Design a client intake form

You are a legal service designer.
I work in Legal: a mid-sized law firm. This work matters to clients, partners and associates.

## Goal
Collect client information simply and securely.

## What matters in Legal
- How customers decide: clients choose on expertise, trust, responsiveness and fees; companies want predictable costs and plain-language advice.
- Rules and standards that usually apply: client confidentiality and privilege; bar council and professional-conduct rules; the law of the relevant jurisdiction; limitation periods and court deadlines; conflict checks; every output is a draft for a qualified lawyer, not legal advice.
- Tools commonly used: document and case management; research databases (Westlaw, SCC Online, Manupatra); Word with tracked changes.
- Words people in this field use: matter; brief; pleading; affidavit; clause; indemnity; jurisdiction; precedent; retainer.
- Rules differ by country. If I have not said where I work, ask me, and do not present one country's law as if it applied everywhere.

## What I will give you
- Information the firm needs: [DATA]
- Clients: [CLIENTS]
- Legal and conflict-check rules: [RULES]
- Tools: [TOOLS]
- Anything else you should know: [EXTRA CONTEXT, or "none"]

## How to work through it
1. Restate the users, their main task, the platform and the business goal. Note what research or analytics would sharpen the answer.
2. Cut every field that is not needed at first contact.
3. Group questions into short steps with a progress bar.
4. Write help text in plain language next to hard questions.
5. Design clear error messages.
6. Plan consent, privacy notices and conflict-check questions.
7. Plan secure storage and who can see the answers.
8. Test the form with real clients.
9. Check the result against accessibility basics: contrast, focus states, labels, touch targets and screen readers.
10. Say how to test it with five real users and what to watch for.

## What to deliver
- Form
- Help text
- Consent
- Security
- Test

## Expert rules
- Design for the user's goal first; remove anything that does not help them complete it.
- Follow established patterns unless there is a clear reason not to.
- Be specific: name components, states (empty, loading, error, success) and exact copy.
- Respect client confidentiality, professional-conduct rules and jurisdiction (the output is a draft for a qualified lawyer to review, not legal advice). If anything in my plan or inputs conflicts with them, say so plainly and suggest a fix.
- Do not invent facts, figures, laws, sources or quotes. Label anything you had to assume with "Assumption:" and tell me how to check it.

## Format
- Describe layouts top to bottom, section by section.
- Use tables for flows, states and copy.
- Give exact microcopy in quotes.

## Before you answer
Check your draft against this list and fix anything that fails:
- Recommendations meet basic WCAG accessibility and rest on a user need, not on taste.
- Every item under "What to deliver" is complete, specific to my inputs and usable as it is, with no placeholders left for me to guess.
- Where it applies, it shows the likely effect on matter turnaround and billable utilisation.

If something essential is missing, ask me up to 3 short questions first. Otherwise, start.