Client Intake Summary

Intake information arrives as a scattered form, a rushed phone call, and a thread of forwarded emails, and the person who has to act on it wastes time reassembling the picture. This skill turns that raw material into a clean intake brief: what the client needs, what matters, what is missing, and whether they fit. A good intake summary means the first real conversation with the client starts from understanding, not from re-asking questions they already answered.

1. The raw intake material (form responses, call notes, emails, transcripts).
2. The firm's services and typical fit criteria.
3. Any red flags or disqualifiers the firm screens for.
4. Who will use this brief and what decision it feeds.

Extract the facts first: who the client is, what they are asking for, their situation, timeline, and any budget or urgency signals. Separate what the client stated from what you are inferring, and label inferences so no one treats a guess as a fact. Assess fit against the firm's services and flag disqualifiers plainly. List the open questions the intake left unanswered, ranked by how much they matter to the next step. Keep it tight and scannable; the reader should grasp the whole situation in under a minute and know exactly what to do next.

ALWAYS use:

# Intake Summary: [Client or prospect]
## Snapshot (who they are, what they need, in two lines)
## Situation and goals (the facts)
## Stated vs inferred (flagged)
## Fit assessment (fit / borderline / not a fit, and why)
## Red flags or disqualifiers (if any)
## Open questions (ranked, for the next conversation)
## Recommended next step

• Blending stated facts with inference so guesses look confirmed.
• Skipping the fit assessment and passing everything through.
• Losing the open questions, so the next call re-asks the basics.
• A summary so long it is no faster than reading the raw intake.

Intake for a prospective family-law client turns a long form and two emails into a two-line snapshot, a facts section, a note that the stated budget is inferred from a passing comment, a borderline fit flag because the matter is outside the firm's core practice, and three ranked questions to resolve on the consult call.