Automating legal document intake and case filing

The challenge

Legal teams live and die by their documents. Contracts from clients, filings from courts, correspondence from opposing counsel — it all lands in email.

This commercial law firm with 25 attorneys was drowning. Paralegals spent their mornings sorting through a shared inbox, manually downloading attachments, renaming files, and dragging them into the right case folder in their document management system.

On average, each document took 3-5 minutes to file correctly — and with 80+ documents arriving daily, that's an entire paralegal's day gone before any substantive work begins.

Worse: misfiled documents created real liability. A contract ending up in the wrong matter folder meant missed deadlines. An exhibit attached to the wrong case meant compliance headaches during discovery.

The solution

They created matter-specific email aliases using EmailConnect. Each active case gets a dedicated address like case-2024-0847@ingest.firmname.com. Clients, courts, and opposing counsel all send documents to the case-specific address.

EmailConnect parses each incoming email, extracts all attachments, identifies the sender and subject context, and fires a structured webhook to their document management system. Their automation layer handles the rest: filing into the right folder, tagging by document type, and notifying the assigned attorney.

Step 1: EmailConnect delivers the parsed email

When an email arrives at the case alias, EmailConnect parses it and fires a webhook with the full payload:

{
  "message": {
    "date": "2024-09-12T14:32:00.000Z",
    "sender": {
      "name": "Jorge Martinez",
      "email": "j.martinez@opposingfirm.com"
    },
    "recipient": {
      "email": "case-2024-0847@ingest.firmname.com"
    },
    "subject": "RE: Discovery response - batch 3",
    "content": {
      "text": "Counsel,\n\nPlease find attached the third batch of discovery responses...",
      "markdown": "Counsel,\n\nPlease find attached the third batch of discovery responses..."
    },
    "attachments": [
      {
        "filename": "discovery_response_batch3.pdf",
        "contentType": "application/pdf",
        "size": 4928307,
        "url": "https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/..."
      },
      {
        "filename": "exhibit_list_updated.xlsx",
        "contentType": "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet",
        "size": 314572,
        "url": "https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/..."
      }
    ]
  },
  "classification": {
    "type": "normal",
    "signals": ["has_attachment"],
    "confidence": "definite"
  }
}

Showing relevant fields only. See the full webhook payload reference →

Step 2: The automation layer classifies and routes

Their document management workflow receives the webhook and applies routing logic:

• Matter identification — the recipient alias (case-2024-0847) maps directly to the case
• Sender domain matching — opposingfirm.com is tagged as opposing counsel
• Subject line parsing — "discovery response" triggers the discovery subfolder
• Attachment classification — PDFs filed as documents, spreadsheets as exhibits
• Deadline extraction — dates in the email body trigger calendar reminders

Step 3: The result

The document management system ends up with everything filed and the right people notified:

{
  "matter": "2024-0847 — Westbrook v. Alpine Industries",
  "filed_to": "Discovery / Opposing counsel responses",
  "documents": [
    { "file": "discovery_response_batch3.pdf", "tagged": "discovery_response" },
    { "file": "exhibit_list_updated.xlsx", "tagged": "exhibit_index" }
  ],
  "actions_taken": [
    "Filed to matter 2024-0847 / Discovery",
    "Tagged as opposing counsel correspondence",
    "Deadline flagged: response due within 14 days",
    "Attorney J. van Dijk notified via Teams"
  ]
}

The results

Document intake went from a full-day manual operation to a hands-off automated workflow. A non-negotiable requirement: privileged documents could not leave the EU. EmailConnect's EU-sovereign infrastructure means all processing and storage stays within European borders — no Cloud Act exposure, no third-country transfers, and full audit logging for bar association compliance.

• Zero misfiled documents since the alias itself determines the case — no guesswork
• Instant attorney notification means faster response to opposing counsel
• Court deadline extraction prevents missed filing dates
• Complete audit trail satisfies bar association and regulatory requirements
• Paralegals do legal work instead of playing file manager