Mass tort intake
Mass tort intake that grades every claimant and decides none of them.
A tort campaign can bring in more inquiries in a week than a team can read carefully. The usual fix is a score: software that says which claimants are worth calling. I build the other kind. Software reads each inquiry for its facts and checks them against criteria your lawyers wrote. A person makes every call.
By Jimmy Hackett, founder of Playground Giants · Updated November 13, 2026
Talk about your intakeWhy a claimant score is the wrong thing to automate
Ask a model whether a claimant qualifies and it will answer, confidently, every time. Run the same transcript twice and the answer can change. Six weeks into a campaign nobody can say why a given person landed in the reject pile, because the reason was never written down anywhere a lawyer could read.
In a mass tort that happens a thousand times a week. Each rejection is a judgment about someone's claim that no lawyer made and nobody can explain to a co-counsel, a regulator or the claimant.
Writing a better prompt doesn't fix it. What fixes it is not asking the model that question at all.
The mass tort intake process, step by step
Four steps. The model works in the second one only.
1. Keep the claimant’s own words
Every call transcript, form and referral email is saved as it arrived, once, in your firm’s systems. When a claimant disputes how they were screened six months later, the original is still there.
2. Pull out the facts, nothing else
A model reads each inquiry and fills a fixed set of fields for that tort: product or drug, injury as the claimant described it, dates, location, records mentioned. If a date isn’t clearly stated, the field stays empty. There is no field for how strong the claim is.
3. Check the facts against written criteria
Ordinary code, not the model, checks each field against the tort’s criteria: inside the exposure window, injury on the qualifying list, records available, a jurisdiction you take. Each check passes, fails or comes back incomplete, and each result names the rule that produced it.
4. Send every claimant to a person
Met criteria goes to attorney review. Incomplete goes to an intake specialist with the missing question attached. When the model is unsure or unavailable, the inquiry goes to a person instead of being guessed at or skipped.
The longer version, with what goes wrong at each step, is in mass tort intake: grading volume without grading merit.
Mass tort intake services, leads or a system you own
Most of what ranks for mass tort intake is a service you rent or leads you buy. Both fit many firms. What separates the three is who writes the screening criteria, and where the record of each decision lives.
Rent an intake service
A call center screens claimants on a script and sends over the ones who pass. Fast to start and good for surges. The script, and the record of why someone was turned away, stay with the vendor.
Buy leads that arrive pre-screened
Someone else runs the campaign and the screening and sells you the result. You see the claimants who passed, not the rules that passed them.
Own the intake system
Your criteria, in writing a lawyer can read and change, applied the same way to every claimant, on accounts in your firm’s name. More setup at the start. It can sit behind either of the other two.
What is real so far
Not a mass tort client yet. The same grading layer, running on PI intake.
I haven't run mass tort intake for a client. The grading layer described here runs today on personal injury intake at one firm, which is not named at its preference.
made-up inquiries, written to the firm's own rules, that the grading was tested against
from a form submit to a graded lead in front of the firm
digest of every inquiry where the software's grade and a person's disagreed
The disagreement digest is the part that matters for a tort campaign. When the software and a person disagree, the rule gets fixed and written down, instead of the two arguing claimant by claimant.
Read the personal injury case studyHow it starts
With the two week law firm intake audit. I trace how claimants reach your firm today, from the ad or the call center to the retainer, show where something is deciding that shouldn't be, and price the build in phases. It is a $2,500 fixed fee, credited in full if you build within ninety days, and the plan is yours either way. For intake software beyond mass torts, see law firm intake software.
Questions about mass tort intake
What is mass tort intake?
Mass tort intake is the screening a firm runs on every person who responds to a tort campaign: a fixed questionnaire for that tort, checks against its criteria (product or drug used, injury, dates, where it happened), a request for records, and a retainer. At campaign volume it is mostly sorting, which is why it gets automated, and why the sorting rules have to be written down.
Can software decide whether a claimant qualifies?
It should not. A model can read an inquiry and pull out the facts. Ordinary code can check those facts against criteria a lawyer wrote and say which ones are met, missing or unclear. Whether the person has a case is a legal judgment, and a person makes it.
How is this different from a mass tort intake service?
An intake service rents you people, usually a call center, who screen claimants on their script and send you the ones who pass. This is a system on accounts in your firm’s name: your criteria, written so a lawyer can read them, and a record of why each claimant was routed where they were. It can sit behind a call center you already use.
What happens to a claimant who is missing an answer?
They are marked incomplete, not rejected, and routed to a person who can ask the missing question. Incomplete is its own outcome in the rules, separate from does-not-qualify.
Has Playground Giants run mass tort intake?
Not for a client yet. The same grading layer runs on personal injury intake at one firm: it was tested against 66 made-up inquiries written to the firm’s own rules, a graded lead reaches the firm in under 10 seconds, and a daily digest lists every inquiry where the software’s grade and a person’s grade disagreed.
What does it cost to start?
Every build starts with the Workflow Audit: two weeks, a $2,500 fixed fee, and a written plan that is yours either way. If you build within ninety days, the full fee comes off the build price.
Tell me how claimants reach your firm today.
A short message is enough for me to tell you whether there is anything worth building. If there is not, I will say so.
Talk about your intake