A letter from the court arrives in the e-Doreczenia box, a new client's enquiry comes by email or through the website form, and the phone rings at the same moment. In a 1-5 person firm, each of these channels is usually watched by someone different, or by no one in particular, while the deadline attached to that e-Doreczenia letter keeps running regardless of whether anyone has opened it yet.
This article covers what e-Doreczenia actually is and who must have it, how professional confidentiality changes the way you take in new enquiries, when a law firm itself becomes an obligated institution under anti-money-laundering rules, and how to put all of this into one order without missing a deadline or breaching confidentiality.
When an enquiry lives in five places at once
A typical day at a small law firm: the e-Doreczenia box in one tab, regular mail in another, a mobile phone, a contact form on the website, and sometimes a messenger app a friend-referred client writes through. Each channel has its own rhythm and its own risk — a missed e-Doreczenia deadline costs differently than a lost enquiry from someone who simply writes to another firm instead.
| Channel | Who usually picks it up | Where it lands | Risk without any order |
|---|---|---|---|
| e-Doreczenia | A partner or the office manager | The provider's box interface | A missed procedural deadline |
| Regular mail | The office manager | A folder on the desk | No date of receipt logged anywhere |
| Phone | Whoever happens to answer | A sticky note or nothing at all | The enquiry vanishes before it reaches a lawyer |
| Website form / email | Whoever checks the inbox that day | An email inbox | A reply days later, or never |
Before you start tidying individual channels, it's worth working out how much actually falls through these cracks. An example on made-up numbers — substitute your own: if a firm gets around 20 enquiries a week across five channels and 3 of them get lost in the gap between mail and phone, over a month (4 weeks) that's 3 × 4 = 12 enquiries nobody sees — more than one every working day.
What e-Doreczenia is and who the obligation applies to
e-Doreczenia is the electronic equivalent of registered mail with confirmation of receipt — legally equal to a traditional registered letter with confirmation, as described on the gov.pl e-Doreczenia portal. Since 1 January 2025, people practising professions of public trust are required to have an e-Doreczenia box.
Professions of public trust versus companies registered in KRS or CEiDG
The obligation for professions of public trust — which include advocates (adwokat) and legal counsels (radca prawny) — took effect on 1 January 2025. Separately, companies registered in Poland's KRS or CEiDG business registers must use e-Doreczenia according to a schedule — the source doesn't give one single date for every business entity, so the exact deadline for your firm's legal form is worth checking directly on the gov.pl portal rather than assuming it has already passed or hasn't arrived yet.
Professional confidentiality: what exactly it covers and how it changes enquiry intake
Before you design a process for taking in enquiries, it's worth going back to the definition of confidentiality itself — because it decides who is even allowed to see the content of an enquiry.
What the law actually says
Under Article 6(1) of the Advocacy Act: an advocate is obliged to keep confidential everything they learned in connection with providing legal assistance; paragraph 2 says this obligation cannot be limited in time. Similarly, Article 3(3) and (4) of the Legal Counsels Act: a legal counsel is obliged to keep confidential everything they learned in connection with providing legal assistance, and that obligation likewise has no time limit.
That "everything" covers not only the content of advice given, but the very content of an enquiry someone left in a website form or said over the phone, before any engagement even existed. The practical conclusion for your process: exactly who sees the content of an enquiry before it reaches a specific lawyer, and where that content is stored, isn't a matter of organisational convenience — it's a matter of the scope of professional confidentiality. The form that takes in a first enquiry shouldn't ask about case details — a general subject and contact details are enough, with the details coming out only in a conversation with a specific lawyer after a conflict-of-interest check.
AML: when a law firm becomes an obligated institution
The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Act lists advocates, legal counsels, foreign lawyers and tax advisors as obligated institutions — but not for every case, only to the extent they provide legal assistance concerning specific activities, including the purchase or sale of real estate, a business, or an organised part of a business, as set out in the anti-money-laundering act (Article 2(1)(14)). Deciding whether a particular case falls within that scope is a legal assessment for the firm itself or its compliance advisor — not something a website form can resolve.
The minimum data at first contact
An intake form works best when it asks for less, not more — for two reasons at once: less personal data to process before it's even clear an engagement will happen, and less risk that someone unauthorised reads case details before a conflict-of-interest check has taken place.
