A solo or small-firm PI practice that takes every call it pleases will drown in files that go nowhere. The intake screen is not customer service; it is triage. The question is not whether the caller has a sympathetic story but whether the matter clears five specific gates that decide whether a file becomes a case.
Five gates, in order: statute, venue, defendant solvency, damages threshold, conflict check. A trained intake specialist runs the sequence in under five minutes on a recorded call. An attorney touches the file only if all five gates open. Below is the framework working California PI shops are using to keep their conversion numbers honest and their wasted hours down.
Statute First, Always
The first question is when. California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 sets a two-year limit for personal injury actions. That is the easy case. The harder cases are the ones where the caller has already burned through most of the period without knowing it.
Government tort claims under Government Code § 911.2 demand a written claim within six months of accrual. Late claim applications under § 911.4 give an outer year, but the relief is discretionary and routinely denied. A pedestrian-struck-by-city-vehicle call that arrives at month seven is functionally a referral to a malpractice carrier, not an intake.
Medical malpractice carries CCP § 340.5 — the earlier of three years from injury or one year from discovery, with limited tolling for foreign objects, fraud, and intentional concealment. The 90-day notice of intent under CCP § 364 tolls the limitations period an extra 90 days if served in the final 90. Product liability and latent defect cases turn on discovery; an asbestos call from 1987 exposure may still be timely under CCP § 340.2.
For minors, CCP § 352 tolls the statute until age 18 for most injury claims — but not for medical malpractice, where § 340.5 sets its own minor-specific clock with tolling capped well short of the age-of-majority date. That carve-out kills more pediatric med-mal calls than any other rule. Intake should flag the case and the date in the same breath.
The 90-day rule of thumb
If the incident date sits within 90 days of the statute running, the call is presumptively a decline absent extraordinary damages. There is not enough runway to investigate, demand, and file. Either the caller already has counsel and is shopping, or they have been sitting on the matter — both are bad signs at intake.
Venue and Forum
A San Diego rear-ender with two California parties is a clean venue call under CCP § 395. A trucking case where the carrier is incorporated in Texas, the driver lives in Nevada, and the crash occurred on I-15 near Baker is a forum problem before it is anything else. CCP § 395.5 puts venue where the contract was made, where the obligation arose, where the breach occurred, or where the defendant resides — for a corporate defendant in a tort action, that usually points back to the county of the injury.
Federal diversity under 28 U.S.C. § 1332 requires complete diversity and over $75,000 in controversy. A solid soft-tissue case can drop below that threshold once liens are netted; a catastrophic injury will not. The point is to know at intake whether the case is headed to state court, federal court, or arbitration under an MVA arbitration clause the caller does not yet know exists.
Venue dictates the cost structure too. A San Francisco Superior case carries different discovery, different motion practice, and a different jury pool than the same case in Kern County. The intake screen should match the venue to the firm's geography and capacity. A Bay Area firm without local counsel in Imperial County should think twice before signing a case that will live in El Centro for three years. Premises matters with public defendants carry their own constructive-notice burdens, as the discussion in Sargenti v. City of Long Beach illustrates.
Defendant Solvency and Recovery Sources
A case is worth its collectibility, not its theoretical verdict value. The intake script should pull three things: was the at-fault driver insured, what were the policy limits, and is there a UM/UIM stack on the plaintiff's side. California's minimum auto liability limits jumped to $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident on January 1, 2025, up from the long-standing $15,000/$30,000 floor.
The minimum-limits problem is the most common silent killer. A caller with $400,000 in medical specials, no UIM, and a defendant carrying $30,000 in primary coverage is not a personal injury case in any practical sense. It is a UIM denial waiting to happen and a medical lien problem. The firm that signs it eats the cost of investigating a matter that pays $30,000 minus 40 percent minus liens.
Commercial defendants change the math. A delivery van fleet, a rideshare driver in Period 3, a public works crew — these carry layered policies. Independent contractor classification under AB 5 and the Borello/Dynamex framework can be the difference between $1 million and $30,000 in available coverage. Intake should be asking whether the at-fault driver was working at the time, not only whether the caller is hurt.
For how recovery economics flow through to client takeaway, see the discussion in Lien Resolution Workflow: Staffing, Tools, and the Net-to-Client Number.
The Damages Floor
Every firm should have a written damages floor. For a contingency PI shop, the floor is the point below which the case loses money once investigation, litigation costs, and lien resolution are baked in. For most California firms the floor sits between $25,000 and $50,000 in defensible settlement value — not policy limits, not theoretical verdict, but a number the carrier desk will actually authorize.
Intake should ask three questions: where was the caller treated, are they still treating, and what is the total medical bills figure to date. Two ER visits and three chiropractor appointments do not clear most floors. A radiculopathy with an MRI showing herniation and a recommendation for epidural injections probably does. Treatment trajectory matters more than initial complaint.
Lost wages are the other lever. A W-2 employee out of work for six weeks with documented earnings produces clean wage loss. A 1099 contractor with no books does not, regardless of how confident the caller is in the lost income figure. The intake script should be asking for employer name, role, and how the caller is documenting time out.
The damages floor should also account for the firm's lien posture. California's medical lien practice has shifted under recent reasonableness rulings — the consolidation of medical billing through private equity has compressed net-to-client on the same gross numbers. A $40,000 case in 2022 may net less in 2026 than it did three years ago, which moves the floor up, not down.
Conflicts and the Rule 1.18 Trap
The conflict check is the gate most often skipped under intake pressure. California Rule of Professional Conduct 1.18 governs duties to prospective clients. Any substantive intake conversation creates a prospective-client relationship even if the firm never signs the matter. Material confidential information shared during that conversation can disqualify the firm from representing the adverse party later — including parties the firm did not realize were in the same accident chain.
This matters in multi-vehicle accidents, employer/employee chains, and any matter where the firm's existing client roster might overlap with potential defendants. A passenger calling about a single-vehicle accident is a conflict with the driver — who may be the firm's existing client through another matter. The intake form should capture every party identifiable from the call before any facts about liability or damages.
The screening-only conversation
Rule 1.18(d) allows a firm to limit prospective-client information to what is needed to determine whether a conflict exists. Train intake to identify all parties before exploring facts. Names, vehicle owners, employers, premises owners — these go into the conflict check first. Only after the check clears does the call move to the damages portion.
For firms doing volume intake, a written script that surfaces party names in the first two minutes is the difference between a clean ethical wall and a disqualification motion. The cost of getting this wrong is the entire matter plus a possible bar complaint.
Closing
Five gates, five minutes. A working intake process produces a case-to-call ratio the firm can defend at the partner meeting and a non-billable hours figure that does not eat the year. Firms that treat intake as receptionist work end up with files that should have been declines and declines that should have been files. The screen is the cheapest risk management a PI firm runs.