The Demand Letter Workflow: From File to Attorney-Approved Draft

From a settled file to a signed demand, without the bottleneck

The demand letter is where a personal-injury case turns into leverage. It packages liability, treatment, and damages into one document that tells the insurance adjuster why the claim is worth what you say it is. Written well and sent on time, it moves the file toward settlement. Written late, it lets a case sit while your firm carries the cost and the client waits.

Nimbus Marlowe is the AI operations layer for personal-injury law firms, starting with intake. The demand letter drafter is one role in that layer. It reads the file, assembles the facts, and produces a first draft. A licensed attorney reviews and adopts it before anything goes out. The goal is not to take the attorney off the letter. The goal is to take away the blank page and the three-week delay.

A demand letter should never wait three weeks because no one had a clear afternoon to start it.

Why demand letters pile up in small firms

In a contingency practice, unbilled hours are invisible until they cost you. A demand letter can take a paralegal or attorney several hours to assemble: pulling medical records, adding up the specials, checking the police report, and writing a narrative that holds together. Multiply that by a full caseload and the letters that are ready to write keep losing to the fires of the day.

The result is a queue. Cases that could be demanding today are waiting on someone to find a clear afternoon. Every week a demand sits unwritten is a week of delayed settlement and delayed fees on work your firm has already done.

The demand letter workflow, step by step

The workflow below is how Nimbus moves a file from complete to attorney-approved. Each step has a clear owner, and the attorney owns the final word.

Step 1: Confirm the file is complete. A demand is only as good as the file behind it. Before drafting starts, the workflow checks that the core pieces are in: the facts of liability, the medical records and bills, proof of lost wages where relevant, and documentation of damages. Missing records are flagged so the firm can request them, not discovered halfway through a draft.

Step 2: Organize the damages. The drafter pulls the numbers out of the records and lays them out: medical specials by provider, total billed, lost income, and the supporting facts for general damages. This is assembly and organization, not valuation. The system does not decide what the case is worth or what to demand. It presents the raw material so the attorney can set the number.

Step 3: Draft the narrative. With the facts organized, the demand letter drafter writes the first version: a clear statement of liability, a summary of the injuries and treatment, the itemized damages, and a professional closing that requests a response by a stated date. The draft follows the firm's format and tone so it reads like the firm, not like a template.

Step 4: Attorney review and adoption. This is the step that matters most. A licensed attorney reads the draft, sets or confirms the demand figure, corrects anything the record does not support, and adopts the letter as the firm's own work product. Nothing goes to an adjuster as a machine draft. The attorney signs off on the strategy, the number, and the words.

Step 5: Send and track. Once the attorney approves, the letter goes out with a response deadline. The file is updated so the firm knows a demand is pending and when to follow up. If the deadline passes without a response, the case surfaces for the next action.

Where the human stays in charge

It is worth being precise about the line. The demand letter drafter organizes facts and produces a draft. It does not give legal advice, it does not assess the merits of the claim, and it does not decide the demand amount or any deadline. Those are legal judgments, and a licensed attorney makes them. Every output is a draft that an attorney reviews and adopts before it leaves the firm.

That is what makes the workflow safe to run at volume. The speed comes from removing the blank-page work. The judgment stays with the lawyer.

What it costs

Nimbus prices the demand letter draft at a flat, published rate: $170 per completed draft. No seats, no subscription tier, no percentage of the recovery. You pay per draft the drafter completes, and the CRM that holds your cases is free. Compare that to pulling an attorney or paralegal off other work for several hours per letter. A part-time intake or drafting specialist runs $3,000 to $4,000 a month whether the letters are moving or not.

Pricing this way keeps the incentive clean. Nimbus never takes a cut of a settlement or judgment, so a bigger recovery is entirely the firm's. The demand letter drafter sits in front of your existing practice-management system and feeds finished drafts into the workflow you already run.

The payoff for a PI firm

For a plaintiff firm, speed on demands is money. A letter that goes out in days instead of weeks starts the settlement conversation sooner and clears the case off your desk faster. Across a caseload, closing that gap compounds: more demands sent, shorter cycle times, and fewer files stalled on a task no one had time to start.

The demand letter is one document type. The same operations layer covers intake, contract review, case preparation, and collections follow-up, so the firm runs on one system instead of a stack of point vendors each doing one thing at an opaque price.

If your demand letters are stacking up, you can put the drafter to work without changing the software you already use. Start with a free account and send a file through, or book a walkthrough to see the workflow end to end before you commit.