Client Intake and Case Assessment
Where professional obligations, strategic analysis, and human judgment intersect most directly
Domestic Violence Screening at Every Intake
Every family law intake requires domestic violence screening. This is not a suggestion or a best practice. It is a professional and ethical obligation. The reasons are practical and serious: domestic violence affects a significant percentage of family law clients; the legal strategy in a domestic violence case differs materially from strategy in a case without it; and the attorney who fails to identify a domestic violence situation may provide advice that is not just suboptimal but dangerous.
When a client discloses domestic violence: The attorney's first obligation is to the client's safety. The second is to assess immediate legal needs — is there an existing order, does one need to be sought urgently, does the client have access to funds independent of the abusing spouse? These questions shape everything that follows in the representation.
The Attorney's Role vs. the Paralegal's Role
The paralegal screens at intake for the presence of domestic violence and flags it for the attorney. The attorney assesses the legal implications: whether a protective order is needed, whether the dissolution must proceed on a timeline that accounts for the client's safety, whether service of process requires special handling, whether address confidentiality programs are appropriate. These are legal assessments that require the attorney's judgment.
Initial Case Assessment — Four Dimensions
Composition, value, complex assets
Children, arrangement, risk factors
Income, capacity, existing obligations
Plus complicating factors: domestic violence, mental health, substance abuse, hidden assets, prior litigation. AI tools are useful for developing the intake framework — the questions to ask, the documents to request, the issues to identify. They are also useful for orienting the attorney to legal standards in the jurisdiction provisionally, before primary source verification.
Communicating realistic expectations: Family law clients frequently arrive with expectations shaped by friends, online research, and hope — not legal reality. AI-assisted preliminary analysis can help the attorney prepare for difficult expectation-setting conversations. A preliminary analysis that has not been verified against current primary sources should inform attorney preparation, not be presented to the client as the attorney's considered assessment.
Ready-to-Use Prompts
Adapt these prompts for your practice and jurisdiction. Click Copy to paste directly into any AI tool.