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Legal Client Intake Software for Attorneys

Automate your firm’s client intake process using Gavel. Build customized logic-based questionnaires for your clients and feed them into document templates.

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Client Intake With v. Without Gavel

Creating the Intake

Display intake questions customized to each client

01

Without Gavel

Attorney creates questions for clients, but:

  • Cannot notify client that a question was left unanswered
  • No data validation to ensure responses are limited to certain characters (e.g. DOB needs to be a date field, SSN needs 9 characters)
  • Overwhelming for clients who receive general client intake form with dozens of inapplicable questions
  • Requires back and forth between attorney and client to edit data, causing confusion as to most recently updated data

‍

With Gavel

Attorney creates a workflow questionnaire that can:

  • Reduce input error by limiting the accepted response type and giving live feedback
  • Use explainer icons to provide context without making the document needlessly long
  • Use conditional logic so clients only see relevant questions
  • Be edited at anytime directly from Gavel dashboard by attorney
  • Allow client to save and edit info at their own pace

Attorney’s Role in Completing Intake

Less attorney time wasted hand-holding

02

Without Gavel

  • In-person intake: Walks client through intake, providing explanations in real-time, listening to client anecdotes and focusing on being present with client while also taking notes; or
  • Remote intake: Fields questions from client regarding intake, numerous emails, asks questions about about client’s progress

‍

With Gavel

  • Client gets custom login and link to complete intake on their own time
  • Gavel dashboard gives attorney and client insight into progress
  • Attorney can be as hands-off or hands-on as desired (as intake is digestible and self-explanatory)

Client’s Intake Experience

Flexible, stress-free experience for the client

03

Without Gavel

  • In-person intake: Live conversation with attorney, where client must verbally answer to best of ability on the spot, may forget key details which alter the course of questioning; or
  • Remote intake: Fills in the PDF/Word doc intake form themselves and jots down questions for attorney if unfamiliar with legal term or needs clarity; client may also be answering redundant questions if long-time client; client may lose progress completed on intake if computer hardware failure

With Gavel

  • Client completes the intake on computer or mobile device
  • Client has the option to pause and return to intake on their own time, knowing intake progress is saved in their Gavel portal
  • Client can go back to previous questions, edit answers or update information previously given to attorney
  • Client must not answer redundant questions. Gavel also integrates and can populate data from other software (like Clio or practice management system)

The Look of the Client Intake Form

Beautiful UI and display of information for the client

04

Without Gavel

  • In-person intake: Printed document with data that cannot be reused without retyping the data; or
  • Remote intake: A standard, non-dynamic PDF or Word doc which requires attorney or paralegal to retype information

With Gavel

Excellent client experience with dynamic, client-friendly design that can be customized with:

  • Personalized questions (e.g., including the client’s name throughout the questionnaire)
  • Attorney’s name, logo, and color scheme
  • Seamless integration to attorney’s website and a client portal that feels like a custom-build tech product for your law firm
  • Videos and images with information for the client

Managing Client Intake Data

Automate what's next for intake data

05

Without Gavel

  • Attorney and team must review intake from client and manually input responses into separate data management program
  • Each new matter for client requires duplicate data entry
  • Client cannot update or view the latest profile data

With Gavel

  • Attorney and client can view responses in Gavel’s Data Manager to use, update, and reuse data for later matters or documents
  • Easily integrate and export data from Gavel intake to auto-populate into firm’s practice management system with Gavel’s multiple integrations

Document Generation with Client Data

Generate new documents, leveraging all intake data

06

Without Gavel

Attorney must pull up intake document and manually input information for each new work product

With Gavel

  • Automatically generate sets of documents by pulling data from the intake form, ensuring formatting is always consistent
  • Documents are always accurate and error-free because attorney’s rules are used
  • Huge time savings when drafting documents
  • Newly generated documents from Gavel can be a perfectly formatted Microsoft Word document, docx or PDF

Why Gavel?

Most powerful document automation software 

Drag and drop user interface makes it easy for anyone to set up 

Client-facing features, so your clients can answer and complete client intake questionnaires

Free training and customer support via phone, live screenshare, or email

Many integrations, including Clio, Zapier, Microsoft Word, and a public API

Access to template-building automators (“Gavel Experts”) who can create your workflows

Highest level of data security and compliance

Embed videos and images into your workflows to educate your clients

How Do I Get Started?

1

Enter your email below to start a free trial

2

Create a new workflow for your client intake form

3

Build out your questions to capture client data

4

Customize using logic and setting up rules

5

Select and tag your output documents

6

Launch your client intake

Questions? Reach out to [email protected]

FAQs

My client intake process works fine. Why automate it now?

  • Collect and store client data seamlessly
  • Automatically populate multiple documents with your client data with a click
  • Increase accuracy and reduce errors through repeatable process
  • Save time on tasks you can’t bill for
  • Improve client experience

I want to automate my client intake, but I don’t have time. Can I hire someone to build it for me?

