Intake forms

Ask once, capture everything.
Every submission becomes a lead.

The MatterFirst intake form builder showing the New Purchase Enquiry form with its shareable link and website embed code

Build a form from typed fields, share it as a link or embed it on your site, and every submission creates a lead with the answers already where they belong: no client login, no retyping, no inbox triage.

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Encrypted at rest and in transit Australian data residency Hosted on AWS No lock-in contracts Guided setup available Your data exportable on request

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What is a legal client intake form?

A form your firm builds from typed fields and shares by link, embed or email, with no client login. In MatterFirst each submission creates a lead automatically: mapped answers fill lead and contact fields, unmapped answers are kept in notes, and the lead lands in the pipeline the form names, owned and on an SLA clock.

How it works

From form to routed lead

1

Form opened

2

Answers captured

3

Mapped to fields

4

Lead created

5

Routed and live

No client login: the link is the credential

Unmapped answers are kept in lead notes, not dropped

The portal and the AI assistant feed the same intake path

Five steps between a prospect clicking your link and a lead sitting in the right pipeline. Nobody retypes anything.

Form builder

Typed fields, built in minutes

Build each form from real field types rather than free text, optionally tied to a matter type. Full name and email are on every form so a submission is always someone you can actually reply to.

  • Eight field types: short and long text, email, phone, number, date, dropdown and checkbox
  • Full name and email on every form, required, and the builder will not let you remove them
  • Per-field required flags, help text and dropdown options, with drag to reorder
  • A dropdown with no options cannot be saved, so a form nobody could complete never goes live

Capability 1 of 4

Build it once, share it anywhere.

Field mappings

Answers land in fields, not in a heap

Each field maps to a lead or contact attribute, so a submission arrives as structured data and creates the lead's contact as it goes. Whatever you choose not to map is kept, not dropped.

  • Map answers to lead fields: name, summary, notes, source detail, referral source or custom metadata
  • Map contact details: first and last name, email, phone, mobile, company and address
  • Unmapped answers go to the lead's notes by default, with metadata or discard as the alternatives
  • Mappings follow the field itself, so renaming a field does not silently orphan its mapping

Capability 2 of 4

Every answer lands somewhere deliberate.

Routing

Submitted, created, routed. No triage inbox.

Every submission becomes a lead through one intake path, the same one the client portal and the AI assistant's intake use. The form and your firm's intake defaults decide where it goes before anyone has looked at it.

  • The form names the pipeline its leads land in
  • Your default intake assignee takes ownership, and a matter type can name its own
  • Priority sets an SLA due date from the hours your firm configures
  • A Form Submitted trigger starts your automation rules the moment the answers arrive

Capability 3 of 4

Every enquiry arrives already routed.

Sharing

On your website, in an email, in the portal

Each form has a public URL that works without any client account, carries your firm's branding, and sits behind spam throttling. Share it wherever the enquiry actually starts.

  • A shareable public link that needs no client login
  • An iframe embed for your firm's own website
  • Email the form link to a client from inside MatterFirst
  • Offer a form inside the client portal only when you tick it, per form

Capability 4 of 4

Your form, on your site, under your name.

MatterFirst is a legal practice management platform for Australian law firms, built by NorthCape Technology, covering matters, documents, trust accounting, billing and a client portal, with data hosted in the AWS region the firm chooses.

This suits firms whose enquiries start on the web and end up retyped: out of an email inbox, a PDF or a generic form builder and into the practice system. It is built for capture and routing rather than long interviews: fields are flat, with no conditional branching, so it will frustrate a firm that wants a questionnaire that changes shape as the client answers.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Do clients need an account to fill in a form?
No. The public link is the credential: anyone who has it can open the form and submit, under your firm's branding. Forms can also be offered inside the client portal, but only the ones you explicitly mark as portal-visible, so a conveyancing client is never offered your family law intake.
What happens to answers that are not mapped to a field?
They are kept. By default unmapped answers are written into the lead's notes; you can direct them to the lead's metadata instead, or discard them explicitly. The full submission is also stored on the lead, so nothing a prospect typed is silently lost.
Who does the lead go to?
The form's routing rules choose the pipeline it lands in. Ownership comes from your firm's default intake assignee, which a matter type can override, and the lead's priority sets an SLA due date from the hours your firm configures. Nothing waits for someone to notice an inbox.
What stops spam through a public form?
Submissions pass a honeypot check and are rate limited per visitor and per form, on the page and on the JSON endpoint alike. Retries are safe too: the intake path is idempotent, so a double click or a network retry returns the existing lead rather than creating a second one.
Where is my data stored?
In the AWS region your firm chooses. Sydney (ap-southeast-2) is the default for Australian firms. Matter data, documents, extraction and matter questions all stay in that region. The one exception is the first step of Document AI, reading the document itself, which runs on Azure AI Document Intelligence in Azure's Australia East region. Both regions are in Australia.
How much does MatterFirst cost?
Pricing is per workspace rather than per seat, starting at $199 per month for Solo. Each plan includes a set number of users, a monthly AI balance in Australian dollars, the client portal and automations. Extra users are billed only past the included seats. Full plan inclusions are on the pricing page.
Can I get my data out if I leave?
Yes. Your matters, contacts, documents and time records are exportable on request, and there is no lock-in contract. We would rather you were able to leave and chose not to.
Is there a free trial?
Yes, a 14 day guided trial on Solo, Practice or Firm. It is guided rather than self-serve because a practice management system tells you very little until it has your real matters in it, and we would rather help you load them than leave you looking at an empty workspace.
Who builds MatterFirst?
NorthCape Technology, a Melbourne-based software company. MatterFirst is built in Australia for Australian legal practice, which is why trust accounting and Xero are first-class rather than regional add-ons, and why PEXA and InfoTrack are on the roadmap rather than absent from it.
Is MatterFirst suitable for a firm of my size?
It is designed for solo practitioners up to firms of roughly twenty seats. Below that, Solo carries the full platform for one user. Above it, the platform works but you should expect to talk to us about migration and rollout rather than signing up online.

Reviewed by Nick Hallam

Co-founder and Operations Director, NorthCape Technology

Aerospace engineer by background, and the one who talks to firms about how they actually run. Reviews the pages that describe how a practice works day to day.

Last reviewed

Ready to put a form where your enquiries start?

Book a demo and we will build an intake form for one of your matter types, map its fields, and follow a test submission through to the routed lead.

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