A law firm pre-qualification workflow runs five gates in a fixed order: jurisdiction and practice-area fit, incident date against the statute of limitations, adverse party and conflict check, economic viability, and the warning with a decline path. Cheap disqualifiers come before confidential case detail, because ABA Model Rule 1.18 treats an intake form that invites case information as a consultation.
Before You Start: What a Bad Lead Costs Your Firm
You pay for a lead before anyone reads it, and a personal injury lead runs $442 through Google Search Ads. First Page Sage drew that figure from 49 personal injury firms in 36 states. Then someone has to handle it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded a $54,140 median annual wage for legal secretaries and administrative assistants as of May 2024, which is about $26 an hour.
Pre-qualification moves that decision upstream into the form. Lawbrokr is one place the logic can live, though every gate below works in a form builder or on a legal pad.
Five gates follow, in mandatory order:
- Jurisdiction and practice-area fit
- Incident date against the statute of limitations
- Adverse party identification and conflict check
- Economic viability
- The warning and the decline path
Gates 1 and 2: Jurisdiction and Incident Date
Jurisdiction runs first and incident date second. Both disqualify absolutely. Neither requires case detail.
Gate one asks where the matter arose and what type it is. Collect a full accident narrative from an out-of-state visitor and you have taken on Rule 1.18(b) confidentiality duties for a case you can never accept. One dropdown clears the gate.
Gate two asks for the date of the incident, never for elapsed time. California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 reads: “Within two years: An action for assault, battery, or injury to, or for the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another.” Key the date field to jurisdiction and claim type, and build a hard stop instead of a soft flag.
Skip the static multi-state limitations table. Periods vary by claim type and bend under tolling and discovery rules, and a stale table on your own site is a liability. Clio puts law firm utilization at 38 percent, roughly three billable hours out of eight, so there is no spare capacity for manual screening either.
Gates 3 and 4: Adverse Party, Conflict Check, and Viability
Adverse-party identity is the input a conflict check needs. Case narrative is not. Name the other side third and take the story last.
Three rules govern this gate:
- Model Rule 1.7(a) provides that “a lawyer shall not represent a client if the representation involves a concurrent conflict of interest,” which exists where “the representation of one client will be directly adverse to another client.”
- Model Rule 1.9(a) bars a lawyer who formerly represented a client from acting “in the same or a substantially related matter in which that person’s interests are materially adverse to the interests of the former client.”
- Model Rule 4.2 states that a lawyer “shall not communicate about the subject of the representation with a person the lawyer knows to be represented by another lawyer in the matter.”
A representation-status question therefore has to halt collection outright and route to a human.
The American Bar Association puts the sequencing point plainly in Comment [4]: “In order to avoid acquiring disqualifying information from a prospective client, a lawyer considering whether or not to undertake a new matter should limit the initial consultation to only such information as reasonably appears necessary for that purpose.”
Gate four asks whether a defendant has a source of recovery and whether the fee model fits, a screen covering retainer capacity. Numeric bands belong in a separate qualification scorecard.
Gate 5: The Warning and the Decline Path
An intake workflow without cautionary language turns visitors into prospective clients. Comment [2] of Rule 1.18 sets the trigger: “a consultation is likely to have occurred if a lawyer, either in person or through the lawyer’s advertising in any medium, specifically requests or invites the submission of information about a potential representation without clear and reasonably understandable warnings and cautionary statements that limit the lawyer’s obligations, and a person provides information in response.”
Comment [5] supplies the fix: “A lawyer may condition a consultation with a prospective client on the person’s informed consent that no information disclosed during the consultation will prohibit the lawyer from representing a different client in the matter.”
Put that warning above the first free-text field, where a visitor sees it before typing anything about the matter. Lawbrokr workflows can carry it there. Give declined visitors an outcome on the same screen, with plain reasoning and somewhere to go next. Confidentiality under Rule 1.18(b) survives the decline. Check the governing state version of each rule, since adoptions vary.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many questions should a law firm pre-qualification workflow have?
Pre-qualification workflows are governed by question order more than question count. Ask enough to clear jurisdiction, incident date, adverse party and viability, with no free-text case narrative until a warning has appeared. A workflow that disqualifies someone at gate one should stop there.
Does an online intake form create an attorney-client relationship?
An online intake form does not by itself create an attorney-client relationship. ABA Model Rule 1.18 Comment [2] indicates that a consultation is likely to have occurred when a lawyer invites the submission of information about a potential representation without clear and reasonably understandable warnings, which makes the submitter a prospective client.
What should a firm do with leads it disqualifies?
Rule 1.18 Comment [4] says the lawyer should so inform the prospective client or decline the representation. Give an outcome on the same screen, with plain reasoning and a route onward such as a bar referral service. Confidentiality survives the decline.
What is the statute of limitations question supposed to ask?
Ask for the date of the incident as a calendar date. Answers like “about a year ago” cannot be checked against a limitations period. Key the answer to jurisdiction and claim type, apply a hard stop, and skip any published multi-state table.
How fast should you contact a lead that passes?
Hennessey Digital tested 1,333 US law firms in the first quarter of 2025 and measured a 13-minute median response time, with 26 percent never responding at all. Speed buys little on an unqualified lead, which is the argument for gating first.
Build Your Pre-Qualification Workflow
Map the five gates on paper this week, check each rule against the state version that governs your practice, and build the logic into software last. Lawbrokr runs pre-qualification workflows with conditional routing, so a sequence defined this way deploys without rebuilding your intake from scratch.
Book a free demo to see the gates running live, or contact us online with a question about your own screening criteria.
