier 3 | 1 business day | 5 business days | Contract manager or lawyer |
| Tier 4 | Automatic | Self-serve template or guidance link at once; check within 2 business days | Legal operations |

Business days exclude weekends and public holidays where the owner
works. The clock starts when the request is complete (all mandatory
fields and documents).

## 4. Routing

<!-- Guidance: Route each request to the lowest-cost resource that can do it well: self-serve, contract manager, in-house lawyer, alternative legal service provider or outside counsel. The CLOC Service Delivery Models area describes this matching of work to resource. -->

| Request type | Tier 4 | Tier 3 | Tier 2 | Tier 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contract | Template and playbook T0 | Contract manager (`legal-ops/contract-review-playbook`) | Commercial lawyer | Head of commercial legal |
| Advice | Guidance library | Lawyer on rota | Specialist lawyer | General counsel |
| Dispute or claim | n/a | Litigation counsel | Litigation counsel, consider outside counsel | General counsel, outside counsel, legal hold (`legal-ops/legal-hold-notice`) |
| Regulatory | n/a | Compliance | Regulatory counsel | General counsel and outside counsel |
| Employment | HR policy | Employment lawyer | Employment lawyer | General counsel |
| Volume work (for example NDAs at scale, contract migration) | n/a | Alternative legal service provider under framework | n/a | n/a |

Outside counsel are instructed only under the outside counsel
guidelines (`legal-ops/outside-counsel-guidelines`), with a budget for
matters expected to exceed [USD 25,000].

```mermaid
flowchart TD
  A["Request submitted"] --> B{"Emergency or whistleblowing?"}
  B -->|"Yes"| C["Separate route, section 1"]
  B -->|"No"| D{"Complete?"}
  D -->|"No"| E["Return to requester for missing fields"]
  E --> A
  D -->|"Yes"| F["Conflicts and sanctions check on counterparty"]
  F --> G["Assign tier 1 to 4"]
  G --> H["Route per section 4"]
  H --> I{"Outside counsel needed?"}
  I -->|"Yes"| J["Engage under guidelines with budget"]
  I -->|"No"| K["In-house or self-serve"]
  J --> L["Matter opened with owner and due date"]
  K --> L
  L --> M["Close, record outcome and time"]
```

## 5. Matter log

<!-- Guidance: One row per request. The ID is the matter number used in billing and spend reports. Due dates follow section 3.1. -->

| Matter ID | Received | Type | Tier | Owner | First response due | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MAT-2026-0201 *(Example)* | 2026-10-05 (Mon) | Regulatory: data protection authority letter | 1 | General counsel | 2026-10-06 | Open |
| MAT-2026-0202 *(Example)* | 2026-10-06 (Tue) | Contract: enterprise customer paper, ACV USD 410,000 | 2 | Commercial lawyer | 2026-10-09 | Open |
| MAT-2026-0203 *(Example)* | 2026-10-08 (Thu) | Contract: supplier on our paper, USD 80,000 | 3 | Contract manager | 2026-10-15 | Open |
| MAT-2026-0204 *(Example)* | 2026-10-08 (Thu) | Mutual NDA on template | 4 | Legal operations | Self-serve | Closed same day |

The example due dates assume no public holidays in the period; adjust
for local holidays.

## 6. Reporting and review

<!-- Guidance: Report monthly to the general counsel and twice a year to business leaders. Use the data to change tiers, add self-serve templates or shift work to other resources. -->

| Measure | Definition | Target *(Example)* |
|---|---|---|
| Volume by type and tier | Requests opened per month | Trend only |
| First response within service level | Share of requests meeting section 3.1 | 90% |
| Cycle time | Request complete to matter closed, median by type | Trend down |
| Self-serve share | Tier 4 requests closed without a lawyer | Trend up |
| Work sent outside | Matters with outside counsel or providers, and spend | Within budget (`legal-ops/legal-spend-budget`) |
| Requester satisfaction | Short survey on closure | [Target] |

Review questions every six months:

- Which request types grow fastest, and can templates or guidance
  absorb them?
- Which tier misses its service level most often, and is it capacity
  or incomplete requests?
- Which work could move to a lower-cost resource without raising risk?

## Standard and licence note

Structure informed by the CLOC Core 12 functional areas, in particular
Service Delivery Models and Practice Operations, as described in the
Corporate Legal Operations Consortium guide What is Legal Operations
(August 2020), cited by name only; see https://cloc.org/what-is-legal-operations/.
No text is copied from CLOC material. Tiers, thresholds and service
levels are examples, not values set by CLOC or by any law. The
organisation and matters are fictional. All text is original wording.
This is a documentation format, not legal advice.

Template licence: MIT.