By the Templateez Team · Licensed Attorney · June 2026

Criminal Defense Intake: What You Need Before the First Hearing

Criminal defense intake operates under constraints that do not exist in civil practice. The client may be calling from a holding cell. The first court appearance may be tomorrow morning. You do not have the luxury of scheduling a leisurely consultation next week and asking the client to bring their documents. You need specific information fast, and you need it organized in a way that lets you walk into an arraignment or bail hearing prepared. For guidance on structuring your office to handle emergency after-hours calls like DUI arrests and overnight bookings, see our dedicated guide.

A general law firm intake form covers conflict checks, fee agreements, and matter classification. Those are necessary but insufficient for criminal defense. A proper criminal defense intake form captures the details that determine your first 72 hours of representation.

Charges and case identification

Start with what the client is actually charged with. Not "assault" — the specific statute number, the degree, and whether it is a felony, misdemeanor, or violation. A client who says "I got arrested for assault" could be facing anything from a municipal ordinance violation to a first-degree felony with mandatory minimums. The statute citation tells you the elements you will need to address, the potential sentencing range, and whether the case is in municipal court or superior court.

Your intake should also capture: complaint or indictment number (if issued), arresting agency, arrest date, and the assigned court and judge if known. In jurisdictions with multiple courthouses, the assigned location matters for scheduling and for knowing which prosecutor's office is handling the case.

Bail and custody status

This is the first thing you need to know and the field most civil intake forms do not have. Is the client in custody right now? If so, where are they being held? What is the bail amount, and has it been posted? If they are out, what are the conditions of release — GPS monitoring, no-contact orders, travel restrictions, drug testing, check-in requirements?

Bail conditions affect everything from your ability to meet with the client to whether a bail modification motion is your most urgent filing. If your client is sitting in county jail on $250,000 bail for a non-violent offense, the bail argument might be more pressing than the merits for the first two weeks.

Speedy trial, not statute of limitations

Civil lawyers think in terms of statutes of limitations. Criminal defense lawyers think in terms of speedy trial clocks. Once charges are filed or the client is arrested, a constitutional and statutory clock starts running. In federal court, the Speedy Trial Act gives you 70 days from indictment to trial, with excludable time for specific events. State rules vary but the principle is the same: the government cannot hold a charge over someone indefinitely.

Your intake form needs a field for the speedy trial deadline and a field for the date the clock started. It also needs space to track excludable time — continuances, competency evaluations, interlocutory appeals — because every one of those tolls the clock. Missing a speedy trial deadline is a potential dismissal with prejudice in your client's favor if you catch it, and malpractice if you do not.

Prior record

Ask about prior convictions, pending charges in other jurisdictions, and probation or parole status. This is not optional background — it drives sentencing exposure directly. A second DWI carries different mandatory minimums than a first. A new arrest while on probation triggers a violation proceeding that runs parallel to the new case. A client with a prior felony conviction who is charged with a firearm offense faces federal mandatory minimums that change the entire landscape.

Your intake should capture: prior felony convictions (with approximate dates and jurisdictions), prior misdemeanor convictions, any current probation or parole supervision (with the supervising officer's name if known), and any pending charges elsewhere. Clients sometimes forget to mention the open case in the next county. Your form should ask directly.

Co-defendants and witnesses

Criminal cases often involve multiple defendants, and your intake needs to capture who they are. Co-defendant information matters for conflict checks (you cannot represent Client A if your firm represented Co-Defendant B last year), for joint defense agreements, and for understanding the government's theory of the case. If three people were arrested at the same scene, the prosecution's strategy against your client depends partly on what the other two are doing.

Witness information is equally critical. Your intake should capture the names and contact information for anyone the client knows was present, any potential alibi witnesses, and any victim or complainant information the client has. In domestic violence cases, the complainant is often someone the client lives with — and the no-contact order in the bail conditions may prevent the client from returning home, which creates an immediate practical crisis on top of the legal one.

Discovery and evidence status

At intake, you usually do not have discovery yet. But you should ask what the client knows. Was there a body camera? Store surveillance? A recorded statement at the police station? Did the client consent to a search, or was there a warrant? Did the client make any statements to police, and if so, were Miranda warnings given?

These questions do two things. First, they flag potential suppression issues early — if the client says officers searched the car without consent or a warrant, that is a motion to suppress you should be thinking about before you even get the police report. Second, they tell you what discovery to demand promptly. Body camera footage gets overwritten. Store surveillance systems record over themselves on 30- or 60-day loops. Identifying these sources at intake and sending preservation letters immediately can save evidence that disappears if you wait.

Why civil intake forms do not work

A personal injury intake form captures accident details, medical treatment, and insurance information. None of that maps to criminal defense. The timeline is different (speedy trial clocks rather than civil filing deadlines), the urgency is different (the client may be in jail right now), the procedural framework is different (the prosecution is a government entity, not a private litigant), and the information you need to act on day one is categorically different.

Using a civil intake form for criminal defense means you will miss bail conditions, speedy trial deadlines, co-defendant conflicts, and suppression issues. Those are not nice-to-haves. They are the substance of early-stage criminal defense work.

Getting organized across a criminal defense practice

If you handle a mix of criminal matters — DWI, drug offenses, assault, white collar, domestic violence — a structured intake process keeps you from reinventing the wheel on every new case. For traffic-specific matters like speeding, DUI/DWI, and moving violations, a dedicated traffic violations intake form captures the radar calibration, point exposure, and CDL-specific fields that a general criminal intake misses. The same core fields apply across charge types: custody status, bail conditions, speedy trial dates, prior record, co-defendants, and evidence preservation needs. What changes is the substantive detail within each category.

For a practice that handles criminal defense alongside other matter types, the Legal Bundle covers criminal defense, personal injury, family law, immigration, and 34 other practice areas with intake forms built for each area's specific requirements.