Client intake that ends with an open matter.
Intake is the work before there is a case: capturing the inquiry, screening it, deciding whether to take it. What a prospect told you on the first call is still on the record when the file opens.
One board, your stages, hired or not hired
A referral phoned in over lunch and a consult booked at midnight land on the same board, in a stage you named, with its source tagged, until you assign an owner and mark the outcome hired or not hired.
A card carries the prospect, the practice area, the source tags, and the members it is assigned to, so the board says who is waiting and who owns it without opening anything.
Managing leadsCustom intake stages
Stage columns you name, reorder, and drag a lead across.
Hired and not hired
One tab for hired, one for not hired, both sortable and searchable.
Measure it, follow it up, then convert it
Tag where the work came from, queue your follow-up on the lead, then convert it. The contact, practice area, document folder, and checklist carry into the matter.
Build it once, send it, or publish it
Drag in the questions your practice actually asks. Send it to one named client as a one-time request, or publish it where every submission opens a lead and a contact for you.
An embedded form sits inside your own web page, so a prospect fills it in without leaving your site, and the submission lands in Esqase all the same.
Embedding a formSend a client a form
A one-time request for a named person, or fill it in yourself.
Forms as intake
A public submission opens the lead and the contact for you.
The pieces that turn an inquiry into a decision.
Read the intake docsContacts
Conflict checking
Screen the clients you are about to take on against the records your firm already holds.
Run it at intake
A button on the new-lead and new-matter forms.
Reviewed before you proceed
Judgment stays with the lawyer, not the software.
Booking
Self-serve scheduling
Give every meeting its own booking page, built from real availability, so a prospect can pick a time without a phone call.
Real availability
Per-host hours, with holiday overrides.
Books itself in
A contact, a lead, and an event, in one step.
Reports
The intake overview
See how many leads arrived, how many you decided, and which of your sources actually end in hired clients.
Compare two periods
Any date range, against the one before it.
Ranked by source
By how many leads, and by conversion rate.
Set up intake for your firm.
Browse the docsFAQs
Leads, sources, forms, booking, and workflows, one area at a time.
Leads
What is a lead?
A prospective client you have not decided to take on. It sits on your pipeline with a stage, a source, an owner, and a follow-up checklist until you record an outcome of hired or not hired.
Can the pipeline match our process?
The stage columns are yours to add, rename, reorder, and delete, and each is typed as to do, in progress, or done. Deleting a column is permanent, so move any leads out of it first.
Can a lead be kept private?
Yes. A private lead is visible only to the members assigned to it and to firm owners, so it stays off the board and out of the outcome tables for everyone else.
Sources
What is a lead source?
A short reusable label recording how someone found your firm, with a color so you can pick it out at a glance. A single lead can carry more than one.
Are lead sources added automatically?
Yes. A booking tags the new lead with a Booking source, and a form submission tags it with both a shared Form source and a second one named after that specific form.
How do I know a channel is worth it?
The intake overview ranks your sources twice, by how many leads each one sent and by conversion rate. A channel high on the first and low on the second is volume without clients.
Forms
What makes a form an intake form?
One setting. A lead-intake form is published at a public address and every submission opens a lead and a contact, which is why it has to collect a name plus an email or a phone.
What can a form ask?
Twenty-two question types across basic inputs, selection, dates, and advanced, plus layout elements for headings and columns. Validation and visibility rules sit on top of those.
Can I send a form to one person?
Create a request against a named contact. Send them a link to complete themselves, or fill it in on their behalf during a call. Either way a draft lead and contact are created.
Can I embed a form on our website?
Paste the embed snippet into one of your pages and the form renders inside it, with none of the surrounding Esqase page. Submissions arrive exactly as they would from a hosted link.
Booking
Can clients book without an account?
Yes. Each event type you publish has its own booking page, opened from a single link with no sign-in, showing the host, the duration, the location, and your real availability.
Where do available times come from?
The host's weekly availability, falling back to your firm's when the host has not set their own. Date-specific overrides handle holidays without disturbing the weekly pattern.
Can I vet a booking before confirming?
By default, yes. Auto-confirm starts off, so a new booking is recorded as tentative and waits for someone on your team to approve it, reject it, or propose a different time. Turn auto-confirm on for routine meetings.
Workflow
What is a workflow?
A reusable, ordered playbook of steps such as sending an email, creating a task, requesting a form, or booking a meeting, which you attach to a lead or a matter.
Does a workflow run by itself?
No. Attaching one copies its steps onto the record as to-dos for your team to run, and a booking or form submission attaches them the same pending way. The one exception is the new-matter wizard, where an automatic workflow starts its first step.
If I edit a workflow, do existing leads change?
No. Each record keeps its own copy from the moment the steps were attached, so rewriting a workflow changes only what you attach to something afterwards.