Professional Services · Client intake automation
New client intake takes three hours before your first billable minute
Banao builds client-intake automation that takes a prospect from enquiry form to opened matter in under ten minutes — conflicts check, document collection, engagement letter, and DMS entry without a paralegal touching the keyboard.
The system runs inside your existing practice-management and document stack, not alongside it. Every handoff that currently sits in an inbox becomes a tracked, timed workflow.
A mid-size advisory practice— intake automated from web form to matter opening, conflicts check and engagement letter included.
The first call is free · 45 minutes · no obligation
What we build
What a Banao intake deployment includes
Client intake has at least six manual steps most firms have never mapped end to end. We map them, then automate the ones that don't need a fee earner's judgement.
Structured intake forms with conditional logic
A web form that asks only what each practice area actually needs, routes to the right team on submission, and blocks incomplete submissions before they land in your shared inbox.
Automated conflicts check
Prospect and related-party names are checked against your existing client list and matter index the moment a form arrives — results returned in minutes, not the following morning.
Document collection and verification
The system requests, chases, and confirms the identity documents, signed terms, and matter-specific materials the engagement requires, and only escalates to staff when something is genuinely missing or stalled.
Engagement letter generation
Draft letters are generated from your own approved templates, pre-filled with matter details captured at intake, and routed for partner review rather than typed from scratch each time.
Practice-management and DMS sync
Once approved, the matter opens automatically in your practice-management system and the intake file lands in your DMS, tagged and structured so the fee earner finds everything in order on day one.
Intake SLA dashboard
A single view of every intake in progress — time since submission, blocking step, responsible owner — so your operations lead can see where the queue is building before it becomes a client complaint.
Receipts
Where this is already running
Metrics shown dotted (··) are being finalised in our case-study metrics pack — published only once verified.
Web-to-matter intake automated across four practice areas
Intake was handled by email, PDF forms, and a shared inbox that no single person owned. Banao mapped the end-to-end workflow across four practice areas, replaced the loose email chain with a structured form-to-matter pipeline, and wired the conflicts check and engagement letter generation into the same flow.
Dogfooding
We automate our own intake before we automate yours
Banao qualifies and progresses its own client pipeline through the same type of structured intake workflow it builds for professional-services firms. Vikaas, Banao's own demand-generation system, handles initial qualification so the first human contact happens with context already gathered — not at the top of a cold email thread.
A process that has to work for our own business development is already tested before it reaches your firm.
Runs Banao's own lead qualification and client pipeline end to end.
Screens Banao's own engineering hires — same structured intake logic applied to a different domain.
The honest version
When intake automation is the wrong starting point
We will tell you when it doesn't make sense to start here:
- Very low volume: below thirty to forty new matters a month, the admin overhead is real but the automation payback is slow. A well-structured template and a clear owner is the cheaper fix.
- Intake process undefined: if partners each run intake differently and there's no agreed definition of 'done', automation encodes the wrong workflow. We surface this in the Discovery Sprint and will tell you to fix the process first.
- DMS or practice-management in poor shape: if your matter-filing structure is inconsistent, automated sync creates disorder faster than manual entry would. We flag this before we build.
How we start
How we start — map the workflow before we automate it
We don't quote an intake system off a feature list. We audit your actual intake steps first.
- 01
AI Discovery Sprint
2 weeks · fixed price
We shadow your intake team, map every handoff from enquiry to opened matter, score each step for automation fit, and hand back a workflow diagram and ROI estimate — yours to keep regardless. If you proceed, the Sprint fee is credited against the build.
- 02
Build
Intake forms, conflicts-check integration, document collection, engagement letter generation, and practice-management sync — built to your firm's templates, terminology, and approval rules.
- 03
Production and handoff
Live deployment with staff change management, an SLA dashboard for your operations lead, and a three-month support window so exceptions that surface in real use get resolved, not logged.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How long does a typical intake deployment take?
The Discovery Sprint is two weeks. Build is typically six to ten weeks depending on the number of practice areas, the complexity of your conflicts-check logic, and the state of your practice-management system. The SLA dashboard and handoff training are included in the build phase.
Which practice-management and DMS systems do you integrate with?
We integrate with the major practice-management and document systems used in mid-market professional-services firms. The Discovery Sprint confirms compatibility with your specific stack before any build commitment is made.
How does the conflicts check work if our client database has inconsistent data?
Fuzzy matching handles name variants and company aliases better than exact string search, but it is only as reliable as the underlying data. Where the database is in poor shape, we surface that in the Sprint and recommend a data-clean step first — it is cheaper than building on a bad foundation.
What happens when intake submissions are incomplete or need follow-up?
The system sends structured follow-up requests to the prospect automatically and tracks outstanding items. Staff are only pulled in when a submission has stalled past a configurable threshold or when a fee earner needs to make a judgement call — not for routine chasing.
Can it handle different requirements across multiple practice areas?
Yes. The form and workflow layer is configured per practice area — different questions, different document requirements, different conflicts-check parameters, different approval chains. A single intake type doesn't fit a firm that handles both disputes and corporate work, so the system is built to branch.
Get started
Show us your intake queue
Bring your current intake process — even if it's mostly email — and we'll map it in 45 minutes and tell you where the automation hours are.
Book a Discovery Sprint