Employment Intake

Employment Law Intake Training

Employment callers are often angry, hurt or afraid, and they arrive with a long story and a document folder. Intake has to listen, structure the call and keep from judging whether the employer did anything wrong.

Start With the Call Audit or book a conversation

What is different about employment intake

Callers want to tell the whole story, and a desk that interrupts loses their trust.
Many ask whether what happened is illegal, which is the attorney's judgment.
Documents and dates matter, so the confirmation stage has to say clearly what to bring.

The method does not change. The five stages, the 14-item scorecard and the boundary are the same. What changes is the wording, the questions to ask and where the pressure shows up.

Two Calls

The same moment, answered two ways

"Was that legal?"

The caller says: "My boss did this to me. Is that even legal?"

What most desks say

"That does not sound right. You should definitely talk to the attorney."

A hint of evaluation that could be read as a yes.

What a trained desk says

"That is exactly the question for the attorney, and I do not want to guess at it. I am writing it down so she has it in front of her and goes through it with you at the consultation. Would Thursday at ten or Friday at two be easier?"

The question is handed off, no opinion is given, and the call moves to a time.

The long story

The caller says: A caller who talks for several minutes without a break.

What most desks say

"Okay. Okay. I need to get your name and number."

The caller feels cut off.

What a trained desk says

"Thank you for telling me all of that. I want to be sure the attorney has the important parts. Can I ask a few questions to put the timeline in order, and then we will find a time to go through it in detail?"

The caller is heard first, and the call is gently given a structure.

Questions that always go to the attorney

These come up on employment calls all the time. Intake does not answer them; it hands them off with the fixed line and asks for the next step.

"Can I sue them?"
"Do I have to sign this severance?"
"Will I get my job back?"

The hand-off wording and the full boundary are on the line between intake and the attorney. Wording on this page is an example only; the firm and the attorney set the final wording against their jurisdiction's rules. Scope, plainly: everything on this site concerns the conversation that turns an inquiry into an engagement. Nothing here is legal advice, nothing touches the legal work or the attorney's judgment, and any wording a firm adopts is reviewed by the firm against its jurisdiction's rules on attorney advertising, solicitation and fee communication before it is used.

About the Author

Dr. Jeffrey Scott Stanton, DCH is a behavioral strategist and the founder and Chief Learning Officer of R2R Diagnostic Group. He is the former EVP of Learning & Development at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, where he trained sales professionals on the conversations that turn an inquiry into a commitment. He applies the same method, the R2R Assessment and a 14-item call-review scorecard, to law firm intake teams. The work is the conversation only; legal questions and judgment stay with the attorney.

The method, the scripts and the scorecard are on how it works, the script template and the scorecard guide.