Legal Intake Automation for Law Firm

PROJECT: LEGAL INTAKE AUTOMATION

How we eliminated manual data entry for a high-volume law firm using Zapier, OpenAI, and Clio.

Legal intake relies on speed and accuracy. However, this firm was drowning in unstructured emails. Staff had to manually read every inquiry, download attachments, check for existing clients, and type data into Clio.

This manual friction caused three critical failures:

We built a logic-based listener on the Outlook inbox. Instead of just forwarding emails, we pipe the body text into OpenAI via Zapier.

The AI doesn't just summarize; it extracts specific entities (Client Name, Urgency, Case Type) into strict JSON format, ensuring clean data for the CRM.

A clean file system is a lawyer's best friend. The automation creates a standardized folder structure for every new intake instantly.

Folder names are auto-generated: [Client Email] - [Date]. All attachments are stripped from the email and archived here automatically.

The final step is the most critical: updating the Legal CRM. The system performs a "Conditional Check" before creating records.

It searches for the email address first. If the client exists, it appends the new matter. If not, it creates a new Contact. This guarantees 100% database hygiene.