What to ask for in the form, and what to leave out
A sensible minimum is: name or company name, contact details, a general area of law (e.g. "employment law", "real estate") and a preferred way to be contacted back. What stays out of the form: the other party's name, court case numbers, contract details or amounts — those go to a lawyer only in conversation, after an initial conflict-of-interest check. That split can be built into a lead form (Lead forms) with conditional logic: the first step collects only contact details and a general topic, and further questions appear only on the lawyer's side, not the client's.
e-Doreczenia deadlines belong in a calendar, not a general inbox
A letter from e-Doreczenia that just sits marked-as-read in the provider's panel isn't much different from a letter nobody opened at all — if nobody moved the deadline it creates into a calendar with someone responsible for it. The safest habit: every procedural letter from e-Doreczenia becomes a task in your task system immediately, with a specific person and date attached, rather than staying a line in an inbox someone will "get back to when there's time." That's exactly what a Tasks module does — agreements and deadlines turned into tasks with a responsible person and a reminder, one shared list instead of three groups in a messenger.
Tools, access roles, and the agreement with your software provider
Since professional confidentiality has no time limit, the same goes for responsibility over where client data physically lives in the tools a firm uses — CRM, email, calendar. Two things are worth having written down before anyone asks about compliance: who on the team has access to which cases (roles, not one shared login), and what data processing agreement the firm has signed with the software provider it uses to store client data. That's a separate topic from enquiry intake itself — worth its own internal document, not a paragraph in a website's terms.
Splitting access by role instead of one shared team login can be built with an admin panel (Admin panels) — leads, clients, content and statistics in one place, with roles for the team and without re-entering the same data twice. We wrote more broadly about where client data physically ends up during process automation in automation and GDPR; about the difference between a CRM and the next system layer, in CRM or ERP. How Polish law treats artificial intelligence in client contact outside the law firm context specifically, we covered from a different angle around guest service in restaurants — a different context, but the same principle: the system supports, a human always decides.
Do this yourself — a checklist for today
- List every channel through which enquiries and procedural correspondence arrive today — e-Doreczenia, mail, phone, form, messenger.
- Name one specific person responsible for checking the e-Doreczenia box daily, not "someone on the team."
- Decide exactly which fields your first-contact form has — remove anything beyond contact details and a general subject.
- Check whether an acknowledgement goes to the client automatically right after the form is submitted, instead of waiting for someone to notice it.
- Once a quarter, review who in the system has access to which cases, and remove access for anyone no longer working on them.
What this looks like when a system runs enquiries and cases
- 01New enquiry
- →02minimum data
- →03conflict check
- →04case with roles
- →05deadline in calendar
A system doesn't replace legal judgment or the decision to take on a case — it puts order into everything that happens before a lawyer even opens the file. CRM and automations bring enquiries from phone, form and email into one funnel instead of manual re-entry from a note into a calendar, and a confirmation to the client plus a deadline reminder can go out on their own, the way the Email integrations service describes. Calls outside office hours can be picked up by AI reception and telephony — it qualifies the enquiry and logs it in CRM with a summary, instead of leaving a missed call until morning. We wrote separately about what can realistically be handed to a system in a service business, and what can't, in process automation in a company; one queue instead of five inboxes is covered in query handling automation.
Frequently asked questions
Can a law firm's website contact form ask about case details?
Better not to. It's safer to limit the form to contact details and a general area of law — case details go to a specific lawyer only in conversation, after an initial conflict-of-interest check.
Since when must an advocate or legal counsel have an e-Doreczenia box?
Since 1 January 2025 — that's the date from which people practising professions of public trust must have an e-Doreczenia box. For companies registered in KRS or CEiDG, the obligation follows a separate schedule.
Does an advocate's or legal counsel's professional confidentiality have any time limit?
No. Both Article 6(2) of the Advocacy Act and Article 3(4) of the Legal Counsels Act state explicitly that the obligation to keep professional confidentiality cannot be limited in time.
Is every law firm an obligated institution under anti-money-laundering rules?
Not every case. Advocates and legal counsels are obligated institutions to the extent they provide legal assistance concerning specific activities listed in the act, including the purchase or sale of real estate or a business — whether a given case falls under that is for the firm or its compliance advisor to assess.
Who should have access to an enquiry's content before a conflict-of-interest check is done?
As narrow a circle as possible — ideally one person responsible for first contact, without the whole team automatically able to see form content. Access roles are worth writing down rather than relying on one shared login.
What happens if an e-Doreczenia letter gets read but nobody records the deadline it creates?
Opening the letter alone doesn't protect you from missing the deadline — that's exactly what happens when a letter stays in the provider's panel without being turned into a calendar entry with a responsible person and a date.