July 11, 2026

Insurance Coverage and Defense Intake Forms: A Practical Guide

Insurance coverage work is messy from the start. A carrier calls, says they have a suit against an insured, and asks you to handle the defense. Or a policyholder calls you directly because their insurer just sent a reservation of rights letter and they do not know what it means. Either way, before you can do anything useful, you need a clear picture of the policy, the claim, the parties, and where things stand procedurally. Without that picture, you are guessing—and guessing in coverage work is how opinions get issued on the wrong policy form or defenses get mounted without anyone checking whether the carrier actually has a duty to defend.

An insurance coverage and defense intake form is how you build that picture. Not by asking the client to describe their situation in a paragraph, but by walking through the specific data points that a coverage analysis requires. Here is what the form needs to capture and why each piece matters.

Policyholder and insurer details

Start with who holds the policy and who issued it. That sounds simple, but coverage disputes frequently turn on exactly which entity is the named insured, whether additional insureds are covered by endorsement, and which carrier among a tower of excess layers actually bears exposure. Your intake should collect the policyholder's full legal name, business type, and contact information. Then get the insurer's name, the policy number, and the name of the claims adjuster or coverage counsel who has been handling things on the carrier side. If the carrier has already retained defense counsel separately from you, get that attorney's name and contact information too—you need to know who is already in the picture.

Policy type and coverage dates

Coverage analysis lives and dies on two questions: what kind of policy is this, and when was it in force? The type of policy determines how coverage is triggered. A CGL policy is typically occurrence-based—the policy in effect when the injury or damage happened is the one that responds. An E&O or D&O policy is usually claims-made—meaning the policy in effect when the claim was first made and reported is what matters, regardless of when the underlying act occurred. These are fundamentally different analytical frameworks, and mixing them up is an error you cannot walk back.

Your form should list the common policy types—CGL, D&O, E&O, homeowners, commercial auto, umbrella, excess, cyber, and professional liability—and let the attorney check the applicable one. Then capture the policy period (inception and expiration dates), and for claims-made policies, the retroactive date and whether any extended reporting period or tail coverage exists. For occurrence policies, note the date of loss or occurrence, because that is what determines which policy year is triggered.

The claim or suit: what actually happened

Now you need the facts of the underlying dispute. What is the insured being sued for? When was the suit filed? What are the specific allegations in the complaint? This is where a good intake form earns its keep, because coverage analysis is not about whether the insured did something wrong—it is about whether the allegations in the complaint, taken as true, fall within the scope of coverage. The actual facts may differ from the pleaded facts, and you need both.

Capture the date the claim was first made or the suit was filed, the court and case number if litigation is pending, the parties involved, and a summary of the allegations. If you can get a copy of the underlying complaint attached to the intake, even better. You also want the date the insured first notified the carrier of the claim, because late notice is one of the most common coverage defenses, and your timeline on that issue starts here. If you handle insurance claims matters more broadly, you know how critical this timeline documentation is from the first conversation.

Tender of defense and reservation of rights

Has the insured tendered the defense to the carrier? Has the carrier accepted, denied, or accepted with a reservation of rights? These are threshold questions that shape the entire representation. If the carrier has issued a reservation of rights letter, you need a copy of it. That letter tells you what coverage positions the carrier is taking, what exclusions it is relying on, and what the carrier thinks might allow it to deny coverage down the road while it pays for the defense in the meantime.

This is also where Cumis counsel issues arise. In several states, when a carrier defends under a reservation of rights and there is a conflict of interest between the carrier and the insured, the insured has the right to independent counsel—sometimes called Cumis counsel or Cumis/independent counsel, after the California case that established the rule. If the matter involves a potential conflict, your intake form needs to flag it. Is the carrier asserting that some claims are covered and others are not? Is there an allocation dispute between covered and uncovered claims? Is the carrier reserving the right to seek reimbursement of defense costs if coverage is ultimately denied? Each of these creates a potential conflict that may entitle the insured to choose their own defense attorney at the carrier's expense.

Coverage positions and exclusions at issue

If the carrier has already taken coverage positions, document them at intake. Which policy provisions is the carrier relying on to limit or deny coverage? Common exclusions include the intentional act exclusion, the expected or intended exclusion, the professional services exclusion in CGL policies (which pushes the claim to E&O coverage), the pollution exclusion, the employment-related practices exclusion, and various endorsement-based exclusions that modify the standard form. Your intake should have space to record which exclusions the carrier has flagged and which policy provisions the insured believes support coverage.

This is also where you capture whether there have been prior claims under the same policy. Many policies contain prior-knowledge or prior-notice exclusions that bar coverage for claims the insured knew about before the policy period. Prior claims also affect the aggregate limit—if the insured has already drawn down the aggregate on earlier claims, the remaining coverage available for this claim may be reduced or exhausted.

Other potentially applicable policies

Insurance coverage disputes rarely involve a single policy in isolation. The insured may have CGL coverage from one carrier, an umbrella from another, and a professional liability policy from a third. Each policy has its own "other insurance" clause that determines how coverage is allocated when multiple policies respond to the same claim. Your intake form should ask whether the insured has other policies that might apply to this claim, and if so, capture the carrier, policy number, and policy type for each.

This also matters when you are sorting out the distinction between coverage counsel and defense counsel. Coverage counsel advises on whether the policy covers the claim. Defense counsel defends the insured in the underlying suit. Sometimes one attorney does both; sometimes they are different attorneys with different clients. If you are being asked to fill both roles, the intake form should make that explicit so everyone understands the scope of the engagement from day one. This kind of structural clarity at the outset prevents the misunderstandings that lead to malpractice claims and bar grievances in coverage work. If the underlying dispute involves commercial litigation, the complexity only multiplies, because you are layering coverage analysis on top of an already-complex business dispute.

Why a structured form matters here specifically

You can get away with a loose intake process in some practice areas. Insurance coverage is not one of them. A missed policy endorsement, an overlooked exclusion, a forgotten prior claim under the same policy—any of these can result in a coverage opinion that is wrong. And wrong coverage opinions do not just lose cases. They create malpractice exposure and destroy client relationships with carriers whose repeat business is your practice's revenue base.

A fillable intake form that walks through these categories in order means nothing gets skipped. The attorney filling it out during the first call or meeting has a checklist that covers policy identification, coverage type, claim facts, tender status, reservation of rights, exclusions, conflicts, and related policies. That is the foundation of a coverage file that holds up under scrutiny, whether the scrutiny comes from opposing counsel, the court, or your own client six months later when they want to know why you reached a particular coverage conclusion.

Our legal intake form templates follow a standard three-page litigation format designed by a licensed attorney admitted in New Jersey and New York. The insurance coverage and defense set includes both the internal intake form (for your file) and a client questionnaire (for the policyholder to complete). Both are fillable PDFs—open them in any PDF reader, type in your answers, save, and print.