TL;DR: A single intake script applied across all personal injury case types is a structural failure. The questions that qualify an MVA are not the questions that qualify a wrongful death. The evidence urgency in a commercial vehicle case is completely different from a motorcycle claim. When you apply one script to five case types, you encode the wrong theory of liability, the wrong sense of evidence risk, and the wrong economic lens into every case from the first call. AI intake agents run case-type-specific decision trees. No human intake team executes this level of rigor consistently at volume.
Quick Facts
Oklahoma statute of limitations: 2 years for personal injury, 2 years for wrongful death under 12 O.S. § 95. Missing this checkpoint at intake creates direct malpractice exposure. For wrongful death, the clock runs from the date of death — not the accident — and the personal representative requirement under 12 O.S. § 1053 adds procedural urgency that generic intake scripts never surface.
ELD data retention window: FMCSA requires commercial motor vehicle carriers to maintain ELD records for six months minimum, but overwrite risk begins at 7–8 days for active logs. This evidence window must be flagged and acted on immediately in commercial vehicle cases.
Multi-defendant exposure: Semi-truck cases involve an average of 3–5 potentially liable parties — driver, carrier, freight broker, shipper, maintenance contractor. If you don’t ask who owned what and who dispatched whom, you’re structurally blind to the very theories that turn a case from policy-limited to enterprise-level. This complexity must be identified at intake, not discovered during discovery.
Wrongful death filing requirement: Oklahoma law requires the personal representative of the estate to file wrongful death claims under 12 O.S. § 1053. Confirming this status at intake prevents a disqualifying procedural error — the probate appointment process takes weeks or months, and if you’re already 22 months past the date of death, you may not have enough time.
Commercial carrier broker insurance: Freight brokers typically carry $1–2 million in coverage beyond the standard $75,000 minimum. Identifying broker liability during intake significantly expands recovery potential in commercial vehicle cases.
The Breaking Point
The conviction that a single intake script causes real harm didn’t come from theory. It came from reading loss reports and listening to call recordings side by side.
I kept seeing the same pattern: the script was “working” operationally — every field filled, every checkbox clicked — but we were structurally mislabeling good cases as bad and bad cases as good, purely because the questions were wrong for the case type. Semi-truck and wrongful death files came in as “rejected” or “non-viable,” and later resurfaced in verdict summaries as seven- and eight-figure outcomes handled by some other firm. I would trace them back and see that the original intake had asked generic MVA questions about speed, weather, and seatbelts — but never touched Hours-of-Service, bill of lading, or whether a separate trailer owner existed. It had logged “no witnesses” on a rural wrongful death because the script never asked about first responders or neighbors — only “did anyone you know personally see it.”
Operationally, the script looked clean. Strategically, it was malpractice for a lead-gen company. It created false negatives on high-value, liability-complex cases and false positives on low-value soft-tissue fender benders.
The moment it flipped from “this isn’t ideal” to “this is harm” was when I mapped those intake blind spots to actual lost fee opportunities and degraded trial positions. It wasn’t theoretical anymore. It was line-item damage to firms’ pipelines and, downstream, to injured clients who almost never got to the right lawyer in time.
Once you see that, you can’t unsee it.
Case-Type-Specific Qualification Logic
AI intake agents are configured with branching decision trees specific to each case type. The system identifies the case category early in the conversation and routes to the appropriate qualification pathway. If the downstream lawyer would run a different mental trial for MVA, motorcycle, semi, wrongful death, and catastrophic injury — and they would — then the qualification must run a different decision tree too. Anything else is pretending intake is clerical when, in reality, it’s the first and most consequential strategic move in the entire case.
Motor Vehicle Accidents
Standard MVA qualification focuses on five core elements: liability (who caused the accident, is fault clear or disputed, are there witnesses or police reports), documented injuries (has the caller sought medical treatment, is it documented by a healthcare provider), active treatment (is the caller currently receiving care — treatment gaps weaken claims), insurance coverage (at-fault party coverage, UM/UIM on the caller’s own policy), and statute window (when did the accident occur, how much time remains under Oklahoma’s two-year limit).
These establish whether the case has the basic structure required for pursuit. The script also over-indexes on simple fault tropes — “who got the ticket,” “what did the police say” — without accounting for comparative negligence, roadway defects, or policy stacking. The AI asks how defense would try to carve up the facts, not just what the officer concluded. That distinction separates cases worth pursuing from cases that look clean and aren’t.
Motorcycle Cases
Motorcycle cases require the same five MVA checkpoints, plus additional qualification criteria that a sedan-sedan collision script never surfaces: conspicuity (was the rider visible to other drivers), lane positioning (was the rider operating within their lane and in a position consistent with defensive riding), evasive action (what did the rider do to avoid the collision), and officer narrative bias (motorcycle accident reports frequently reflect systemic anti-rider bias that understates the other driver’s fault). If intake doesn’t ask about these factors, you’re handing the firm a liability picture filtered through the most hostile lens in the case — the police report — without any counterweight.
Commercial Vehicle and Semi-Truck Cases
Commercial vehicle cases require everything in the MVA tree, plus criteria that don’t appear on any generic intake form. Treating a tractor-trailer like a pickup truck is the cardinal sin of PI intake.
