Meet Donna: AutoCounsel's AI Intake Assistant for Plaintiff Law Firms

The intake moment is fragile

Every plaintiff firm knows the problem. A prospective client calls in pain, confused, scared, or shopping for the first firm that responds with clarity. They might be at the scene of a car accident, sitting in an ER waiting room, or processing an employer retaliation they do not yet fully understand. The difference between signing that case and losing it to a competitor often comes down to minutes.

Firms that answer quickly, ask the right questions, and demonstrate competence in the first call win. Firms that let it ring, route to voicemail, or fumble through an unstructured intake lose. This is not a technology problem firms have ignored. It is one they have tried to solve with receptionists, call centers, intake specialists, and answering services — each with their own limitations in cost, consistency, availability, and quality.

Donna is AutoCounsel's answer to the intake moment. She is an AI voice agent purpose-built for plaintiff law firms, designed to answer calls 24/7, qualify leads against the firm's own criteria, capture structured facts, and route each matter with the context the legal team needs to act immediately.

Not a generic receptionist bot

The market is full of AI answering services that greet callers with a script and take a message. Donna is fundamentally different. She is configured around the specific firm's intake criteria, practice areas, qualification logic, scheduling process, and escalation rules. She does not just answer the phone — she runs a structured intake interview tailored to personal injury, employment law, or workers' compensation cases.

When a potential PI client calls, Donna captures accident details, injury type, treatment status, insurance information, at-fault party details, and statute of limitations flags. For an employment case, she screens for retaliation, wrongful termination, discrimination, or wage-and-hour claims and captures the employment timeline, protected activity, and employer details. For workers' comp, she gathers injury circumstances, employer report status, medical treatment history, and missed work documentation.

Every call produces a structured summary: caller facts, case type classification, qualification score, urgency signals, risk flags, and a recommended next step. This is not a raw transcript that someone needs to read and interpret. It is an actionable intake record that maps directly to the firm's CRM fields.

What Donna does on every call

Donna answers in English or Spanish, using natural conversational phrasing adapted to the practice area. She introduces herself, explains the firm's process, and guides the caller through a goal-based interview. If the caller is emotional or confused, she acknowledges it and adjusts her pacing. If the caller is shopping for a firm, she highlights the firm's strengths without making promises.

During the call, Donna captures structured data points — not just free text. She identifies the caller's name, contact details, incident date, injury type, responsible parties, insurance carriers, existing legal representation, and any time-sensitive deadlines. She checks statute of limitations windows automatically across all US states.

After qualification, Donna can schedule a consultation directly on the attorney's calendar, initiate a retainer agreement for electronic signature, and send a confirmation email to the caller with next steps and a list of documents to bring. For repeat callers, she remembers prior conversations and picks up where the last one left off.

Every call is recorded, transcribed, and summarized. The transcript is stored against the matter record. The structured summary is written into the CRM. The staff receives an intake report in their inbox within seconds of the call ending.

The workflow continues after the call ends

Donna's real power is not the call itself — it is what happens next. Because AutoCounsel is a workflow execution platform, the intake call is just the first step in a configurable sequence. After Donna qualifies a lead, the platform can automatically create a matter in Litify, Salesforce, or Filevine. It can send a welcome email. It can assign a paralegal. It can request medical records. It can trigger a case quality assessment.

The firm designs these workflows visually in AutoCounsel's workflow editor, with branching logic, human approval gates, and escalation rules. If the case is high-value PI with clear liability and strong injuries, the workflow might fast-track retainer signing and immediately request police reports and medical records. If the case is marginal, the workflow might route to an attorney for a screening call before committing resources.

This is the difference between an AI receptionist and an AI intake specialist. Donna does not just capture a message. She starts a case.

Built for firms that compete on responsiveness

The legal intake market is competitive. Potential clients often call multiple firms. The first firm that responds competently, captures the right details, and makes the client feel heard wins the case. Donna is designed to be that first responder — available 24/7, consistent in quality, and fast enough to beat any human-staffed intake team.

For firm leadership, Donna solves several operational problems at once. She eliminates missed calls. She standardizes intake quality. She frees staff from phone duty. She captures cleaner data. She reduces the time from first call to case opening. And she does it at a fraction of the cost of adding intake specialists.

Donna is available today for personal injury, employment, and workers' compensation intake. She integrates with Litify, Salesforce, Filevine, RingCentral, Twilio, Microsoft Office, and Gmail. Every workflow is customized to the firm's process, practice areas, and team structure.

‍

AutoCounsel is built by Neptune Technologies Inc.—the agentic AI parent company behind Odyssey, Neptune Wealth, AutoCounsel, and Neptune Forge.