A 2025 report from the American Association for Justice found that the five largest property and casualty insurers denied over 300 million claims in a single year. Three hundred million. And the majority of policyholders who got denied never called a lawyer.
The ones who do call your firm represent the tip of the iceberg. They are frustrated, confused, and often convinced that the insurance company must be right. They have been told “your policy does not cover this” or “the damage was pre-existing” or “you missed the filing deadline” so many times that they half-believe it. And if whoever picks up the phone at your firm does not know how to handle that specific psychology, you will lose the case before the attorney ever hears about it.
Insurance bad faith cases are among the highest-value matters a plaintiff’s firm can sign. Punitive damages are on the table. Fee multipliers exist in many jurisdictions. But the intake call for these cases is fundamentally different from a car accident or a slip and fall. The caller is not describing an event. They are describing a process. A long, grinding process of being ignored, lowballed, and delayed by a company they trusted.
Here is how to build an intake process that captures these cases instead of letting them walk out the door.
Most intake calls follow a straightforward pattern: something happened, someone got hurt, and now the caller wants to know if they have a case. The person on the phone asks about the accident, the injuries, the timeline, and the liable party.
Insurance bad faith calls do not work that way. The “event” is not a single moment. It is a pattern of behavior by the insurance company that may have unfolded over weeks, months, or even years. The caller might not even know what bad faith means. They just know they paid premiums, filed a claim, and got stonewalled.
This creates three specific challenges for whoever is handling your phones:
Challenge 1: The caller does not know what to call their problem. They will say things like “my insurance company is screwing me” or “they keep giving me the runaround” or “they denied my claim for no reason.” They will not say “I have a bad faith insurance claim.” Your front desk needs to recognize these phrases as potential bad faith cases and not dismiss them as general frustration.
Challenge 2: The story is long and nonlinear. A car accident caller can give you the facts in two minutes. A bad faith caller needs to walk you through months of back-and-forth correspondence, multiple adjusters, repeated denials, and conflicting explanations. The person on the phone needs to let that story unfold without rushing it, while still capturing the specific details that matter for case qualification.
Challenge 3: The caller has low confidence. After being told “no” by a large corporation for months, most callers genuinely question whether they have a case. They are not calling with the certainty of someone who just got rear-ended. They are calling with a quiet hope that maybe, possibly, the insurance company was wrong. One dismissive response from your team and they will hang up and never call back.
Not every insurance dispute is a bad faith case. Your intake process needs to separate legitimate bad faith claims from situations where the policy genuinely does not provide coverage. These eight questions will get you there.
This is the foundation question. Bad faith claims arise from many policy types, and each has different coverage structures, regulatory frameworks, and damage models. The main categories:
The policy type determines which state regulations apply, what damages are available, and how the claim should be evaluated. Capture this first.
This is where you identify the specific bad faith conduct. The person on the phone should listen for these patterns:
You do not need to identify the legal theory at intake. You need to capture what actually happened in the caller’s own words. Write it down verbatim if possible.
Timeline matters for two reasons. First, statutes of limitations on bad faith claims vary by state, and the clock may have started running months ago. Second, the length of delay between the claim filing and the insurer’s response (or lack of response) is itself evidence of bad faith. In most jurisdictions, insurers have a statutory obligation to acknowledge claims within 15 to 30 days. If the caller says “I filed six months ago and still have not heard back,” that is a strong signal.
Written denial letters are gold for bad faith cases. They lock the insurer into a specific rationale that can be challenged. Ask the caller:
If the caller received no written explanation at all, that is also significant. Most state insurance regulations require written explanations for claim denials. The absence of one can be evidence of bad faith in itself.
Bad faith cases need sufficient damages to justify litigation. Ask about:
In many states, bad faith allows recovery of consequential damages far beyond the policy limits. A $50,000 homeowner’s claim that was wrongfully denied, forcing the family to live in a hotel for six months, can become a $300,000 case when you add consequential damages, emotional distress, and punitive damages. But you need to capture those downstream effects at intake.
