Legal Request Intake & Triage Checklist (In-House) Template

The intake coordinator logs each request as soon as it arrives, whichever way it came in: the intake form, an email to the legal inbox or a message to one lawyer. Enter the target date first. Every due date counts back from it in business days, so the run works towards the date the business needs the answer. The early due dates show when each step must be done for the answer to be ready, not how quickly a request should be logged.

• Log the request, the dates and the people — a short title and reference, the requester’s team, the date it arrived, the target date for the answer, the type of request, and the intake coordinator, requester, legal owner and head of legal; later tasks are assigned from these fields
• Capture the request on the intake form — what the requester wants legal to do, the background, the other parties, the money or risk involved, the decision the answer supports, the documents they have, and why the date matters
• Keep the request and its papers within the legal team — the request, its documents and the replies saved in the legal team’s own space for requests, not a shared drive or a group chat, and copied only to the people who need them
• Acknowledge the request to the requester — the reference, who will look at it, when they will hear about the route and the target date, and where to send anything further

A request without its facts or documents cannot be triaged well. The intake coordinator checks it against the form before triage. A request that is missing something adds tasks to ask for it and to record when it arrived.

• Check the request against the intake form — every question on the form answered, the documents attached, the decision it supports clear, and a real target date rather than “as soon as possible”
• Ask the requester for what is missing — a short list of the facts, documents or decisions still needed, and the date they are needed by for the target date to hold
• Record when the missing information arrived — the date it came in and whether it changes the target date; if it came late, agree a new target date with the requester and change it on the first task, which moves the open due dates
• Check whether legal has already answered this — an open request on the same subject, earlier advice, or a playbook, template or policy that already answers it, linked so the work is not done twice

The head of legal sets the risk tier and chooses the route. The factors, tiers and routes here are this template’s choices: change them to match your own triage rules. A high tier adds an update plan and a second lawyer’s review. The type of request may add a check here, and the route decides the set-up tasks in Phase 5.

• Rate the risk and set the tier — the money at stake, regulatory exposure, any dispute or claim, personal data, reputation and whether the answer sets a precedent, each rated in the table and summed up as a low, medium or high tier
• Rate the complexity and the effort — a quick answer, a standard piece of work or a complex one, a rough estimate of the hours, and whether it needs knowledge the team does not have
• Check what drives the date — the business decision or event the answer is needed for, and any date set by a court, a regulator or a contract, so the target date is the right one
• Dispute or claim: check whether a legal hold is needed — whether the request concerns a claim, a letter before action or a threatened dispute; if information may need preserving, start the Legal Hold Checklist the same day
• Personal data: check for a breach or an access request — whether the request is really a personal data breach or a person asking for their own data; each runs on its own checklist with its own time limits, so start the Data Breach Response Checklist or the DSAR Response Checklist the same day
• Regulatory question: record the regulator’s dates and contacts — any date the regulator has set, who at the regulator is involved, and who in the business must see the answer before it goes back
• Choose the route — self-serve with a playbook for low-risk, standard requests, the legal team, or outside counsel for specialist or high-volume work; the route decides the Phase 5 tasks

The request now gets a confirmed owner, an agreed scope and date, and a line in the request log. If the target date changes, change it on the first task and the open due dates move with it.

• Confirm the legal owner — the lawyer named on the first task, or a better-placed one if triage showed the request needs it; if it changes, change the legal owner on the first task and their tasks move to them
• Agree the scope and target date with the requester — what legal will and will not do, the form the answer takes, and the target date; if the date moves, change it on the first task
• High risk: agree how the business is kept informed — who in the business and the leadership team hears about the request, how often, and who may see the advice
• Add the request to the request log — the reference, requester, type, tier, route, owner and target date, so the team can see every open request in one place

Only the tasks for the route chosen in Phase 3 appear, plus a hand-over task when the request is a contract or an NDA. Outside counsel is not instructed until the head of legal approves the budget.

