| name | legal-request-triage |
| description | Triage incoming legal or legal-adjacent requests by issue type, urgency, jurisdiction or contract context, factual completeness, business impact, deadlines, confidentiality, and the qualified owner needed for interpretation. |
Legal Request Triage
Use when legal operations receives a question, dispute, contract issue, policy request, notice, claim, or other matter that needs routing rather than immediate substantive advice.
Procedure
- Capture the requester, business owner, issue, desired decision, relevant parties, dates, geography or jurisdiction if known, and why the matter is time-sensitive.
- Collect authoritative documents, communications, notices, contracts, policies, facts, and prior legal guidance relevant to the request.
- Classify the request by process area such as commercial, privacy, employment, corporate, dispute, IP, regulatory, policy, or another organization-defined category without assuming the legal conclusion.
- Identify hard deadlines, limitation or notice dates provided by authoritative sources, active incidents, threatened harm, or executive commitments that change urgency.
- Separate factual questions Legal Ops can resolve from legal interpretation or advice that requires qualified counsel.
- Identify business, finance, security, product, HR, procurement, or operational stakeholders whose facts or decisions are prerequisites.
- Apply confidentiality and privilege handling according to organizational policy and counsel direction.
- Route the complete packet to the correct authorized reviewer with an urgency level and concise statement of the decision needed.
Decision rules
- Triage determines process and owner; it does not manufacture legal advice.
- Urgency should follow real deadlines and consequence, not requester seniority alone.
- Preserve original notices and communications.
- If jurisdiction or authority is unclear, surface that uncertainty to counsel.
Quality gate
Triage is complete when the issue, facts, documents, deadlines, business impact, confidentiality, and required decision are clear, factual gaps are visible, stakeholders are identified, and the request reaches the qualified owner without Legal Ops overstating legal conclusions.
