Why Legal Intake Gets Ignored (and Why That’s a Mistake)

Picture this: It's 4 PM on a Friday, and your inbox just pinged with another "urgent" request.

The subject line reads "Need contract review ASAP" but when you open it, you find a three-line email with no context, no timeline, and a vague reference to "the usual terms." You know you'll spend the next hour playing detective just to understand what you're being asked to do.

Sound familiar?

If you're nodding, your legal intake process might be working against you.

Request inertia is taking over your afternoon (and possibly weekend). Restructuring intake might not be at the top of your to-do list, but it should be.

Outdated Labels Hurt Progress

From the lawyer's perspective, resistance to new intake processes makes sense. We see attorneys go through an instinctive cost/benefit analysis and conclude it isn't worth it:

• "Requests will keep coming regardless of how they arrive"

• "The workload will still outpace capacity"

• "This will add friction to business units that rely on us"

• "It's going to require too much professional capital to implement"

• "We may be more organized, but so what if the outcome is still 'too much work and too little time'?"

These objections reveal something deeper than practical concerns. They expose how outdated perceptions of the legal function keep teams stuck in reactive cycles.

Legal departments often carry the weight of old stereotypes:

• Too slow

• Too rigid

• Too “legalistic” (it’s right there in the name)

Modern in-house teams want to be seen as strategic partners, not roadblocks. They hesitate to implement anything that might look overly strict or bureaucratic. Instead, they perform flexibility by absorbing whatever chaos comes their way. 

The irony? Legal risks being "too rigid" when they introduce structure, but they are still expected to produce quality work regardless of the inputs. So they take on the hidden administrative burden, thinking this makes them better business partners.

This choice reinforces a reactive stance and drains capacity, leaving less room for strategic partnership. Ultimately, creating the very pain points that fuel those business critiques.

What the common objections really reveal

• "The business will keep sending requests anyway"

  This assumes legal has no influence over the quality of inputs they receive, positioning lawyers as purely reactive
  
  

• "The work will keep outpacing capacity"

  This accepts capacity constraints as immutable rather than examining what's consuming that capacity
  
  

• "Why risk frustrating colleagues by adding steps?"

  This prioritizes short-term relationship comfort over long-term partnership effectiveness (and assumes solutions haven't solved for this—hint: we have)

The underlying assumption in these objections is that better intake only adds burden. But this misses how quality inputs create a compounding effect on capacity and outcomes.

Quality -> Capacity -> Quality

When lawyers get well-structured quality inputs, they eliminate:

• Detective work to understand what's actually being asked

• Endless back-and-forth emails to extract basic facts

• Starting over when crucial details emerge mid-analysis

• Duplicating effort across similar requests

Capacity emerges directly from that improved work experience. Lawyers gain both time and mental bandwidth, creating space for deeper thinking.

With more capacity, lawyers can:

• Go deeper in their analysis instead of rushing to surface-level conclusions

• Engage earlier in strategic conversations rather than reacting to decisions already made

• Ensure their recommendations reflect both legal rigor and business context

• Proactively identify issues before they become problems

Better quality legal work reinforces the value of the structured process. Business stakeholders see faster, more strategic advice, and become more willing to invest the upfront effort in providing complete information.

See how this shift changed the perception of the legal function at M42.

What Legal Intake Can and Cannot Solve

Intake is not a cure-all. It will not make the flood of requests disappear. Under-resourced teams won't get new headcount overnight, but the benefits will help them advocate for better resourcing.

With better intake, teams benefit from:

Consistency: Similar matters get handled the same way, every time. This reduces both the cognitive load on lawyers and the uncertainty for business stakeholders about what to expect.

Visibility: Leadership sees the true picture of workload and demand. Instead of requests disappearing into individual email inboxes, patterns are clear and resource needs become quantifiable.

Predictability: Business stakeholders know what information legal needs, what turnaround times are realistic, and when to engage legal for maximum impact.

Better Outcomes with Better Intake

So does it matter how work arrives? Absolutely.

Legal teams will always be busy, but improving intake means they don’t have to choose between being responsive and being strategic.

Want to learn how Coheso's legal front door enables better intake without change management? Read our guide: What Is a Legal Front Door? A Guide to Modern Legal Intake.