Why legal intake fails at the second handoff
A short standfirst for "Why legal intake fails at the second handoff", written to sit under the headline on the index page.
What changed
The obligation applies from the first review cycle, and the deadline is fixed. Teams that batch their intake will feel this sooner.
The threshold is set out in the guidance; this reference for the detail.
Who it applies to
- In-house teams handling supplier paper
- Anyone routing intake through a shared inbox
- Including the teams who only triage
Sequencing
- Map the current intake path
- Decide what a complete request looks like
The bottleneck was never the drafting. It was the queue.
One caveat
An external counsel note covers the edge cases; this reference for the detail.
| Stage | Owner | Typical duration |
|---|---|---|
| Intake | Requester | 1 day |
| Review | Legal | 3 days |
| Signature | Requester | 1 day |
What a working intake path looks like
A working intake path starts with one door. Every request, whether it arrives from sales, procurement or a founder on a Friday evening, lands in the same place and is read by the same rule. That rule is not a person. It is a short list of questions: who is asking, what they are asking for, what it is worth, and when they need it. A request that answers all four is complete and moves on. A request that answers fewer than four goes back to the requester with the missing questions, and nobody in legal has spent a minute on it yet.
The second element is a visible queue. When requesters can see where their work sits and what is ahead of it, the reminder emails stop, because the answer to "any update" is already on the screen. The queue also tells the legal team something the inbox never could: how much of the week is triage and how much is review.
The third element is a default answer for the most common asks. A standard NDA, a standard data processing addendum and a standard order form cover most of what a growing company signs. When the default is the answer, the requester should be able to send it without waiting for a lawyer to say so.
None of this requires new software. It requires agreeing on what a complete request is, writing that agreement down, and holding the door.