How AI legal intake works, step by step
Legal intake automationis software that answers a law firm’s calls, asks the first-call intake questions and files the answers as a record the firm can act on. With Call Della it takes four steps: you forward your after-hours line, Della runs the intake, she scores urgency and alerts the attorney on call, and the dossier and morning brief arrive by 7am.
Della covers personal injury, criminal defense and immigration, each with its own questions. She never gives legal advice and never claims to be human.
How does legal intake automation work?
Legal intake automation with Call Della works by moving your after-hours calls from voicemail to an intake specialist who files every call. Setup needs no new phone system, because forwarding happens on the line your firm already has. The four steps below run on every call, every night.
01Forward your after-hours line
Your firm gets its own Della number. You set your phones to forward to it when the office closes, and we place a test call with you before you go live.
02Della runs the intake questions
Della answers in your firm’s name and asks the questions for your practice area: what happened, when and where, who is calling, how to reach them and any deadline.
03She scores urgency and alerts the attorney on call
Each call gets an urgency score. When a matter cannot wait, such as an arrest or a detention, the attorney on call gets an email alert.
04The dossier and morning brief arrive by 7am
Every call is filed as a dossier with summary, urgency score, recording and transcript, and the morning brief reaches your team by 7am in your time zone.
What does automated legal intake ask callers?
Automated legal intake with Della asks the questions a trained intake specialist would ask for the caller’s practice area, in a set order. Every call captures the caller’s name, phone number, relationship to the matter and best callback time. The rest depends on the practice area, as the table shows. Della records anything she cannot resolve as a follow-up question for the attorney rather than guessing.
| Practice area | What Della captures | Typical urgent signal |
|---|---|---|
| Personal injury | Incident type, date and place, injuries, treatment so far, insurance contacts, fault, prior counsel | Serious injury, a filing deadline close to expiring |
| Criminal defense | Charges, custody status and facility, court date, who is calling for the defendant | Someone in custody, a hearing within a day |
| Immigration | Matter type, status, detention details, filing or hearing deadlines, in English or Spanish | A detention, a removal hearing or filing deadline |
How is law firm intake automation different from voicemail or a message service?
Law firm intake automation differs from voicemail and message-taking services in what reaches the firm the next morning. Voicemail depends on the caller leaving details and waiting. A message service passes on a name and number. Della runs the intake itself, so the firm starts the day with facts, an urgency score and a recording. According to the Oklahoma Bar Journal (September 2025), Clio’s 2024 Legal Trends Report found that only 40% of firms answered a prospective client’s call.
| Voicemail | Message service | Call Della | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who answers | No one | An operator | Della, in your firm’s name |
| Intake questions | None | Usually name, number, reason | The full first-call intake for the practice area |
| Urgent calls | Found next morning | Depends on the service | Urgency score and email to the attorney on call |
| Next morning | A voicemail box | A message log | Dossiers and a ranked brief by 7am |
For costs and in-house staffing, see after-hours intake options compared.
What does your intake team do in the morning?
Your intake team opens the morning brief, which arrives by 7am, and works down the list from the most urgent call. Each dossier holds the caller’s details, the facts in the order an attorney would want them, the urgency score, the recording and the transcript. Nobody has to replay voicemails or guess which caller matters most.
Della covers the hours your team is not there. She does not replace your daytime intake staff, and the callback, the conflict check and the engagement stay with your firm. The law firm client intake playbook covers what happens after the first call.
What are missed calls costing your firm?
The cost of a missed call is the fee from the case that caller would have signed. Work it out for your own firm: missed calls a month × share that are new matters × your sign rate × your average fee. The sliders start on example figures. Move them to your own numbers.
For the method and what to count as a missed call, see the full missed-call cost calculator.
Questions about how Della handles a call
How do we forward our phone line to Della?
Every plan includes your own Della number. Your firm sets its phone system or carrier to forward calls to that number outside office hours, the same way you would forward to an answering service. Before you go live, we run a test call together so you can hear the greeting and see the dossier it produces.
How does Della decide a call is urgent?
Della scores each call for urgency from what the caller tells her: a person in custody, a detention, a court date or filing deadline that is close, or a serious injury. The score sits on the dossier, and the morning brief ranks calls by it so your team calls back the most time-sensitive matters first.
How are urgent calls escalated overnight?
When Della marks a call urgent, the attorney on call gets an email alert with the caller’s details and the summary, so a lawyer can decide whether to call back that night. Alerts go by email today. The full recording and transcript are in the Call Della dashboard with the dossier.
What is in the morning brief?
The morning brief is a summary of every call Della took overnight, ranked by urgency, delivered by 7am in your time zone. Each entry links to the full dossier with the caller’s contact details, the facts they gave, the urgency score, the recording and the transcript, so intake staff can start callbacks straight away.
Is every call recorded?
Yes. Della records and transcribes every call so your attorneys can check her summary against what the caller actually said. Each call carries the recording disclosure set for your state. Your firm owns the recordings and transcripts, and retention is set per firm. The security page explains how call data is handled.
What happens if a caller asks Della a legal question?
Della does not answer it. She tells the caller that an attorney will address the question on the callback, records the question in the dossier and moves on with the intake. Della never gives legal advice, never quotes fees and never tells a caller the firm will take the case.
- EncryptedCall data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
- RecordedEvery call is recorded and transcribed, with retention set per firm.
- Firm-ownedYour firm owns its recordings, transcripts and dossiers.
- No trainingYour callers’ data is not used to train AI models.
- State-awareThe recording disclosure is set for your state.
- No legal adviceDella takes intake. Legal questions go to your attorneys.
Hear Della before you trust her.
Book a 30-minute demo. We run a live intake call for your practice area while you listen, then walk you through the dossier she files.