Yes! While we pride ourselves on easy software that anyone can use you have access to Gavel document automators (“Gavel Experts”) who can help build your vision for you. Gavel Experts have been vetted for their expertise, critical thinking, quality and efficiency and start as low as $35/hour. They are often law students, paralegals and lawyers themselves.

Does Gavel offer help throughout the building process?

Yes. Gavel’s award winning customer team provides unlimited and speedy support for all customers, regardless of the subscription plan. Contact Gavel via phone, live screenshare, email or even via the Slack community for immediate support. Gavel also provides live training and a 24/7 knowledge center.

We also have a robust YouTube presence, learning center, lesson topics center, guides for various aspects of your practice and examples of how other practices and industries are using Gavel.

Do I need any technical background to build on Gavel?

Nope! Gavel is easy to use no matter how much technical knowledge you have.

How much does it cost?

Subscriptions start at $83/mo with a free trial. See what plan is right for you here. 

Reach out to us if you’re a non-profit - we have sliding scales to make sure everyone has access to the platform.

How secure is Gavel?

Security is our primary concern given that we serve primarily legal customers. All customers are set up on segregated encrypted databases. All data centers are managed in accordance with leading data security standards, including SOC 1 - 3, PCI DSS Level 1, and ISO 9001 / ISO 27001. Gavel regularly undergoes third party security and penetration testing and is compliant with local privacy laws and regulations. 

See gavel.io/security for more details.

What Else Can I Automate?

General

  • Engagement Letters
  • Retainer agreements
  • Declarations
  • Points and Authority Memorandums
  • Affidavits
  • Judicial Council Forms
  • Notary Forms
  • Meet and Confer Letters
  • Discovery propounding documents
  • Discovery responding documents

Corporate

  • Share Purchase Agreements
  • Operating Agreements
  • Articles of Incorporations
  • Bylaws
  • Series A Fundraising Documents
  • Series Seed Fundraising Documents
  • NVCA documents
  • Subscription documents
  • Non-disclosure agreements
  • Equity Incentive Plans

Real Estate

  • Deeds
  • Title Documents
  • Purchase Agreements
  • Lease Agreements
  • Assignments
  • PCORs
  • Mortgage and other financing documents

Family Law

  • Child Custody Agreements
  • Prenuptial/postnuptial agreements
  • Marital Agreements
  • Adoption Papers

Immigration

  • Visa Applications
  • Green Card Applications
  • Employment Authorization Applications
  • Asylum Applications
  • Citizenship Applications
  • Petition for Family Members

Mortgage and Loan Law

  • Construction loans
  • Business purpose loans
  • Consumer bridge loans
  • Forbearance agreements
  • Modification or extension agreements
  • Pre-negotiation agreements
  • Residential docs corrections
  • Loan default letters
  • Broker investor packages
  • Buyer closing docs
  • Seller closing docs
  • Lease agreements

Legal Aid

  • Restraining orders
  • Fee waivers
  • Name changes

Estate Planning

  • Wills
  • Power of Attorneys
  • Marital Agreements
  • Health Care Directives
  • Trusts for couple
  • Trusts for single
  • Property Assignments
  • Beneficiary Designations

Franchise Law

  • Franchise agreements
  • Franchise disclosure documents
  • Joint Venture Agreements
  • Purchase Agreements

Mortgage and Loan Law

  • Offer Letters
  • Employee handbooks
  • Independent contractor agreements
  • Consulting agreements
  • Advisor agreements
  • Separation agreements
  • Stock option agreements
  • Covid-19 Related Policies
  • ICHRA
  • ERISA
  • FMLA policy creators
  • NCR compliance
  • Confidentiality Agreements

Testimonials

Our client intake which previously took 1hr+ now takes approximately 15-20 minutes [with Gavel]. Documents that we previously had to spend time changing pronouns and tenses can now be updated with the click of a button. We are new users, so we are still discovering benefits, but so far it has saved us quite a bit of time.

Joy E, Paralegal

Before we started using [Gavel], we were manually drafting documents with MS Word, which wasted thousands of hours of employee time. If you need a robust document automation or document assembly tool, [Gavel] may be what you've been looking for.

Verified Reviewer (read more here)

I (and especially our paralegals) are very happy we found [Gavel]. We've saved a ton of time, and it's worth the monthly fee times 1000. Because it creates a web-based app, we've also considered rolling this out as an intake or document generation process for our clients - the interface is clean and mobile-friendly for that purpose, too.

Verified Reviewer (read more here)

About 95% of the data I collect from Clients in the Client intake process is done through these [Gavel] workflows.

Sisu Legal Immigration firm (read more here)

Automating the engagement letter and the Client intake questionnaire process takes less than a day to set up [with Gavel] (and can be done by support staff who knows your process), and it has huge impacts - this automation takes away all the stress and time-crunch of onboarding a new Client (especially if you get a few new Clients in one day).

20 IP Lawyers Insight (read more here)

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