Personal injury intake is the process a personal injury firm uses to turn an injury inquiry, usually a call or form from a crash, into a screened, conflict-checked, signed case.
It is the practice-area version of legal intake: the caller is injured, several firms hold the same number, and contingency economics pay nothing until a case signs.
The marketing that produces the inquiries lives in personal injury lawyer marketing; this page is the intake that follows.
What makes personal injury intake different
MyCase's 2024 Benchmark Report, built from 2023 data in its own customers' accounts, counted consultations logged at 7% of personal injury leads against 14% across all practice areas, and MyCase's explanation is that personal injury firms often sign without a consultation.
Those are records logged in one software system, not booking, show or close rates; the ratios and their limits have their own page at consultation to signed case rate.
The same report put converted personal injury leads at an average of 3 days from intake to conversion, the shortest of the practice areas listed, against 16 for immigration and employment (converted leads only, one software base).
The personal injury intake process, step by step
A personal injury intake process has five stages, and a caller can drop out at each one.
Answer every inquiry live
A phone someone answers, a form that routes, a chat that reaches a human: our practical take, not a measured result, is that an injury inquiry should not end at voicemail.
Screen for fit and conflicts
Confirm the firm handles the claim type and location, check the parties named against the conflict list, and log the outcome.
Make the consult-or-sign decision
Personal injury commonly moves straight from a qualified call to a fee discussion; whether your firm holds consultations is your call.
Put the fee agreement in writing
ABA Model Rule 1.5(c) says a contingent fee agreement must be in a writing signed by the client, stating the percentage(s) for settlement, trial or appeal, which expenses are deducted, and whether expenses come out before or after the fee is calculated.
Sign, log and hand off
The retainer gets signed, the matter gets logged with its marketing source, and the file reaches the legal team.
Fee rules are state rules: Florida's Rule 4-1.5(f)(4)(B), for example, presumes a contingency fee clearly excessive without court approval above 33 1/3% of the first $1 million before an answer is filed, or 40% of that first $1 million after an answer through judgment (as of October 1, 2026); other states differ, some with no schedule.
Personal injury intake questions to ask
Script wording has its own page at the legal intake script; the questions fall into five groups, shown here for a car accident intake, the archetypal personal injury call.
- The incident: what happened, the crash type, the date, the location.
- Injuries and treatment: what hurts, treatment so far, what comes next.
- Coverage and fault basics: insurance in play, a police report, photos, witnesses.
- Representation and conflicts: whether another firm is involved, and the parties and insurers named.
- Reach and urgency: best number and email, work status, any deadline the caller mentions.
Ask less at the start, not more: our practical take, not a rule, is that intake collects only what fit and conflicts need first, for a reason the next section gives.
Speed: sign the case before the competitor calls back
People shop: in Clio's 2019 survey, 57% of consumers who had ever shopped for a lawyer contacted more than one firm, 44% believed they needed to talk to more than one lawyer, and 42% said that if they liked the first lawyer they spoke with, they would not need to speak with others.
That is a statement about liking the first conversation, not that 42% hire the first lawyer they call.
The comparison is old and not law-firm-specific: in a study of 1.25 million leads published by Harvard Business Review in 2011, firms trying to contact a lead within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify it as those trying an hour later, and more than 60 times as likely as those waiting 24 hours or longer; qualify meant a meaningful conversation with a decision maker, not a signature.
The website decides how many calls arrive at all: in click-to-call tests Gabe ran at Sourcely, the startup he worked at just before LaserAway, conversion rate rose by up to 50% in some cases, on website-initiated calls only, a website result from an earlier role, not an intake or signed-case one.
The response-time playbook lives at law firm speed to lead; the intake-side point is simpler: an injury inquiry should reach a person, not a voicemail, and the screen should finish inside the first call.
The rules that reach into personal injury intake
Under ABA Model Rule 1.18, a person who consults a lawyer about possibly forming a client-lawyer relationship is a prospective client, and even if no relationship follows, the lawyer may not use or reveal information from that consultation except as Rule 1.9 would allow for a former client.
Rule 1.18(c) adds that a lawyer who receives information that could be significantly harmful to the prospective client may not represent an adverse party in the same or a substantially related matter, with the conflict imputed to the firm, while 1.18(d) allows exceptions for informed consent confirmed in writing and for screening when intake collected only what was reasonably necessary.
