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When you start a new case, the most important task is to understand your client's case. When you start a new case, the most important task is to understand your client's case. The traditional approach is to ferret out the initial information over several interview meetings which naturally raise follow up questions. However, this is time consuming, expensive for your client, and to gather preliminary information, not an efficient use of time.
In this article, we'd like to show you how MasterFile's intake module and professional practice area specific intake forms save you valuable time, ensure you capture critical case information and by reducing tedious and time consuming data entry, help you load your case into MasterFile quickly. The intake forms can also be used internally by your own staff or yourself for rapid initial loading of facts and players.
Here's what we'll cover:
What are client intake forms and why they are useful
A recent trend to capturing preliminary case information has been to ask clients to complete a questionnaire or intake form to collect preliminary information. These forms are usually practice area specific, such as for personal injury, family law, criminal law, etc. The advantage of this method is that it guides the client through the process, prompting them to provide specific information you require -- much like an interview. For example, some of the information required when dealing with a personal injury intake form for an auto-accident might have the following questions.
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In this manner, it also ensures critical information is not forgotten. The intake form is also more efficient for you and less expensive for the client as preliminary information can be obtained without taking valuable interview time. Once an intake form has been completed and reviewed, follow up interviews will then naturally be more productive as you're able to focus in on specific issues with probing questions.
However, for documents, people and organizations, the intake form is cumbersome and the logical approach would be for your client to simply list this information in tables, since these items just consist of basic information such as name, organization name, and document date. Normally, you request this information from your client. They typically send it back in an e-mail which you will then have to enter in MasterFile.
Similarly, for capturing the case chronology the fact/event table will help your client think about their case in those terms -- as a logical chronology. This in turn helps you as the information is more organized when you receive it. Also, for complex litigation, a traditional intake questionnaire would be insufficient to capture the facts as each case will be unique in its character and the fact/event table lends itself well to such cases.
Therefore, MasterFile has introduced, for the first time, the professional, practice area specific intake forms (an example of which is partially shown above) combined with structured tables from which MasterFile directly imports document, chronology and player information. The practice area section of the intake form ensures critical information is captured and not forgotten and you or your legal staff can frame relevant information from the form as legal facts within MasterFile.The structured tables containing lists of documents, players and chronology events are imported directly into MasterFile, eliminating tedious, time consuming data entry and helping you quickly populate your MasterFile database. The intake form itself is also loaded and stored in MasterFile so it's always available for reference.
MasterFile's professional client intake forms
Currently MasterFile provides practice area intake forms for:
- Personal injury, auto accident.
- Personal injury, defective product.
- Personal injury, medical malpractice or negligence.
- Criminal case intake.
- Divorce case intake.
Click on a title above to down load and view the respective intake form.
(Legal professionals not using MasterFile are welcome to use the above forms in their practice as long as the page header is maintained intact. Companies providing products and services to legal professionals may not use or redistribute these forms).
MasterFile intake forms are Word template documents which you can customize to include any additional practice area specific information you may require. You can even use them as a starting point to create intake forms for practice areas we have not covered. Since most clients will have Word and be familiar with it, this format was chosen as opposed to any other, such as PDF. In addition, having the full editing and formatting facilities of Word means that your client can emphasize information, spell check, and not be limited in information entry.Using Word, you can customize or create new MasterFile intake form templates quickly and easily.
To create a blank intake form for your client, or to load a completed one returned to you, simply open MasterFile's Client Intake window, shown below:
Example of a completed intake form and results after importing it into MasterFile
Shown below in Microsoft Word, is an intake chronology/fact table completed by a client:
Here is the chronology as it appears after importing into MasterFile (only facts with dates -- events -- are listed here):
MasterFile's colour coded "by Impact Assessment" view, shown below, lists all the facts and lets us immediately see where we need to focus attention.
After importing we're now able to review and revise the facts, updating the fact type and revising the impact assessment and/or fact descriptions as needed. Three of the facts imported had questions or issues to investigate mentioned so these facts are listed separately in MasterFile's "Facts with ?" view, shown below so they're not forgotten and you can see at a glance which issues need further investigation.
Players listed in the intake form have also been imported, as shown below, saving data entry and interview time.
In summary, MasterFile's client intake module and practice area specific intake forms make you look professional. They save you valuable time, ensure you capture critical case information and help load your case into MasterFile quickly by eliminating tedious and time consuming data entry.
Further information
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