By the Templateez Team · Licensed Attorney · July 2026

What Information Should You Collect From New Clients? A Field-by-Field Guide

Every client relationship starts with a form. Whether you’re a solo practitioner opening a personal injury file, a dentist welcoming a new patient, or a plumber dispatching a crew to a residential call, the information you capture in those first few minutes determines how smoothly everything runs from that point forward. Miss a critical field and you’re chasing it down later—or worse, you never get it at all.

I’ve practiced law in New Jersey and New York for years, and I’ve seen what happens when intake forms are incomplete. A missing statute of limitations date nearly cost a colleague a $340,000 settlement. A dental office that skipped medication history ended up in a malpractice review. A plumbing company that didn’t record gate codes wasted $1,200 in labor on a crew that couldn’t access the property.

This guide breaks down exactly what fields belong on a new client intake form, organized by category, with real scenarios that explain why each one matters. If you’re building forms from scratch or evaluating your current intake workflow, use this as your checklist.

1. Universal Fields Every Intake Form Needs

Regardless of your industry, certain fields are non-negotiable. These apply to every intake form—legal, medical, trade, or professional services.

Contact and Identity

• Full legal name. Not a nickname. You need the name that appears on legal documents, insurance cards, and billing records. A family law attorney who files a petition under “Mike Johnson” when the client’s legal name is “Michael A. Johnson III” creates an avoidable headache.
• Date of birth. Required for insurance verification, conflict checks, and age-dependent legal thresholds. In personal injury, the client’s age at the time of injury can affect damages calculations.
• Address (mailing and residential, if different). Billing goes to one; service of process or service calls go to the other. Capture both.
• Phone number(s). Cell and home/work. Note which is primary.
• Email address. For appointment confirmations, document delivery, and billing. More than half of professional communications now happen by email, and a missing address means you’re mailing paper or playing phone tag.
• Company (if applicable). Many clients come through a business entity. If you’re billing an LLC or corporation rather than an individual, you need the entity name from the start—not three invoices into the relationship.

Engagement Context

• Referral source. More on this below, but capture it at intake. You won’t remember to ask later.
• Preferred contact method. Some clients refuse to answer unknown numbers. Others never check email. One field saves hours of unreturned calls.
• Emergency contact. Mandatory in healthcare, smart in every field. If a client becomes unreachable mid-matter, you need someone to call.

For a deeper look at how these universal fields fit into a complete client file, see our guide on building a client file that actually works.

2. Legal-Specific Fields

Legal intake forms carry more weight than most because missing information can have jurisdictional or procedural consequences. A personal injury intake form that omits the statute of limitations date is a liability in itself.

Case Identification

• Case type checkboxes. Motor vehicle accident, slip and fall, medical malpractice, products liability—structured checkboxes let your staff categorize the file immediately without interpreting free-text descriptions.
• Opposing party name and contact information. You can’t run a conflict check without this. In litigation, you also need it for service of process. Capture the name, address, phone, and attorney (if known) at first contact.
• Statute of limitations date. This is the field that almost cost a colleague $340,000. The client called about a car accident. The paralegal took down the facts but didn’t calculate the SOL date. The file sat in “pending review” for five weeks. When the attorney finally opened it, they had 22 days left to file. The complaint went out with eight days to spare. A single date field on the intake form would have flagged the urgency on day one.
• Court and jurisdiction. State court, federal court, municipal court—and which county or district. For criminal defense matters, this also determines which prosecutor’s office you’re dealing with.

Case History

• Prior attorney information. If the client had previous counsel, you need their name, firm, and the reason for the change. This flags potential problem clients and helps with file transfers.
• Existing court orders. Restraining orders, custody orders, preliminary injunctions—anything already in place affects your strategy from the start.
• Insurance information. In personal injury, the at-fault party’s insurance carrier and policy number are as important as the client’s own coverage. UIM/UM policy limits from the client’s own auto policy can double the recovery in some cases.

For a complete breakdown of legal-specific intake fields, see our post on essential law firm intake form fields. You can also browse our full collection of legal intake forms, each designed for a specific practice area.