• Contract or NDA: hand it to the contract review process — start the Contract Review & Approval Checklist, or the NDA Processing Workflow Checklist for an NDA, and note it here; that checklist does the review, negotiation and signing, and this one keeps the log entry and the requester’s confirmation. Use “Prepare the answer” to record where the contract stands, and sign off here once the contract checklist has approved it; if that takes longer than the target date, move the target date on the first task
• Legal team: plan the work — the questions to answer, the research, who else in the team or the business is needed, and the dates for a first draft and the final answer
• Self-serve: send the playbook and the approved template — the playbook or guidance note, the approved template or clauses, the limits within which the requester can go ahead alone, and who to ask when something falls outside them
• Outside counsel: choose the firm and ask for a scope and estimate — a firm from your panel, or one that knows the subject, asked for its scope, staffing, rates and a fee estimate or cap before any work starts
• Self-serve: requester completes it within the playbook — the document completed or the question answered with the playbook, and anything outside its limits sent back to the legal owner
• Outside counsel: approve the budget — the estimate, the budget and how spend will be reported, approved or not by the head of legal before the firm is instructed
• Budget not approved: change the scope, the firm or the route — a smaller scope, another firm’s estimate, or the legal team instead; to go back to the approval, un-complete it, change the decision and complete it again, or change the route on the triage task
• Outside counsel: send the instruction through the legal team — once the budget is approved: the engagement terms agreed and the instruction and papers sent by the legal owner, not straight from the business, so the firm takes instructions from one place and its advice comes back through legal

The legal owner does or directs the work against the agreed scope. A high risk tier adds a second lawyer’s review before the answer goes to sign-off.

• Gather the facts and documents the answer depends on — the further facts, documents and people the answer needs, asked for in one go and saved with the request
• Outside counsel: review the firm’s advice and its bill — the advice checked against the questions asked and the scope, and the fees so far against the approved budget, with any overrun approved before more work
• Prepare the answer — the advice, the drafted or marked-up document, or on the self-serve route the requester’s completed document checked against the playbook. On the outside counsel route, the answer is built on the firm’s advice, reviewed in the task before
• Check the answer against the request and the scope — it answers what was asked, in the agreed form and within the scope, with its assumptions and limits stated plainly so the business can act on it
• High risk: get a second lawyer’s review — another lawyer reads the answer before sign-off, looking for missed issues, wrong assumptions and anything the business could misread. If the head of legal is the legal owner, ask another lawyer or outside counsel to read it, and record who did
• Record the time spent — the legal team’s hours, and outside counsel’s fees where they apply, so the request log shows what the request cost

The legal owner signs off the answer before it goes to the requester. Nothing after this task can be completed until it is done, and Not approved adds a rework task.

• Legal owner signs off the answer — the answer approved, approved with conditions or not approved, with any conditions on how the business may use it
• Not approved: rework the answer and bring it back — what to change, done and checked; then un-complete the sign-off, change the decision and complete it again

The answer goes back to the requester, who confirms it meets the request. Needs more work adds a follow-up task.

• Send the answer to the requester — the answer in the agreed form, what it covers and what it does not, any conditions from the sign-off, and who else it may be shared with
• Talk the requester through the answer and the next steps — a short call or note on what the business does now, who does it and by when, and what to bring back to legal
• Requester confirms the request is answered — the requester says whether the answer meets the request, or what is still needed
• Needs more work: agree the follow-up — what is still needed, whether it is within the agreed scope (finish it in this run) or a new question (log it as a new request), and the new date

The request is closed in the log, and anything reusable goes into the playbook, so the next request like it is quicker.

• File the final answer and the papers — the final advice or document, the sign-off and the key emails saved with the request in the legal team’s records
• Add reusable points to the playbook or FAQ — a question the business asks often, a clause that worked, or a limit the self-serve playbook should change, passed to whoever keeps the playbook
• Ask the requester for feedback — a quick view on speed, clarity and whether the route was right, kept for the legal team’s own review of its requests
• Close the request in the request log — the status closed, with the date, outcome, route, time and cost, so the log shows open and closed requests and how long each took