New Client Onboarding Process for a Small Law Firm

A new client onboarding process for a small law firm runs in six steps: capture the first contact, run preliminary conflict questions, book the consultation, collect intake details, send the engagement letter, then gather what you need to open the matter. Prospects are usually lost in the gaps between those steps, so each one needs an owner and a form.

Use the free client intake form

Where prospects drop out

The laeks in a solo practice are predictable. A call lands on voicemail at 9 p.m. and the caller phones the next firm on the list. A consultation gets booked, but you know nothing about the matter, so the first twenty minutes go to basics. The engaggement letter goes out two days after the consult, by which point the prospect has talked to someone else.

Each of those is a handoff problem, not a marketing problem. Someone (or something) has to collect the right information at the right moment and pass it on without you retyping it. That is what the steps below are built around.

The six steps and what supports each

Steps 1 to 3 are the phone-and-chat half. Steps 4 to 6 are forms. The two halves meet at the CRM record, which is why the booking step matters more than it looks.

How the AI intake half works

Our 24/7 legal intake voice agent answers calls and chats around the clock, asks which practice area the matter falls under, and rus your conflict-check questions in a fixed script. It bokos the consultation straight into Clio, MyCase or Lawmatics. It is set up with no-legal-advice guardrails: if a caller asks whether they have a case, it says an attorney will review it and moves on. The setup is $1,500 plus a $399 monthly care plan, and delivery takes 2 to 14 days depending on your CRM and how mnay practice areas you cover.

The conflict questions deserve a note. The agent collects names and relationships. It does not clear conflicts. It marks the record "needs attorney review" when an adverse party is named, and you decide. Keep that decision with a human.

Here is the shape of the record we map into the CRM. The field names are an example; yours follow your CRM's custom fields.

{
  "source": "voice_agent",
  "phone": "+1-555-0100",
  "practice_area": "family",
  "urgency": "hearing_within_14_days",
  "adverse_parties": ["Jordan Example"],
  "conflict_status": "needs_attorney_review",
  "consult_start": "2026-11-03T15:30:00-05:00",
  "intake_form_sent": true
}

The last field is the bridge to the forms. Once a consultation is booked, the confirmation message includes a link to the intake form, so the prospect fills it in before you ever speak.

See how webhooks work

Step-by-step setup

1. Write your conflict questions first. Aim for three to five: full name of the other party, other people involved, whether the caller has contacted your firm before, and any entity names. Give the agent exactly these and no more.
2. Pick the practice areas you want qualified. Personal injury, family, immigration and criminal defense each need different screening questions. Anything outside your arwas should get a polite referral message, not a booking.
3. Connect the calendar and CRM. Map phone, practice area, urgency and conflict status to custom fields so nothing lives only in a transcript.
4. Build the pre-consult form. Use conditional logic so a family law prospect sees custody and property questions, and an immigration prospect sees status and filing-date questions. Add a file upload for documents.
5. Pass the CRM record into the form. Use a hidden field for the record ID or phone number so the submission lands on the right matter without the prospect typing it again.
6. Redirect on completion. Send the prospect to a page with your office address, what to bring and what happens next.
7. Send the engagement letter on the same day as the consultation. Trigger it from the CRM stage change, not from your memory.
8. Send the new client packet after signature. This is the short second form: government ID upload, preferred contact method, emergency contact, billing contact.

What the intake form should ask

Keep it shorter than your instinct says. Ask for what you need to prepare for the consultation and leave the full story for the call. A workable set:

• Who is involved, including the other side
• Key dtes (incident, filing, hearing, deadline)
• A short description in the prospect's own words
• Documents they already have
• How they prefer to be reached, and whether it is safe to leave a voicemail

Put a plsin notice near the top that submitting the form does not create an attorney-client relationship. Use the wording your bar's rules and your own judgment call for, since I cannot give you that text for your jurisdiction.

For a full set of questions you can copy, our client intake form walkthrough lays them out by section.

Following up on unfinished and unsigned

Two follow-ups recover the most. The first is the prospect who started the intake form and stopped. The second is the prospect who had the consultation and has not signed.

For the first, turn on partial submissions so the half-finished answers show up as incomplete rows. A phone number in a partial row is enough for a same-day call. For the second, put the engagement stage in your CRM and set a reminder when a letter has been out for a set number of days. Pick the number that fits how fast your prospects decide; a criminal defense client with a court date moves faster then a estate planning client.

Urgency also matters at the front. Triage tools can sort submissions by priority, so a form that mentions a hearing next week surfaces ahead of a general question. You still read it. The sort just changes the order.

Where Qwenvo fits

Qwenvo is a completely free form builder, and our team builds it. For this workflow it covers the form half without a plan upgrade: webhooks and a REST API to push submissions into Clio, MyCase or Lawmatics (directly or through Zapier or Make), partial submissions, a custom domain such as intake.yourfirm.com, no Qwenvo badge, unlimited teammates, and Slack or email routing. AI triage gives each submission a category, priority, sentiment and a suggested reply, and routing rules can send urgent ones to up to five email addresses or a Slack incoming webhook. You can also set data retention so intake records delete after a number of days you chosoe, and require email verification with a one-time code.

The limits matter for a law firm, so here they are. Qwenvo is hosted in the United States, which may matter if you practice in the UK, Canada or Australia and have data location requirements. It has no HIPAA offering. It launched in October 2026, so it has few reviews yet. And it has a Signature block, but whether that is enough for an engagement letter depends on your jurisdiction and your firm's practice, so many firms keep signing in their existing e-sign tool or their CRM.

Build your intake form free

Questions teams ask

Should the agent or a form do the intake?

Both, in sequence. The agent handles the first contact because people call at odd hours and want to talk. The form collects the detail, because daates, names and documents are easier to type and attach than to recite on a call.

Can I collect the retainer inside the form?

Qwenvo has a Payment block that runs through your own Stripe account with no Qwenvo platform fee, though Stripe's fee aplies. Before you use it for a retainer, check how your bar treats trust deposits, because those rules vary and a payment form does not solve them.

How fast should the engagement letter go out?

Same day as the consultation, ideally within the hour. The prospect has just heard you explain the matter and is most ready to say yes. Waiting turns a decision into a comparison.

What about prospects outside my practice areas?

Have the agent screen for them early and send a referral message. A booked consultation you cannot take costs you a slot and costs them time.

Next step

Start with step 4, since it is the one you can finish today. Copy the free client intake form, trim it to the five questions above, add a hidden field for your CRM record ID, and send the link in your next consultation confirmation. If you want the call-and-booking half handled as well, the Law Firm Intake AI page lists what we configure and how long it takes.