Why Intake and Triage Automation Will Define In‑House Legal

In many in‑house teams, between a third and a half of legal cycle time disappears before a lawyer ever opens a document. It’s the intake and triage dead zone: unclear requests, scattered context, manual routing, and lost institutional knowledge. If you want faster deals, cleaner risk management, and happier stakeholders, this is the lever to pull first.

The Real Bottleneck: Intake, Not Advice

Most legal leaders invest in better templates or negotiation playbooks, then wonder why turnaround times barely move. The issue isn’t just what lawyers do—it’s how work arrives and where it goes. When intake is ad hoc, every request becomes bespoke. Counsel becomes a switchboard. Business teams wait.

What changes the game is systematized intake powered by a living knowledge layer: your playbooks, positions, and workflows encoded so the system can recognize the request, gather the right facts, assign ownership, and draft the first step. Every decision feeds back into the foundation so the next similar request is faster, cleaner, and more consistent.

From Playbooks to Agents: Operationalizing Knowledge

Playbooks are only as good as their accessibility in the flow of work. AI agents make them actionable. Instead of a static PDF on a shared drive, your positions become prompts that drive real outcomes:

Detect request type and risk tier from plain‑language submissions.
Pull context—existing MSAs, vendor profiles, DPAs, security answers—from your systems.
Route to the right owner based on domain, risk, and availability.
Generate a first draft, checklist, or questionnaire aligned to your standards.
Log each decision (accepted clause, escalated term, exception rationale) back into the knowledge layer.

That’s how knowledge compounds instead of disappearing. The system learns which paths lead to approval, which terms trigger procurement or privacy review, and where human judgment adds the most value.

A Concrete Blueprint: SaaS Contract Intake, End‑to‑End

Consider a common workflow: a business owner needs a new SaaS tool. Traditionally, legal gets a Slack ping, an email attachment, and a calendar invite—none with full context. With an agent‑driven intake on a platform like Sandstone, it looks different:

Structured intake: The requester selects “New SaaS” and answers a few targeted questions (data types, user count, spend, go‑live date). The agent enriches the request by pulling the vendor’s DPA link, security page, and existing records from procurement.
Auto‑classification and risk tiering: Based on data sensitivity and spend, the request is labeled Medium Risk and automatically includes Privacy and Security as stakeholders.
Smart routing: Legal Ops receives the matter; Privacy gets a checklist; Security receives a pre‑filled SIG‑lite based on publicly available info; Procurement is added for PO tracking.
First draft and guardrails: The agent generates a markup to the vendor MSA or selects your short‑form if below spend threshold. It applies your positions (e.g., liability cap, SLA credits) and flags any exceptions needing counsel sign‑off.
System‑level visibility: The requester sees status in real time; approvers receive nudges; the agent logs each decision to the knowledge layer, updating playbook rationale and exception patterns.

Result: predictable cycle times, fewer “what’s the status?” pings, and legal time spent on judgment calls—not ticket triage.

Metrics That Actually Move the Needle

If you want adoption beyond a pilot, track the metrics that reflect business value:

First‑response SLA: Time from request to acknowledgment and ownership.
Auto‑closure/deflection rate: Percentage resolved without lawyer intervention (e.g., policy guidance, self‑serve templates).
Playbook coverage: Share of matters fully handled by standard positions with no exceptions.
Exception rate and reason codes: Where human review still adds value—and why.
Cycle time by risk tier: Apples‑to‑apples benchmarking for predictable timelines.
Requester satisfaction (CSAT) and re‑open rate: Quality without rework.
Lawyer time saved: Hours shifted from coordination to counsel work.

These metrics tell a story executives understand: faster deals, clearer risk posture, and a scalable legal foundation.

Start Small, Ship Fast: A Two‑Week Pilot Plan

You don’t need a big‑bang transformation. Pick one high‑volume workflow and operationalize it.

Choose the use case: New SaaS intake, marketing NDA issuance, or vendor renewals.
Codify the playbook: Define defaults, acceptable alternatives, and true redlines.
Wire the data: Connect procurement, CRM, and document storage for context.
Build the agent path: Intake form, classification, routing, first‑draft actions, and escalation points.
Set KPIs and review cadence: Weekly stand‑ups to tune prompts, rules, and ownership.

Actionable takeaway: Stand up a single agent‑driven intake for “New SaaS” within two weeks. Measure first‑response SLA, cycle time by risk tier, and auto‑closure rate. Use the results to prioritize your next playbook.

The Bedrock of Trust and Growth

Great legal teams don’t win by being everywhere—they win by making the right things automatic. When intake and triage run on a living, AI‑powered knowledge layer, legal becomes connective tissue, not a bottleneck. Every request strengthens your foundation; every decision compounds into clearer guidance.

