Mass Tort Intake Qualification: Criteria, Versions, and Review

Mass tort intake qualification is a governed review process that compares a claimant record with firm-approved criteria. A reliable system records the criteria version, each answer's state, supporting evidence, conflicts, exceptions, and the authorized reviewer. It helps staff prepare consistent files without turning intake software into the final decision maker.

Qualification is a review state, not a form result

A completed questionnaire does not prove that a prospective matter qualifies. It proves only that the workflow received a set of responses. Those responses may be incomplete, internally inconsistent, unsupported by documents, or evaluated against an outdated rule set.

The intake record should therefore separate five things:

1. what the prospect or source reported
2. which firm-approved criterion applies
3. which version of that criterion was effective
4. what the available evidence supports or contradicts
5. what a lawyer or other authorized firm reviewer decided

That separation matters at mass tort volume. When a rule is buried in a script, spreadsheet formula, or vendor configuration, staff cannot reliably explain why one record advanced and another entered review. A governed qualification model makes the rule, result, evidence, and reviewer visible without claiming that an operational screen decides legal merit.

This guide describes the record and workflow. It does not supply criteria for any drug, device, exposure, product, jurisdiction, or filing program. The responsible firm must define and approve the criteria that apply to its work.

Build criteria as controlled records

A qualification criterion should be stored as a named record, not as prose copied into call notes. Each record needs enough detail for staff to ask the right question and for reviewers to reconstruct the result later.

Criteria field	What it controls	Example of a safe operational value
Criterion ID	Stable reference across versions	EXPOSURE-DATE-01
Question	Prompt approved for the current stage	Ask for the date or allow unknown
Answer type	Values the system may accept	Date, range, yes, no, unknown
Evidence expectation	Record that may support the answer	Named document type, if available
Result mapping	Possible operational outcomes	Met, not met, unresolved, exception
Effective version	Rule set used for evaluation	Version 3, effective on a recorded date
Approval owner	Person authorized to approve the rule	Named lawyer or firm-approved role
Escalation rule	Condition that requires review	Conflicting dates or unsupported answer

The example values describe system behavior, not substantive eligibility. A firm can change the question or result mapping without overwriting the record that governed earlier reviews.

NIST's Data Governance and Management Profile concept paper connects data quality with policies, roles, provenance, lineage, and accountability. Applied to intake, that means a qualification result should be traceable to an approved rule, its input, its source, and the person responsible for the review.

Give every rule an effective version

Qualification rules change. The firm may clarify a question, revise an evidence expectation, add an exception, or change who must approve a result. Editing the current rule in place destroys the ability to interpret earlier work.

Treat each approved rule set as an effective version:

Version element	Required record	Why it matters
Version number	Immutable identifier	Distinguishes one approved rule set from another
Effective from	Date and time	Determines when the version may govern new evaluations
Effective until	Date and time or open	Prevents use after retirement
Approved by	Named authorized person	Establishes ownership
Change reason	Short reviewed explanation	Gives later reviewers context
Changed criteria	Field-level comparison	Shows what actually moved
Re-evaluation policy	None, selected records, or defined cohort	Prevents silent retrospective scoring

NIST Special Publication 800-53 describes configuration change control in control CM-3 as reviewing, approving or disapproving, documenting, implementing, and retaining records of controlled changes. A law firm qualification rule is not a federal information-system control. The same change-record principle is useful here because the firm needs to know which approved configuration produced an operational result.

When a version changes, do not silently replace prior evaluations. Store the original result with its original version. If the firm decides that selected records require another pass, create a new evaluation event that points to the new version and preserves the former result.

Distinguish answered, unknown, and unanswered

Qualification workflows fail when every empty field becomes the same value. Three states should remain distinct:

• Answered means the question received a usable response, including an explicit no.
• Unknown means the person was asked but could not provide the fact.
• Unanswered means the workflow has no response and may not have presented the question.

These states produce different work. An unknown treatment date may call for a document request. An unanswered treatment question may call for an interview task. A no response may resolve the operational criterion, subject to the firm's rule and review requirements.

Do not force a precise answer when the prospect knows only a range. Store the reported range as reported. Do not convert "spring 2021" into an invented day. A normalized value can be added later if firm policy permits it, but the original statement and its source should remain visible.

