Building a Custom Intake-to-Matter System for a Law Firm
How CrestOps designed a Salesforce intake form and matter automation that replaced a spreadsheet-based process — cutting new-matter setup time from 30 minutes to under 5.
The situation
A small law firm was running new-client intake entirely through a shared Outlook inbox and a multi-tab spreadsheet. Each new matter meant copying details into three places, manually checking for conflicts, and emailing the assigned attorney. Nothing was centralized, nothing was reportable, and nobody could say with confidence which matters were actually active.
The firm had Salesforce licenses but wasn't using them. They brought in CrestOps to turn that investment into a working system — fast.
The constraints
- 8-week timeline. Partners wanted to stop losing matters before the next quarter.
- No full-time admin. Whatever we built had to be operable by a paralegal, not a developer.
- Zero disruption. Active matters couldn't stall during the rollout.
What we built
1. A single intake form — not five
We replaced the spreadsheet-and-email process with one Salesforce-native intake form accessible from both the web and an internal shortcut. The form captures all of the information the firm actually needs for a new matter: contact details, matter type, referral source, conflict parties, and an initial narrative.
Behind the scenes:
- Form submission creates a Contact, Account, and a Matter record in a single transaction.
- A conflicts check runs automatically against all existing parties and flags potential conflicts for partner review before the matter is opened.
- The assigned attorney receives an alert with a one-click link to the new matter.
2. Matter lifecycle, modeled cleanly
We set up the Matter object with a clear status progression — Intake → Conflicts Clear → Engaged → Active → Closed — and wired Flow automations to the transitions. Specifically:
| Transition | What fires |
|---|---|
| Conflicts Clear → Engaged | Engagement letter task + 48-hour follow-up |
| Engaged → Active | Matter folder template, team assignment, kickoff task |
| Active → Closed | Archive workflow, final invoice check, client survey task |
No more manual handoffs between stages. No more matters stuck in limbo because a step got missed.
3. Reports the partners actually read
We built three dashboards: one for the managing partner (pipeline, active matter counts, stuck matters), one for practice leaders (matters by type, by attorney), and one for the intake paralegal (what needs attention today). Every dashboard works on live data — no Excel exports, ever.
The outcome
- New-matter setup time: 30+ minutes → under 5 minutes.
- Conflicts check: manual review against a Google Sheet → automatic against every existing party.
- Matter visibility: a spreadsheet that nobody trusted → live dashboards partners check daily.
- Rollout: full go-live in 7 weeks, on the original timeline.
The paralegal who owned intake became the firm's de facto Salesforce power user within 30 days — exactly the outcome the partners wanted.
Why it worked
We didn't rebuild the firm's process — we modeled the one they already had, cleanly, in Salesforce. Every field, status, and automation mapped to a decision the firm was already making. That meant the team adopted it without retraining how they think about matters; they just did the same work in a faster place.
Interested in a similar build for your firm? Book a 30-minute discovery call.