mass tort intake qualificationVersion the Rules. Route Uncertainty to a Person.
A practical operating model for versioned qualification criteria, explicit uncertainty, evidence support, exception routing, and authorized review.
Mass tort intake qualification is a governed review process supporting firm-wide mass tort intake services that compares a claimant record with firm-approved criteria. A reliable system records the criteria version, each answer's state, supporting evidence, conflicts, exceptions, and the authorized reviewer. It helps staff prepare consistent files without turning intake software into the final decision maker.
Qualification is a review state
A completed questionnaire shows only that the workflow received a set of responses. Those responses may be incomplete, internally inconsistent, unsupported by documents, or evaluated against an outdated rule set.
The intake record should therefore separate five things:
- what the prospect or source reported
- which firm-approved criterion applies
- which version of that criterion was effective
- what the available evidence supports or contradicts
- what a lawyer or other authorized firm reviewer decided
That separation matters at mass tort volume. When a rule is buried in a script, spreadsheet formula, or vendor configuration, staff cannot reliably explain why one record advanced and another entered review. A governed qualification model makes the rule, result, evidence, and reviewer visible without claiming that an operational screen decides legal merit.
This guide describes the record and workflow. The criteria for any drug, device, exposure, product, jurisdiction, or filing program belong to the responsible firm, which must define and approve the criteria that apply to its work.
Stop Paying Lead Brokers for Unqualified Claimants
Lead brokers frequently pass unqualified leads that consume staff time. OBE applies strict deterministic pre-qualification rules before retainers are issued.
Build criteria as controlled records
A qualification criterion should be stored as a named record. Each record needs enough detail for staff to ask the right question and for reviewers to reconstruct the result later.
| Criteria field | What it controls | Example of a safe operational value |
|---|---|---|
| Criterion ID | Stable reference across versions | EXPOSURE-DATE-01 |
| Question | Prompt approved for the current stage | Ask for the date or allow unknown |
| Answer type | Values the system may accept | Date, range, yes, no, unknown |
| Evidence expectation | Record that may support the answer | Named document type, if available |
| Result mapping | Possible operational outcomes | Met, not met, unresolved, exception |
| Effective version | Rule set used for evaluation | Version 3, effective on a recorded date |
| Approval owner | Person authorized to approve the rule | Named lawyer or firm-approved role |
| Escalation rule | Condition that requires review | Conflicting dates or unsupported answer |
The example values describe system behavior only. A firm can change the question or result mapping without overwriting the record that governed earlier reviews.
NIST's Data Governance and Management Profile concept paper connects data quality with policies, roles, provenance, lineage, and accountability. Applied to intake, that means a qualification result should be traceable to an approved rule, its input, its source, and the person responsible for the review.
Give every rule an effective version
Qualification rules change. The firm may clarify a question, revise an evidence expectation, add an exception, or change who must approve a result. Editing the current rule in place destroys the ability to interpret earlier work.
Treat each approved rule set as an effective version:
| Version element | Required record | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Version number | Immutable identifier | Distinguishes one approved rule set from another |
| Effective from | Date and time | Determines when the version may govern new evaluations |
| Effective until | Date and time or open | Prevents use after retirement |
| Approved by | Named authorized person | Establishes ownership |
| Change reason | Short reviewed explanation | Gives later reviewers context |
| Changed criteria | Field-level comparison | Shows what actually moved |
| Re-evaluation policy | None, selected records, or defined cohort | Prevents silent retrospective scoring |
NIST Special Publication 800-53 describes configuration change control in control CM-3 as reviewing, approving or disapproving, documenting, implementing, and retaining records of controlled changes. A law firm qualification rule sits outside the federal information-system context, and the same change-record principle is useful here because the firm needs to know which approved configuration produced an operational result.
When a version changes, keep prior evaluations intact and store the original result with its original version. If the firm decides that selected records require another pass, create a new evaluation event that points to the new version and preserves the former result.
Distinguish answered, unknown, and unanswered
Qualification workflows fail when every empty field becomes the same value. Three states should remain distinct:
- Answered means the question received a usable response, including an explicit no.
- Unknown means the person was asked but could not provide the fact.
- Unanswered means the workflow has no response and may not have presented the question.
These states produce different work. An unknown treatment date may call for a document request. An unanswered treatment question may call for an interview task. A no response may resolve the operational criterion, subject to the firm's rule and review requirements.
When the prospect knows only a range, store the range as reported. "Spring 2021" stays "spring 2021". A normalized value can be added later if firm policy permits it, but the original statement and its source should remain visible.
Surface conflicts for reviewer resolution
A qualification record can contain two plausible values for the same fact. The prospect may report one date while a document shows another. Two records may use different product names. A correction may disagree with an earlier call note.