This question serves two purposes. First, a state insurance department complaint creates an official record of the dispute. Second, some states require administrative exhaustion before filing a bad faith lawsuit. If the caller has already filed a complaint, ask what happened. If they have not, note it as a potential next step.
This is a qualification and urgency question. If the caller has already been turned down by other firms, find out why. It might be a legitimate coverage exclusion that other attorneys identified. Or it might be that other firms simply do not handle insurance bad faith. Either way, you need to know.
If the caller is shopping multiple firms simultaneously, that tells you something about urgency. These callers are more likely to sign quickly if you demonstrate competence on the first call.
Insurance bad faith cases are document-heavy. Unlike a car accident where liability might be clear from a police report, bad faith cases require a paper trail. Ask whether the caller has:
Callers who have maintained organized files are telling you something important: they have been fighting this battle for a while, they take it seriously, and they are likely to be cooperative clients. Callers who have nothing may still have a case, but expect more legwork on the investigation side.
These callers are not just frustrated. They feel betrayed. They paid premiums for years, sometimes decades, believing they had protection. When they needed it most, the company they trusted said no. That betrayal runs deeper than the financial loss.
Whoever picks up your phone needs to understand this dynamic. The caller is not just reporting an incident. They are telling you about a relationship that broke down. And they need to feel heard before they can move forward with the legal process.
Practical tips for the person handling intake:
Acknowledge the frustration directly. “It sounds like you have been dealing with this for a long time, and I understand how frustrating that must be.” This is not therapy. This is trust-building. The caller needs to know that your firm takes their situation seriously before they will share the details you need to qualify the case.
Do not promise outcomes. Bad faith cases are complex. The person on the phone should never say “you definitely have a case” or “we can get you a big settlement.” Instead: “Based on what you are telling me, this sounds like something our attorneys would want to review. Let me get some more details so we can evaluate it properly.”
Do not rush the story. The natural instinct is to jump to the key facts: policy type, denial reason, dollar amount. But bad faith callers need to tell their story. If you interrupt too early, they will feel dismissed, exactly the way the insurance company made them feel. Let them talk for the first two to three minutes, then guide them through the specific questions.
Validate without judging the insurer. It might be tempting to say “that insurance company is terrible.” But you do not know the full story yet, and making judgments before the attorney reviews the case creates expectations you may not be able to meet. Instead: “What you are describing raises some serious concerns. Our attorneys will want to look at the specifics.”
Train the person handling your phones to listen for these high-value indicators during intake:
Multiple adjusters assigned to the same claim. When an insurance company keeps rotating adjusters, the new adjuster has to start from scratch each time. This is a well-documented delay tactic. If the caller mentions being passed to a third or fourth adjuster, note it prominently in the intake form.
Inconsistent denial reasons. First the claim was denied for “pre-existing damage.” Then it was denied for “failure to mitigate.” Then it was denied for “policy exclusion.” When the reason keeps changing, it suggests the insurer is searching for a justification after making the decision to deny.
Lowball offer with no explanation. The caller’s roof replacement estimate is $45,000. The insurer offers $8,000. No line-by-line breakdown. No independent appraisal. Just a number. This pattern of offering far below actual value without a reasonable basis is textbook bad faith.
Recorded statement pressure. Some insurers push for recorded statements early in the process, then use the caller’s own words against them. If the caller mentions being pressured into a recorded statement, or if the denial references something from that statement, flag it.
Policy rescission after a claim. The caller has been paying premiums for five years. Two weeks after filing a major claim, the insurer “discovers” an alleged misrepresentation on the original application and cancels the policy retroactively. This is one of the most aggressive forms of bad faith and tends to generate significant punitive damages.
Failure to respond within statutory deadlines. Most states require insurers to acknowledge claims within 15 days and make a coverage decision within 30 to 45 days. If the caller describes weeks or months of silence, that alone may constitute bad faith.
