Intake

Contacts & Clients → Intake is where prospective clients wait until you take them on. A lead arrives from your website's intake form, from a website enquiry, or because you added it by hand. You need the Manage intake permission, and everyone who has it sees every lead.

The pipeline#

Each lead has a status: New, Contacted, Consultation scheduled, then Converted or Declined. Open a lead and use Next step to move it along. Declining asks for a reason, for your records; a declined lead can be reopened as new. The list shows open leads; pick a status to see the others. Click View on a row, or the lead's name, to open it.

The board#

Switch List to Board to see a column per status, with every open lead and the leads converted or declined in the last 30 days. Mattersimple remembers your choice in this browser. Drag a lead to another column to move it:

• Columns a lead can't move to fade while you drag.
• Dropping on Declined asks for the reason.
• Dropping on Converted opens the lead with Convert ready, since converting is how a lead becomes a client.

Search works on the board too. Click a card to open the lead.

Assign a lead to someone under Details, and keep notes there as you go.

Adding leads#

• By hand: click New lead for someone who called, emailed or was referred.
• From an enquiry: on Enquiries, open a message and click Convert to lead. The message goes into the lead's notes.
• From your website: turn on the intake form (below). Each submission is a new lead, its answers shown on the lead, and you're notified in Mattersimple.

Converting a lead#

Click Convert to client:

1. Choose the contact. If a contact already has the lead's email, Mattersimple offers to link to them instead of creating a duplicate. Otherwise add the lead as a new contact, or link to another contact.
2. Tick Also open a matter to open their first matter, with a title, practice area and responsible lawyer. This needs the Create matters permission, and runs the matter's automatic conflict check as usual.
3. Click Convert.

You land on the new matter or contact. The lead is marked Converted, links to them, and keeps only its notes editable.

The intake form#

On Intake, click Intake form (← Intake at the top takes you back):

• Show the intake form puts it on your website at /intake. Link to it from your menus in Website → Navigation (it's listed as Intake form). The form needs the website on your plan.
• Introduction: text above the form.
• Name and email are always asked. Choose whether to ask for a phone number and which practice area it's about (from your public practice areas).
• Add a question for anything else, as a short answer, long answer or choice, and mark the ones that are required. Up to 8.
• Click Save intake form in the bar at the bottom. It says when you have unsaved changes.

Your theme draws the form, and its section settings (button label, thank-you message, note under the button) are in the theme editor's Intake form template. Submitting the form never creates a lawyer-client relationship by itself; say so in the note under the button.