That’s the philosophy behind Sandstone: strength through layers, crafted precision, and natural integration with how your team already works. Transform playbooks into agents, triage into routing, and institutional knowledge into an operating system. The outcome is more than speed—it’s scalable, streamlined legal operations as the bedrock of trust and growth across the business.

The Real Bottleneck: Intake, Not Advice

From Playbooks to Agents: Operationalizing Knowledge

Detect request type and risk tier from plain‑language submissions.
Pull context—existing MSAs, vendor profiles, DPAs, security answers—from your systems.
Route to the right owner based on domain, risk, and availability.
Generate a first draft, checklist, or questionnaire aligned to your standards.
Log each decision (accepted clause, escalated term, exception rationale) back into the knowledge layer.

A Concrete Blueprint: SaaS Contract Intake, End‑to‑End

Structured intake: The requester selects “New SaaS” and answers a few targeted questions (data types, user count, spend, go‑live date). The agent enriches the request by pulling the vendor’s DPA link, security page, and existing records from procurement.
Auto‑classification and risk tiering: Based on data sensitivity and spend, the request is labeled Medium Risk and automatically includes Privacy and Security as stakeholders.
Smart routing: Legal Ops receives the matter; Privacy gets a checklist; Security receives a pre‑filled SIG‑lite based on publicly available info; Procurement is added for PO tracking.
First draft and guardrails: The agent generates a markup to the vendor MSA or selects your short‑form if below spend threshold. It applies your positions (e.g., liability cap, SLA credits) and flags any exceptions needing counsel sign‑off.
System‑level visibility: The requester sees status in real time; approvers receive nudges; the agent logs each decision to the knowledge layer, updating playbook rationale and exception patterns.

Result: predictable cycle times, fewer “what’s the status?” pings, and legal time spent on judgment calls—not ticket triage.

Metrics That Actually Move the Needle

If you want adoption beyond a pilot, track the metrics that reflect business value:

First‑response SLA: Time from request to acknowledgment and ownership.
Auto‑closure/deflection rate: Percentage resolved without lawyer intervention (e.g., policy guidance, self‑serve templates).
Playbook coverage: Share of matters fully handled by standard positions with no exceptions.
Exception rate and reason codes: Where human review still adds value—and why.
Cycle time by risk tier: Apples‑to‑apples benchmarking for predictable timelines.
Requester satisfaction (CSAT) and re‑open rate: Quality without rework.
Lawyer time saved: Hours shifted from coordination to counsel work.

These metrics tell a story executives understand: faster deals, clearer risk posture, and a scalable legal foundation.

Start Small, Ship Fast: A Two‑Week Pilot Plan

You don’t need a big‑bang transformation. Pick one high‑volume workflow and operationalize it.

Choose the use case: New SaaS intake, marketing NDA issuance, or vendor renewals.
Codify the playbook: Define defaults, acceptable alternatives, and true redlines.
Wire the data: Connect procurement, CRM, and document storage for context.
Build the agent path: Intake form, classification, routing, first‑draft actions, and escalation points.
Set KPIs and review cadence: Weekly stand‑ups to tune prompts, rules, and ownership.

Actionable takeaway: Stand up a single agent‑driven intake for “New SaaS” within two weeks. Measure first‑response SLA, cycle time by risk tier, and auto‑closure rate. Use the results to prioritize your next playbook.

Why Intake and Triage Automation Will Define In‑House Legal

The Real Bottleneck: Intake, Not Advice

From Playbooks to Agents: Operationalizing Knowledge

A Concrete Blueprint: SaaS Contract Intake, End‑to‑End

Metrics That Actually Move the Needle

Start Small, Ship Fast: A Two‑Week Pilot Plan

Actionable takeaway: Stand up a single agent‑driven intake for “New SaaS” within two weeks. Measure first‑response SLA, cycle time by risk tier, and auto‑closure rate. Use the results to prioritize your next playbook.

The Bedrock of Trust and Growth

About Jarryd Strydom

Why Intake and Triage Automation Will Define In‑House Legal

The Real Bottleneck: Intake, Not Advice

From Playbooks to Agents: Operationalizing Knowledge

A Concrete Blueprint: SaaS Contract Intake, End‑to‑End

Metrics That Actually Move the Needle

Start Small, Ship Fast: A Two‑Week Pilot Plan

Actionable takeaway: Stand up a single agent‑driven intake for “New SaaS” within two weeks. Measure first‑response SLA, cycle time by risk tier, and auto‑closure rate. Use the results to prioritize your next playbook.

The Bedrock of Trust and Growth

About Jarryd Strydom