The AI asks about commercial registration (this triggers FMCSA regulations, mandatory ELD requirements, and significantly different liability exposure), carrier identity (who is the motor carrier, what insurance does the carrier maintain — commercial policies are typically much larger than personal auto coverage), ELD data preservation window (active logs can be overwritten within 7–8 days — this question must be asked and preservation steps initiated immediately), and multi-defendant identification (driver, motor carrier, freight broker, shipper, maintenance contractor — if you don’t ask who owned what and who dispatched whom, you are structurally blind to the theories that turn a policy-limited case into an enterprise-level one).
A generic intake script captures none of this. The caller describes a truck accident, the intake agent records it as a motor vehicle accident, and the case moves forward without the information your trial team needs to evaluate liability or preserve evidence before the clock runs out.
Wrongful Death Claims
Wrongful death cases have a completely different legal architecture underneath them. A personal injury script is built to follow the body — where it was treated, how badly it was hurt, what the prognosis is. In wrongful death, the legally relevant “body” is different: it’s the estate and the class of beneficiaries. The key questions are about relationships and rights, not injuries and providers.
If you stay in the PI frame under emotional pressure, several structural mistakes are almost guaranteed. You anchor on medical care before death instead of on the moment of death and causation, missing whether there’s a viable wrongful death claim versus only a survival claim. You define “the client” as the person on the phone instead of the proper party — the personal representative, the statutory beneficiary class, or both. You never fully map out the family tree, because it feels emotionally intrusive to press on divorces, estranged children, or out-of-state heirs when someone is sobbing.
The AI asks about relationship to the decedent (determines standing and whether the caller can serve as personal representative), cause of death (is there a clear liable party, was death immediate or did it occur after a period of treatment), estate and probate status (has a personal representative been appointed — only the personal representative can file in Oklahoma, and the probate process takes weeks or months), and the statute clock (two years from date of death, not date of accident — a distinction that creates urgent procedural timelines most generic scripts never surface).
The result of skipping this architecture is intake that is emotionally attuned but legally underbuilt. When the file hits a lawyer’s desk, they discover hidden heirs, intra-family conflicts, or statute problems that should have been spotted on day one, not week four.
Catastrophic Injury Cases
Catastrophic injury claims require documentation of severity and future damages that standard personal injury intake doesn’t capture. The AI documents injury severity (traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, amputation, severe burns — these require immediate documentation of severity and prognosis), ongoing treatment (what specialists are involved, is surgery planned or already completed), future damages exposure (life care planning, vocational rehabilitation needs, and multi-million dollar future medical costs must be flagged from first contact so your team can begin building the infrastructure required to prove these damages), and liability adequacy (cases with clear liability but inadequate insurance may not be viable regardless of injury severity — this must be assessed at intake, not after months of case development).
These cases require a different evaluation framework from the start. No intake agent running 40 calls a day applies this level of case-specific rigor consistently. An AI agent does it on call one and call four hundred.
We Ask the Questions a Trial Lawyer Cares About
Liability, injuries, treatment, coverage, timing. Not because we’re trying to interrogate someone, but because that’s how you avoid giving them false hope or missing a critical deadline. And those questions look different depending on whether there’s a commercial registration, a fatality, or a TBI involved.
The intake conversation feels natural because the AI is asking relevant questions in logical order. But the underlying structure is rigorous, case-type-specific, and designed to capture everything your attorneys need to make an informed acceptance decision — including the information that would come up in the first five minutes of a trial lawyer’s mental preparation for that case type.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the AI know which case type decision tree to follow if the caller isn’t sure what kind of case they have?
The AI asks clarifying questions early in the conversation to identify the case category. If someone says they were in an accident involving a semi-truck, the system routes to the commercial vehicle pathway. If they mention a family member who died, it routes to wrongful death. The branching happens naturally based on the information the caller provides — it doesn’t require the caller to self-identify their case type.
What if a case crosses multiple categories, like a motorcycle accident involving a commercial vehicle?
The AI applies the most comprehensive qualification pathway. If a case involves both motorcycle and commercial vehicle elements, it uses the commercial vehicle decision tree because that pathway includes all the motorcycle questions plus the additional commercial requirements. This ensures nothing gets missed in cases where multiple liability frameworks overlap.
How often are the qualification criteria updated to reflect changes in Oklahoma law?
We monitor Oklahoma statute changes, case law developments, and regulatory updates continuously. When changes affect qualification criteria, we update the decision trees immediately. Your intake system stays current without requiring you to retrain staff or revise scripts every time the legal landscape shifts.
Can the qualification logic be customized for a specific firm’s case acceptance criteria?
Yes. The decision trees are configurable to match your firm’s specific thresholds for case acceptance. If you have minimum injury severity requirements, preferred case types, or geographic restrictions, we build those parameters into the qualification logic. The system applies your criteria consistently on every call.
Next Step
If you want to see exactly what the AI captures for the case types your firm focuses on, request a case-type-specific qualification review. We’ll walk through the decision trees for motor vehicle accidents, commercial vehicle cases, wrongful death claims, and catastrophic injuries. You’ll see the questions we ask, the information we capture, and how the system routes callers to the appropriate pathway based on their situation.
This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a technical walkthrough of how case-type-specific qualification actually works in practice.
Are you ready to see what intake looks like when it’s designed around the cases you actually handle?