The problem
A multi-office legal aid organization with 120+ staff had fragmented intake across three channels (online, phone, clinic), inconsistent case acceptance data, and no shared sense of where capacity was going. Nobody could tell whether rejections were an intake problem or a staffing problem, because the underlying LegalServer data wasn't trusted enough to ask. Reports existed, but one overloaded paralegal was the only person who could produce them.
What we did
- Audited LegalServer data quality across intake, case acceptance, outcomes, and time tracking to establish what could actually be trusted
- Conducted 30+ structured interviews with intake staff, attorneys, and supervisors to map the real workflow from first contact through case acceptance
- Analyzed case acceptance and time-to-disposition data by case type and office to find the true capacity bottlenecks
- Assessed the impact of prior policy changes and internal referral patterns to quantify centralization opportunities
- Turned the findings into staff-facing reports and concrete recommendations for triage and staffing alignment
What changed
- Confirmed intake data was reliable enough to build on
- Revealed which case types drove disproportionate staff time, and quantified it
- Gave leadership evidence-based grounds for centralization and staffing decisions
- Clarified intake decision criteria, cutting downstream follow-up work
Built with
LegalServer data
Vonage call data
structured interviews
workflow mapping
historical data analysis