Surface conflicts instead of choosing a winner

A qualification record can contain two plausible values for the same fact. The prospect may report one date while a document shows another. Two records may use different product names. A correction may disagree with an earlier call note.

The system should preserve each assertion with its source, received time, and author. It should then create a conflict that names the field, competing values, affected criterion, owner, and permitted resolution states. It should not select the newest value or the value extracted with the highest confidence unless an authorized policy explicitly allows that step.

Conflict screening is a separate control from qualification. A record may appear to satisfy an operational criterion and still be blocked by the firm's conflict process. The comment on ABA Model Rule 1.18 explains that initial consultations should be limited to information reasonably necessary to decide whether to undertake the matter. The firm should design question order, access, and escalation around its own obligations and jurisdiction, rather than collecting every possible detail before opening controls run.

Treat evidence as support, not as a checkbox

An uploaded file should not automatically mark a criterion as satisfied. The file may be unreadable, unrelated, duplicated, incomplete, or inconsistent with the reported fact. Track document work with specific states such as requested, received, classified, reviewed, supports, contradicts, and insufficient.

For a proposed fact, preserve:

• the person or system that proposed it
• the original statement or document
• the document page or location when practical
• the extraction or entry time
• any correction and its reason
• the reviewer who accepted or rejected it

Route edge cases into named exception queues

An exception queue is a controlled route, not a miscellaneous inbox. Each queue needs entry conditions, a qualified owner, required context, a due date, allowed outcomes, and an escalation path.

Edge case	Queue	Required next action
Unknown fact with expected evidence	Evidence follow-up	Request the approved record or record why it is unavailable
Conflicting answer and document	Fact conflict review	Compare sources and record the reviewed resolution
Possible duplicate claimant	Identity review	Compare approved identifiers before merge or separation
Rule version changed during intake	Version exception	Apply the firm's documented re-evaluation policy
Answer outside a defined format	Data clarification	Preserve the original response and request clarification
Possible conflict	Conflict review	Restrict advancement and route under firm procedure
Unusual fact pattern	Authorized review	Send the complete record to a lawyer or approved reviewer

Do not use "other" as the only explanation. A structured exception reason makes workload visible and shows whether the problem came from a question, a missing source, a rule, or an unusual record.

Keep lawyers and authorized staff at the decision boundary

Software can compare stored answers with firm-approved rules, identify gaps, assemble evidence, and route exceptions. Intake professionals can collect facts, conduct approved follow-up, and prepare the record. The firm must define who may approve criteria and who may make legal, conflict, engagement, and representation decisions.

ABA Model Rule 5.3 addresses managerial and supervisory measures for nonlawyer assistance. The ABA Standing Committee's summary of Formal Opinion 506 says trained and supervised nonlawyers may assist with specified prospective-client intake tasks, while the prospective client must have an opportunity to communicate with the lawyer about the fee agreement and scope of representation.

Firm policy and the rules of the relevant jurisdiction control the exact boundary. The workflow should encode that boundary through permissions and required review states. A score should never masquerade as an attorney decision.

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Audit the evidence behind the disposition

A useful qualification report does more than count records marked qualified or not qualified. It should show which criteria version was used, how many results remain unresolved, which evidence requests are aging, how often reviewers change proposed results, and which exception queues are growing.

Mass tort intake qualification works when the firm can reconstruct the path from source to answer, answer to criterion, criterion to version, evidence to conflict, and proposed result to authorized review. That record gives staff a consistent operating model while preserving the judgment and responsibility that belong with the firm.

Frequently asked questions

Can software decide whether a mass tort claim qualifies?

Software can apply firm-approved operational rules and prepare a proposed result. Lawyers or other authorized firm staff should retain decisions involving legal merit, conflicts, engagement, and legal advice under firm policy and applicable rules.

Should a firm re-evaluate old records when criteria change?

The firm should define a reviewed re-evaluation policy for each change. If records are evaluated again, preserve the original result and version, then add a new evaluation event instead of overwriting history.

What happens when a claimant does not know an answer?

Record the answer as unknown, identify any expected supporting record, and route the appropriate follow-up or review. Do not treat unknown as no, and do not treat it as a question the workflow failed to ask.