That screening exception is why the questions above stay short at the start; ABA Model Rules bind no one until a state adopts them, and your state's adopted rule controls.
On staffing, ABA Formal Opinion 506 (June 7, 2023) says a lawyer may train and supervise a nonlawyer to run prospective-client intake, including initial facts, an initial conflict check and getting the fee agreement signed, as long as the prospective client can always speak with a lawyer.
Whether the nonlawyer may answer a specific question depends on the question, because Rule 5.5 bars assisting unauthorized practice; the opinion is guidance about nonlawyer staff, so applying it to an outside service or an AI tool is an inference.
Recording is the third piece: federal wiretap law (18 U.S.C. §2511(2)(d)) allows a private party to record a call they are part of, or with one party's consent, unless it is done to commit a crime or tort; some states require every party's consent, and Florida, for example, allows interception only when all parties to the communication have given prior consent (Fla. Stat. §934.03).
Announcing a recording at the start of a call is a common practice rather than a legal conclusion, and no verified count of all-party-consent states appears here.
This page describes what the rules say, not advice for your situation: confirm how they apply to your firm with your state bar's ethics counsel or an ethics lawyer.
A personal injury intake checklist, then your own numbers
None of the checklist requires software.
- Every channel reaches a person: after-hours coverage, weekend coverage, a form that routes.
- One-call screening: fit, location and conflicts finished in the first conversation.
- Callbacks logged with times: time to first response becomes a number.
- The fee agreement reviewed by your ethics counsel against your state's rule.
- A monthly mystery shop across phone, form and chat.
- The funnel logged: lead source, consultations, signed cases, revenue by source.
No published benchmark exists for a personal injury firm's consultation-to-signed-case rate, so the numbers worth managing are yours.
A simple diagnostic is the one Clio's researchers ran on the industry: mystery-shop your own firm by phone, form and chat, logging answer rate, time to reply and whether cost and next steps were given; that test is our recommendation built on Clio's criteria, not a Clio recommendation.
Where we fit: More Booked Cases tests the website and landing pages that produce the inquiries and measures consultation and signed-case rates with read access to intake or CRM numbers; Gabe does not staff or train intake or run the consultation.
Frequently asked questions
What is personal injury intake?
It is the process a personal injury firm uses to turn an injury inquiry into a signed case: answering the inquiry, screening for fit and conflicts, agreeing the fee and getting the contingency agreement signed. It moves fast: in MyCase's 2024 Benchmark Report (2023 data, its own customers), converted personal injury leads averaged 3 days from intake to conversion.
What questions should personal injury intake ask?
Enough to judge fit and conflicts: what happened, where and when, the injuries and treatment so far, insurance basics, whether another firm is involved, and how to reach the caller. Collect only what fit and conflicts need first; the deeper details can wait.
Do personal injury firms hold a consultation before signing?
Often not. In MyCase's 2024 Benchmark Report (2023 data from its own customers), consultations logged equaled 7% of personal injury leads against 14% overall, and MyCase attributes that to personal injury firms often signing without a consultation; it is a software-logged ratio, not a booking rate.
Does a law firm need consent to record an intake call?
Federal wiretap law (18 U.S.C. §2511(2)(d)) lets a party to a call record it with one party's consent, but some states require every party's consent; Florida, for example, allows interception only when all parties have given prior consent (Fla. Stat. §934.03). Announcing that a call is recorded is a common practice rather than a legal conclusion, so confirm your state's rule.
Can nonlawyer staff run personal injury intake?
ABA Formal Opinion 506 (June 7, 2023) describes a lawyer training and supervising a nonlawyer to do prospective-client intake, including initial facts, an initial conflict check and getting the fee agreement signed, as long as the prospective client can always speak with a lawyer. It is guidance rather than binding law, and whether a nonlawyer may answer a specific question depends on the question.
What does a contingent fee agreement have to include?
ABA Model Rule 1.5(c) says a contingent fee agreement must be in a writing signed by the client, stating the percentage(s) for settlement, trial or appeal, which expenses are deducted, and whether expenses come out before or after the fee is calculated. Your state's adopted version controls.