Client intake interviews allow you to collect detailed information from your clients remotely. By sending an interview link via email, your clients can provide personal, financial, relationship, and family information at their convenience. The responses are then available for you to review and merge into the client profile.
What Are Intake Interviews?
Intake interviews are structured questionnaires that collect information directly from your clients. Unlike disclosure interviews, which collect financial documents from either party, intake interviews are sent to your own clients to gather the information you need to manage their file. Interviews are pre-populated with any data already saved to the client profile, so clients only need to fill in what is missing or update what has changed.
Creating a New Interview
To create and send a new intake interview:
- Open the client's matter and select Interviews in the matter sidebar.
- Click Send interview.
- Under Interview Types, choose an interview template.
- If more than one person in the matter is your client, choose who should receive the interview under Send to.
- Check the Email Address. It is filled in from the client profile. If you enter a different address, tick the box to confirm that the client should receive the interview at that address.
- Click Send Interview to deliver the interview link to the client via email.
The client will receive an email with a secure link to the interview. They can access and complete the interview without needing a Divorcepath account.
Choosing a Template
When creating a new interview, you can select from the following template types:
- Pre-defined templates — templates created by Divorcepath that cover common intake scenarios: Intake Interview, Financial Interview (Support Claims), and Parenting & Children.
- Firm templates — custom templates created by your team that are shared across your organization. They are marked Customized.
Templates determine which questions are included in the interview. To build your own questionnaire, create a template on the Customize Interviews page first. For more information on creating and managing templates, see Interview Templates.
What Information Is Collected
The questions in an interview come from its template. Templates are made up of steps, such as:
- Profile and address — contact details, address, date of birth, and other identifying information.
- Relationship details — date of marriage or cohabitation, separation date, and relationship history.
- Children — information about children of the relationship.
- Financial information — income, adjustments, property and debts, and budget items.
Choosing a template that includes only the relevant steps keeps the interview focused and reduces the time your client needs to spend completing it.
Tracking Completion Status
Once an interview has been sent, you can monitor its progress on the matter's Interviews page. Under Sent interviews, each interview shows how much of it the client has completed and a progress timeline:
- Email — the interview email has been delivered. If delivery fails, this step shows an error.
- Opened — the client has opened the interview.
- In Progress — the client has begun answering questions.
- Submitted — the client has finished and submitted the interview.
A red badge next to the interview name shows how many answers conflict with the client file and need your review.
Resending Interview Links
Clients can close the interview and come back to the same link later; their progress is saved automatically. If a client's link has expired, opening it automatically emails them a new link to the same interview, and any answers they have already provided are kept.
If a client has not received the email or needs it sent to a different address, send a new interview from the matter's Interviews page.
Link Expiry
Interview links expire 14 days after they are sent. This helps by:
- Encouraging clients to complete the interview promptly.
- Ensuring that stale interview links are not used to submit outdated information.
- Maintaining control over the data collection timeline.
If an interview expires before the client completes it, the client can request a fresh link simply by opening the old one, or you can send a new interview at any time.