The system should preserve each assertion with its source, received time, and author. It should then create a conflict that names the field, competing values, affected criterion, owner, and permitted resolution states. The system selects the newest value or the highest-confidence extraction only when an authorized policy explicitly allows that step.
Conflict screening is a separate control from qualification. A record may appear to satisfy an operational criterion and still be blocked by the firm's conflict process. The comment on ABA Model Rule 1.18 explains that initial consultations should be limited to information reasonably necessary to decide whether to undertake the matter. The firm should design question order, access, and escalation around its own obligations and jurisdiction and collect only what is reasonably necessary before opening controls run.
Automate Statute of Limitations and Exposure Checks
OBE's intake engine calculates applicable statutes of limitations and product recall dates automatically during the initial inquiry.
Treat evidence as support for each criterion
An uploaded file may be unreadable, unrelated, duplicated, incomplete, or inconsistent with the reported fact, so a reviewer confirms support before a criterion is marked satisfied. Track document work with specific states such as requested, received, classified, reviewed, supports, contradicts, and insufficient.
For a proposed fact, preserve:
- the person or system that proposed it
- the original statement or document
- the document page or location when practical
- the extraction or entry time
- any correction and its reason
- the reviewer who accepted or rejected it
Route edge cases into named exception queues
An exception queue is a controlled route. Each queue needs entry conditions, a qualified owner, required context, a due date, allowed outcomes, and an escalation path.
| Edge case | Queue | Required next action |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown fact with expected evidence | Evidence follow-up | Request the approved record or record why it is unavailable |
| Conflicting answer and document | Fact conflict review | Compare sources and record the reviewed resolution |
| Possible duplicate claimant | Identity review | Compare approved identifiers before merge or separation |
| Rule version changed during intake | Version exception | Apply the firm's documented re-evaluation policy |
| Answer outside a defined format | Data clarification | Preserve the original response and request clarification |
| Possible conflict | Conflict review | Restrict advancement and route under firm procedure |
| Unusual fact pattern | Authorized review | Send the complete record to a lawyer or approved reviewer |
Give every exception a structured reason. It makes workload visible and shows whether the problem came from a question, a missing source, a rule, or an unusual record.
Keep lawyers and authorized staff at the decision boundary
Software can compare stored answers with firm-approved rules, identify gaps, assemble evidence, and route exceptions. Intake professionals can collect facts, conduct approved follow-up, and prepare the record. The firm must define who may approve criteria and who may make legal, conflict, engagement, and representation decisions.
ABA Model Rule 5.3 addresses managerial and supervisory measures for nonlawyer assistance. The ABA Standing Committee's summary of Formal Opinion 506 says trained and supervised nonlawyers may assist with specified prospective-client intake tasks, while the prospective client must have an opportunity to communicate with the lawyer about the fee agreement and scope of representation.
Firm policy and the rules of the relevant jurisdiction control the exact boundary. The workflow should encode that boundary through permissions and required review states. A score should never masquerade as an attorney decision.
Do Not Get Scammed Twice: Statutory Fee-Shifting vs. Upfront Retainers
Claimants undergoing case qualification interviews are often misled by unlicensed lead brokers who demand upfront screening fees before submitting files to litigation counsel.
Under federal multidistrict litigation practice, statutory claims and tort actions operate under contingency fee arrangements and statutory fee provisions where attorneys recover fees only upon successful resolution. Claimants should never pay upfront retainers or qualification fees to determine whether their injury meets campaign benchmarks.
OBE equips law firms with deterministic qualification matrices that score eligibility against versioned rules, ensuring transparent evaluation with zero upfront cost to claimants.
Audit the evidence behind the disposition
A useful qualification report shows which criteria version was used, how many results remain unresolved, which evidence requests are aging, how often reviewers change proposed results, and which exception queues are growing, alongside the count of records marked qualified or not qualified.
Mass tort intake qualification works when the firm can reconstruct the path from source to answer, answer to criterion, criterion to version, evidence to conflict, and proposed result to authorized review. That record gives staff a consistent operating model while preserving the judgment and responsibility that belong with the firm.
Find the Right Intake Software and Developers for Your Firm
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Schedule a Consultation with Tim Ottowitz to Review Your Case Type
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Frequently asked questions
Can software decide whether a mass tort claim qualifies?
Software can apply firm-approved operational rules and prepare a proposed result. Lawyers or other authorized firm staff should retain decisions involving legal merit, conflicts, engagement, and legal advice under firm policy and applicable rules.
Should a firm re-evaluate old records when criteria change?
The firm should define a reviewed re-evaluation policy for each change. If records are evaluated again, preserve the original result and version, then add a new evaluation event so history stays intact.
What happens when a claimant does not know an answer?
Record the answer as unknown, identify any expected supporting record, and route the appropriate follow-up or review. Unknown is its own state, separate from no and separate from a question the workflow never asked.