Business Team Legal Request Triage
When requests pile up in the legal inbox, intake form or chat channel and someone has to sort them, route them and acknowledge them before the substantive work begins.
In-house legal teams rarely struggle with any single request. They struggle with the volume: contract reviews, marketing approvals, policy questions and the occasional subpoena all arrive through the same inbox, often without the information legal needs to act. Sorting, routing and acknowledging that stream consumes lawyer time that should go to the requests that actually carry risk.
This prompt applies your team's own triage criteria to a pasted batch of requests. For each one it assigns a type, urgency, risk level and owner from your lists, decides whether a self-service resource you named will do, and lists the missing information. It flags anything that touches litigation, regulators, data incidents or employee complaints for immediate escalation with the triggering language quoted, and drafts a short acknowledgment for each requester that confirms receipt and asks for what is missing without answering the legal question.
The prompt deliberately uses your criteria instead of Claude's view of what is risky, because risk tolerance, ownership and self-service options differ for every company. Claude can misread a terse request, and a misrouted escalation item is costly, so a person on the legal team should review the triage and approve replies before they are sent. The output is a draft for attorney review, not legal advice to the business.
The Prompt
I am on the in-house legal team at [COMPANY]. Triage the batch of business requests below using our team's criteria. <document name="triage_criteria"> [PASTE YOUR TEAM'S CRITERIA: REQUEST TYPES, URGENCY LEVELS, RISK FACTORS, OWNERS BY AREA, SELF-SERVICE RESOURCES SUCH AS APPROVED TEMPLATES OR FAQS] </document> <document name="requests"> [PASTE REQUESTS, ONE PER BLOCK, WITH REQUESTER, DATE AND ANY STATED DEADLINE] </document> For each request, using only our criteria: 1. Request type (from our list). 2. Urgency, with the stated deadline or the reason quoted from the request. 3. Risk level and the criteria factor that drives it. 4. Suggested owner (from our list). 5. Self-serve? Yes only if the request fits a self-service resource listed in the criteria; name it. 6. Missing information needed before legal can act. Output a triage table: # | Requester | Summary (one line) | Type | Urgency | Risk | Owner | Self-serve | Missing info. Then draft a short acknowledgment reply for each request in plain business language: confirm receipt, state who will handle it or point to the self-service resource, and ask for the missing information as a numbered list. Do not give legal advice or answer the substantive question in the reply. Flag separately: any request that may involve litigation, a government inquiry, a regulator, a data incident, an employee complaint or anything else our criteria say must be escalated immediately, quoting the language that triggered the flag. If a request does not fit our criteria, say so instead of forcing a category. This is a draft for review by [LEGAL OPS OR ASSIGNING ATTORNEY] before any reply is sent.
Example Output
A triage table with type, urgency, risk, owner, self-serve status and missing information for each request, escalation flags with quotes, and a short acknowledgment reply for each requester.
Illustrative example — names, figures, and facts are fictional.
LEGAL REQUEST TRIAGE (DRAFT FOR REVIEW)
Batch: 5 requests received [DATE]
# | Requester | Summary | Type | Urgency | Risk | Owner | Self-serve | Missing info
1 | Dana K., Sales | Customer wants mutual NDA before demo | NDA | Normal ("demo is next Thursday") | Low | Commercial | Yes: approved mutual NDA template | Customer legal name
2 | Leo M., Marketing | Wants to run a sweepstakes on social media | Promotions | High ("launch Monday") | Medium: criteria factor "consumer promotions" | Marketing counsel | No | States targeted, prize value, entry method
3 | Priyanka S., HR | Employee alleges manager made discriminatory remarks | Employment | ESCALATE | High | Employment counsel | No | None before escalation
4 | Tomas R., Procurement | Vendor redlines to MSA for cloud tools | Commercial contract | Normal | Medium: "vendor will process customer data" | Commercial + Privacy | No | Data types processed
5 | Grace L., Finance | Question about expense policy wording | Not in criteria | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | Does not fit our categories; confirm whether legal should handle
ESCALATION FLAGS
- Request 3: "she says her manager told her she was 'too old to learn the new system.'" Matches criteria item "employee complaint of discrimination or harassment: same-day escalation."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1. Hi Dana, thanks for the request. For a standard mutual NDA, please use the approved template on the legal intranet page "NDA Template." If the customer edits it, send their version to legal. Please confirm: (1) the customer's full legal name.
2. Hi Leo, thanks. Marketing counsel will review this. To start, please send: (1) the states or countries where people can enter, (2) the prize and its value, (3) how people enter.
3. [HOLD: escalate to employment counsel before replying.]Tips
- •Write your triage criteria down once and save them in a Claude Project. The quality of the triage depends entirely on how specific those criteria are.
- •List your self-service resources by name, such as the approved NDA template or the marketing review checklist. Claude will only route to resources you list.
- •Keep the escalation list short and absolute, for example subpoenas, regulator contact, data incidents and harassment complaints. Those should go to a lawyer the same day regardless of other scoring.
- •Have a person approve the acknowledgments before sending, at least until you trust the routing. A wrong owner in a reply sets the wrong expectation with the business.
- •Treat the triage as a draft for attorney review. Risk ratings are a sorting aid, not a legal assessment, and any law or regulation a request mentions must be verified by the assigned lawyer before anyone relies on it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the prompt need our own triage criteria?
Because the right triage depends on your company. What counts as high risk, who owns privacy questions and whether sales can use an NDA template without legal review are policy choices, not general facts. Without your criteria, Claude would substitute its own judgment, which may not match your risk tolerance. With them, the triage is consistent and easy to audit against the rules your team agreed on.
Can Claude answer the simple requests directly?
The prompt intentionally stops at routing and acknowledgment. Self-service is limited to resources your team has already approved, such as a template or FAQ, so the business is not relying on an unreviewed AI answer to a legal question. If you want Claude to draft substantive answers, run a separate prompt on the specific request and have a lawyer review the answer before it goes out.
What happens with requests that do not fit any category?
The prompt tells Claude to say so instead of forcing a label. Those requests show up as not in criteria, which is useful in two ways: someone can decide whether legal should handle the request at all, and repeated misfits show you where your criteria need a new category or a clearer owner.
Is it safe to paste employee complaints and business requests into Claude?
Requests can include personal information, trade secrets and privileged material, so use a Claude plan whose data terms fit your company's AI policy and limit what you paste to what triage needs. For sensitive categories such as employee complaints or government inquiries, many teams route by rule before any AI step. The escalation flags in this prompt are a backstop, not a substitute for that rule.
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