Matter intake and engagement letters
A new client wants an answer while still choosing a firm, and terms in hand before work starts. Instead the enquiry waits for a fee earner to leave a meeting and the letter for a quiet hour. This role gathers the details, prepares the conflict search and drafts the client care letter. The fee earner decides and approves.
The role in brief
Takes each new enquiry from first contact to an opened matter: details gathered, conflict search prepared, client care letter drafted, signed terms chased.
Your practice management system, such as Clio or Actionstep, your enquiries mailbox and web form, and your letter precedents.
The fee earner taking the matter, or the partner who allocates new work. Possible conflicts, the decision to act, the costs estimate and the letter's terms go to them.
Days from enquiry to letter sent, enquiries waiting on the firm, and matters opened with a complete file.
Who opens a new matter today
A legal secretary or paralegal takes the call or reads the web form, then finds a fee earner to ask whether the firm wants the work. Somebody searches the practice management system for the names. The fee earner dictates or adapts a client care letter, the secretary sends it, and the signed copy and the ID evidence are chased before the file can be opened.
The enquirer who contacted two firms
Someone buying a house or facing a claim rarely contacts one firm. While the enquiry waits for a fee earner to be free, the details are half taken and nobody has replied. A firm that answers first, with a clear next step, is usually the one instructed.
A party missed in the search
Under the SRA's Code for England and Wales, a solicitor acts where there is a conflict of interest, or a significant risk of one, only in limited circumstances. A search on the client's name alone can miss the other side, a connected company or a former client, and it surfaces after work has started.
The letter that followed the work
The SRA's Code says a client is owed the likely cost and the complaints procedure when the firm takes them on, and its guidance says clear costs information at the outset can help prevent complaints. A letter sent a fortnight in, adapted from someone else's matter, gives the client neither in time.
From first enquiry to an opened matter
Your solicitors judge conflicts, decide whether to act and approve every letter. Around those decisions the agent gathers, searches, drafts and chases, working from your own enquiry wording and client care letter precedent.
Enquiry
Replies in your wording, which says the firm has not yet agreed to act, and asks who the client is, who else is involved, the matter and any fixed dates.
Phone enquiries, anything that asks for advice, and any enquiry with a hearing or limitation date close.
Conflict search
Lists every party named, including the other side and any connected companies and people, searches your client and matter records for each, and sets out the possible matches.
Whether a match is a conflict, and the decision to act. Both are a solicitor's.
Client care letter
Drafts the letter from your precedent: the scope, who handles and supervises the matter, the costs estimate the fee earner has given, and your complaints procedure.
The scope, the costs and every term. Nothing is sent until the fee earner approves it.
Opening the matter
Chases the signed terms and the ID evidence. Once the fee earner has approved, sets up the client and matter record and files the search, the letter and the evidence.
ID sign-off, customer due diligence where the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 apply, the risk assessment, and approval to open.
Days from enquiry to letter sent
Counted for every new matter, from the day the enquiry arrives to the day the approved client care letter goes out. Reviewed with you each month.
Enquiries waiting on the firm
How many open enquiries have had no reply or no decision for longer than the number of days you set, and which fee earner each is waiting on.
Matters opened with a complete file
The share of new matters where the conflict search record, the signed terms and the ID evidence were all on the file on the day it was opened.
Questions owners ask
How thorough is the conflict search the agent prepares?
As thorough as your records and your rules allow. It searches every party's name, not only the client's, against the clients, former clients and other parties in your system, and shows each possible match with the matter it came from. It reports matches. It does not conclude that there is or is not a conflict.
Who sets the fee in the client care letter?
The fee earner. The agent drafts from your precedent with the estimate or fixed fee the fee earner gives it, or your published cost, which the SRA Transparency Rules require for residential conveyancing, uncontested probate and some other services, where you advertise them. It never works out a fee itself, and no letter leaves until the fee earner approves it.
Does it speak to prospective clients on the phone?
No. A person takes phone enquiries, and the agent works in writing: your web form, email and your practice management system. It can pick up from the person's note, send the intake questions and carry on from there. Anyone who asks for a person is passed to one.
What happens when an enquiry is urgent?
You set the rules: a hearing listed, a limitation date near, a completion already fixed. An enquiry that meets one goes straight to the person you name, with what the enquirer wrote. The agent does not judge urgency beyond your rules, and it never tells an enquirer what their legal position is.