3. Healthcare-Specific Fields

Healthcare intake goes beyond demographics. You’re collecting information that directly affects treatment decisions, and missing data can cause harm.

Clinical Information

• Chief complaint. Why is the patient here today? This should be in the patient’s own words, captured verbatim when possible. “My tooth hurts when I drink cold water” tells you more than “tooth pain.”
• Medical history. Past surgeries, hospitalizations, chronic conditions. A dental intake form that doesn’t ask about heart conditions is incomplete—patients with certain valve replacements need antibiotic prophylaxis before dental procedures.
• Current medications. This is where a dental office in Ohio learned an expensive lesson. A patient on warfarin (a blood thinner) came in for an extraction. The intake form didn’t have a medications field. Nobody asked. The extraction caused prolonged bleeding that required an ER visit and a $14,000 bill. The malpractice review took nine months. One form field could have prevented the entire chain of events.
• Allergies. Latex, penicillin, lidocaine, iodine—these matter in virtually every clinical setting. Separate drug allergies from environmental allergies.
• Referring physician. For specialists, this field drives referral tracking and follow-up coordination.

Insurance and Subscriber Information

• Insurance subscriber vs. patient. This trips up a lot of practices. The patient is a 14-year-old. The subscriber is the parent. The policy is under the parent’s employer. You need subscriber name, subscriber DOB, subscriber employer, group number, and member ID—all separate from the patient’s own demographics.
• HIPAA acknowledgment fields. Required by federal law. The patient must acknowledge receipt of your Notice of Privacy Practices. Your form needs a date field and signature line for this, and it belongs on the client questionnaire, not the internal intake form.

Browse our full healthcare intake form collection for specialty-specific templates covering dental, chiropractic, mental health, veterinary, and more.

4. Trade and Contractor-Specific Fields

Service businesses lose money on incomplete intake more than almost any other industry. When a crew shows up to a job site without the right information, the cost is immediate and measurable.

Property and Access

• Property address vs. billing address. A property management company calls your plumbing company about a rental unit. The work happens at 142 Oak Street. The invoice goes to a management office at 500 Commerce Drive. If your intake form has one address field, someone’s getting the wrong document.
• Property type (residential or commercial). This affects pricing, licensing requirements, permit needs, and crew assignments. Commercial jobs often require different insurance certificates.
• Access instructions. Gate codes, lockbox combinations, “the key is under the blue pot on the side porch,” whether a tenant needs 24-hour notice. A plumbing company in Texas dispatched a two-person crew to a gated community. No gate code on the work order. The crew sat outside for 40 minutes trying to reach the client by phone. At $75/hour per technician, that’s $100 in wasted labor before anyone touched a pipe. Multiply that by three incomplete work orders a week, and you’re losing $15,000+ a year on a missing form field.
• Preferred schedule and availability windows. “Anytime” never means anytime. Get specific: weekday mornings, after 3 PM, Saturdays only.

Scope and Compliance

• Scope of work description. Free-text field, but critical. “Fix the leak” and “repipe the second-floor bathroom” are very different jobs with very different price tags.
• Permit requirements. Does this work require a municipal permit? Who pulls it—the contractor or the homeowner? Capture this at intake to avoid delays.
• Existing warranty information. Is the equipment under manufacturer warranty? A contractor who replaces a unit that was still under warranty creates a billing dispute and an unhappy client.

5. Professional Services Fields

Accountants, consultants, financial advisors, and similar professionals need intake fields that capture the client’s business context, not just their contact information.

• Business entity type. Sole proprietorship, LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, partnership, nonprofit. An accounting intake form without this field means the preparer is guessing at the tax treatment until they ask—and every minute spent clarifying basics is a minute not spent on billable analysis.
• Fiscal year. Calendar year or fiscal year ending June 30? This determines every deadline on your calendar.
• Software currently in use. QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks, a shoebox of receipts. Knowing this before the first meeting lets you prepare the right questions and set realistic expectations about data migration.
• Prior provider information. Name, firm, and reason for the switch. If they left because their last accountant was “too expensive,” that tells you something about price sensitivity. If they left because of missed deadlines, that tells you about their expectations for responsiveness.
• Specific goals. Tax minimization? Audit preparation? Bookkeeping cleanup? Business valuation for a potential sale? An open-ended “goals” field on the intake form frames the entire engagement.

