Next Generation Legal Intake & Matter Intelligence

For many legal departments, intake is still a black box: emails, ad-hoc conversations, and spreadsheets that create friction, slow response cycles, and bury strategic work under manual triage.

At the HIKE2 Lodge during Dreamforce 2025, leaders from Salesforce, Uber, and HIKE2 explored how modern legal operations teams are transforming intake and matter management using Salesforce Data + AI. Their real-world stories highlighted how intelligent workflows and data-driven design are reshaping legal service delivery, improving user experience, and building trust in legal technology.

What follows are the key principles, lessons, and opportunities they shared for the next generation of legal operations.

Key Takeaways

1. A true legal front door requires structure and clarity

Legal intake cannot rely on memory or manual routing. Teams are investing in standardized intake paths with intuitive forms, clear routing logic, and automated status updates to eliminate bottlenecks and improve transparency.

2. Data governance is foundational to AI success

Poor or inconsistent data erodes trust and creates operational friction. High-performing teams are building data quality frameworks and automating cleanup to ensure reliable, usable intelligence.

3. Persona-driven workflows accelerate adoption

Different users have different needs. Attorneys, paralegals, business partners, and intake teams require tailored experiences. Designing around real personas, not generic process maps, is how adoption happens.

4. Automation is about joy and impact, not only time savings

Even small efficiencies can unlock significant value. When attorneys no longer need to manually classify matters or re-enter repeat data, they gain time to spend on higher-value judgment work and strategic advising.

5. AI is expanding from classification into decision support

Organizations are now embedding context, historical case patterns, and external data to shape strategy, support counsel decisions, and drive proactive resource planning.

Moving Legal Intake Beyond Spreadsheets and Emails

A core theme from the discussion: intake should not feel like a mystery.
Historically, business users sent requests through emails and hallway conversations, hoping they reached the right team. That lack of structure leads to:

• Unpredictable response times
• Manual work interpreting and routing requests
• Limited visibility into matter volume and trends
• Difficulty reporting to leadership

Modern legal teams are replacing that traffic-jam model with structured, digital intake experiences. Users submit matters through guided forms. Requests route automatically to the right practice area. Submitters see status updates without needing to chase down answers.

The result: less noise, faster triage, better stakeholder confidence, and stronger data from day one.

Data Governance: The Hidden Engine of Legal AI

AI is only as good as the data it feeds on.

Leaders shared that early pilots surfaced a familiar challenge: inconsistent fields and incomplete entries limited model accuracy. Attorneys who encountered imperfect outputs quickly lost confidence in the system.

• To avoid that trap, teams emphasized:
• Standardized matter data models
• Incremental cleanup rather than “big bang” data overhauls
• Automation to reduce manual data entry burdens
• Clear expectations and accountability around data quality

This mindset builds trust, builds measurable return, and ensures AI supports rather than disrupts legal workflows.

Designing for the People Doing the Work

One of the most practical insights was the importance of persona-driven design.

Attorneys, paralegals, and legal program teams each bring distinct workflows and constraints. Supporting each role means:

• Tailoring intake paths
• Automating upstream information gathering
• Surfacing context where it matters most
• Creating structured data that translates into analytics

Structured input plus thoughtful user design translates directly into speed, accuracy, and adoption.

And it prepares legal teams for a more intelligent future.

The Future: Agentic Intake and Predictive Legal Intelligence

Looking forward, the panelists highlighted several emerging capabilities:

Agent-guided intake

Instead of expecting users to read knowledge articles, AI will guide them through the right path, ask clarifying questions, and reduce friction.

Self-service where appropriate

AI will help users resolve routine requests without legal intervention, reserving human counsel for higher-value matters.

Predictive decision-support

Legal teams are exploring ways to integrate internal and external data to inform strategy. That could look like forecasting matter impact, understanding judicial histories, or proactively allocating resources across regions and practice areas.

Contextual recommendations

AI will not just classify matters; it will recommend whether to bring in outside counsel, guide RFP processes, and present the right precedents or risk factors at the right time.

In short, the legal front door will not just intake cases. It will coach, triage, learn, and assist.

Making Legal Work More Strategic and More Human

Legal operations transformation is not only about efficiency. It is about elevating the work legal professionals do and creating space for higher-value contributions.

As one panelist shared, when AI auto-classified matters, attorneys celebrated not because it saved hours, but because it made the work experience better.

This is the real win. Not automation for automation’s sake, but a smarter system that supports legal talent, strengthens relationships with the business, and builds intelligence into every part of the legal engine.