Amines attack acyl chlorides to give amides

The mechanism is very similar to attack by alcohol:

Notice that two equivalents of ammonia are required.

The attack can be done by other amines, not just ammonia:

While ammonia is easy to add in excess, protonating amines can be wasteful if the amine is rare or expensive. A base such as NaOH could deprotonate the amines. But OH^- is itself a nucleophile. The solution is to use two separate phases:

This two-phase strategy is called the Schotten-Bauman synthesis.