Our professional services intake forms cover accounting, consulting, financial advising, IT services, and 30+ other specialties.

6. Billing and Insurance Fields Across Industries

Every industry handles billing differently, but certain fields are universal enough to warrant their own section.

• Billing contact (if different from client). In B2B work, the person who hires you is rarely the person who pays. Get the AP contact’s name, email, and phone at intake.
• Payment method preference. Check, credit card, ACH, cash. Some firms offer a discount for ACH; some contractors won’t start work without a deposit by card. Knowing this upfront avoids the awkward payment conversation after work is already underway.
• Insurance carrier and policy number. In healthcare, this is obvious. But estate planning attorneys also need it—some legal insurance plans cover document preparation. Contractors need the homeowner’s insurance info for damage claims. Ask across industries.
• Retainer or deposit terms acknowledged. If your engagement requires upfront payment, note the amount and whether the client has been informed. This isn’t a signature field—that goes on the questionnaire—but the intake form should record that the terms were discussed.

7. Authorization and Consent Fields

Here is where most form builders make a structural mistake: they put signatures and consent language on the intake form. Intake forms are internal business documents. They’re filled out by your staff, not the client. Client-facing authorizations belong on the client questionnaire, which is the document the client signs.

The questionnaire should capture:

• Consent to treatment or representation.
• Fee agreement acknowledgment.
• HIPAA acknowledgment (healthcare).
• Authorization to release records (healthcare and legal).
• Terms and conditions acceptance.
• Client signature and date.

The intake form records that these items were completed. The questionnaire is where they’re completed. Mixing the two creates a document that’s too long for staff to fill out efficiently and too informal for a client signature to carry legal weight.

8. The Fields You Think You Don’t Need

Some of the most valuable intake fields are the ones practitioners skip because they seem unnecessary. They’re not.

Referral Source

If you spend $2,000 a month on Google Ads and $500 on a local sponsorship, you need to know which one is sending clients. A referral source field with structured options—Google search, social media, referral from existing client, attorney referral, directory listing, drive-by/signage, other—gives you real ROI data. Without it, you’re guessing. One firm I know discovered that 40% of their new matters came from a single referral partner. They had been spending $18,000 a year on a marketing channel that produced 3% of their intake. The referral source field paid for itself the first month.

Preferred Contact Method

This seems trivial until you’ve left four voicemails for a client who only responds to text messages. Or sent three emails to someone who checks email once a week. One checkbox—call, text, email, mail—eliminates days of wasted follow-up over the life of a matter.

Company Name

“Company (if applicable)” catches the B2B clients who need invoices addressed to their business entity, the contractors operating through an LLC, and the small business owners whose personal and business legal needs overlap. Skip it, and you’ll be re-issuing invoices when accounting rejects one made out to an individual instead of the entity.

How They Heard About You

Different from referral source. “Referral source” captures the channel. “How did you hear about us” captures the story. “My neighbor used you last year and said you were great” is marketing gold that a checkbox can’t capture. A small free-text field here complements the structured referral source dropdown.

Putting It All Together

A well-designed intake form does three things: it captures everything you need to open a file, it takes less than five minutes for your staff to complete, and it flags urgent items—like a statute of limitations date or a medication allergy—before they become problems.

The specific fields vary by profession, but the structure doesn’t. Start with universals (identity, contact, engagement context), add your industry-specific sections (case details for law, clinical info for healthcare, property details for trades), include billing fields, and keep all client-facing authorizations on a separate questionnaire.

If you’re not sure which fields your profession requires, browse our full catalog of 164 intake form sets. Each one was designed by a licensed attorney with the field requirements of that specific profession in mind. And if you want to understand how these forms fit into the broader intake process, start with the first five minutes of new client intake—because the form is only as good as the process that surrounds it.