Even firms that handle insurance disputes regularly make these errors at the intake stage:
Mistake 1: Treating it like a coverage dispute. Coverage disputes and bad faith claims are related but distinct. A coverage dispute is about whether the policy covers the loss. Bad faith is about whether the insurer handled the claim in good faith, regardless of the coverage outcome. Your intake process should capture both dimensions. The caller might have a bad faith claim even if the underlying coverage question is close.
Mistake 2: Asking only about the denial. Many intake scripts focus on the denial itself. But bad faith cases are built on the entire claims handling process. Ask about every interaction: the initial report, the adjuster visits, the phone calls, the letters, the delays, the requests for additional documentation. Each touchpoint is a potential piece of evidence.
Mistake 3: Not asking about consequential damages. The caller lost $50,000 in property damage. But they also had to pay $12,000 for temporary housing, missed three months of work, developed anxiety from the financial stress, and are now facing foreclosure because they could not make repairs. Those consequential damages can dwarf the original claim amount. If your intake form does not have a section for downstream impacts, you are leaving money on the table.
Mistake 4: Screening out “small” claims. A $15,000 denied claim might seem too small to litigate. But if the insurer’s conduct was egregious enough, punitive damages can multiply that number tenfold. And if the same insurer is doing this to thousands of policyholders, your $15,000 case might be the lead case in a pattern-and-practice action. Do not screen out cases based on claim value alone. Screen based on the insurer’s conduct.
Mistake 5: Failing to preserve the timeline. Bad faith cases live and die on timelines. When did the claim get filed? When did the insurer respond? When was the denial issued? How many days between each step? If you do not capture dates at intake, reconstructing the timeline later is exponentially harder. Ask the caller to have their correspondence in front of them during the call if possible.
Based on everything above, here is a practical checklist your team can use starting today:
Caller Information: Name, phone, email, best time to call back, how they found your firm.
Policy Details: Insurance company name, policy type, policy number (if available), coverage amount, years the policy has been active, premium payment status.
Claim Details: Date of loss, date claim was filed, claim number, type of loss (property damage, medical, disability, death benefit, business interruption).
Insurer Conduct: What the insurer did or failed to do (denial, delay, lowball, no response, rescission). Whether a written denial was received and the stated reason. Number of adjusters assigned. Whether a recorded statement was taken. Whether the insurer met statutory response deadlines.
Damages: Original claim amount, amount offered by insurer (if any), out-of-pocket expenses incurred, lost income, emotional distress, any other downstream impacts.
Documentation: Whether the caller has the policy, correspondence, denial letters, estimates, medical records, and phone call notes.
Prior Actions: Whether the caller filed a state insurance department complaint, spoke with other attorneys, or took any other action.
Urgency Flags: Approaching statute of limitations, ongoing property damage, active foreclosure or eviction, medical treatment being denied.
The challenge with insurance bad faith intake is not just knowing what questions to ask. It is recognizing the case type in the first place. When a caller says “my insurance company denied my roof claim,” the person on the phone might route it as a basic property dispute. They might not recognize that the pattern of delays, lowball offers, and rotating adjusters the caller describes adds up to bad faith.
Real-time AI coaching solves this recognition problem. eNZeTi listens to intake calls as they happen and identifies patterns that suggest bad faith, even when the caller does not use that language. When the caller mentions their third adjuster in six months, eNZeTi flags it. When the caller describes a denial that came with no written explanation, eNZeTi prompts the person on the phone to dig deeper.
This matters because insurance bad faith cases are high-value but easy to miss. The caller does not walk in and say “I have a bad faith claim.” They say “my insurance company is jerking me around.” Without real-time coaching, that caller gets a sympathetic ear and a callback that never happens. With eNZeTi, they get a proper qualification and a warm handoff to an attorney who already has the key facts.
The firms that sign the most insurance bad faith cases are not the ones with the best attorneys for those cases. They are the ones whose intake process can recognize and capture those cases before the caller hangs up and calls someone else.
See how eNZeTi works in a real law firm — Book a Free Call Analysis at enzeti.com.
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