What a screened inquiry actually means

A raw contact is a name and a phone number. Nothing has been checked. A screened inquiry is a contact whose answers have been checked against criteria your firm agreed to in writing. A retained client is someone your firm has spoken to, evaluated, and signed.

These are not interchangeable, and any provider who treats them as interchangeable is asking you to pay for ambiguity. A screened inquiry is not a promise of a case. It is a record that a defined set of questions was asked and answered in a defined way.

When the definition is written down, billing becomes inspectable. Either an inquiry met the criteria on the day it was delivered or it did not. When the definition is vague, every dispute becomes an argument about what the word qualified meant.

This is why the criteria document comes before any delivery: the price of an inquiry only makes sense against a shared definition of what it is.

It is not a case evaluation. Your attorneys keep that judgment. It is not a guarantee that the person will answer the phone. And it is not a retained client - retention depends on your intake, your evaluation, and the person's own choice of counsel.

Keeping these boundaries straight is not caution for its own sake. It is what makes the purchase something you can actually evaluate.