Law firm intake KPIs: six numbers, each from a report the firm already keeps

1 and 2: first-reply time and the consult-to-signed rate

First-reply time is the gap between a new person’s first contact and the firm’s first live conversation with them. Formula: for each new inbound number or form, the minutes from first contact to the first answered call or callback, then the median, reported separately for business hours, evenings and weekends. The report is the phone system’s call-detail export, plus the answering service’s log and the form timestamps in the intake tool. Remove existing clients, opposing counsel and vendors first. Alongside the median, count the new callers the firm never reached at all; that count is the leak the median hides.

The consult-to-signed rate is fee agreements signed divided by consults held, for the same period, broken out by attorney and by practice area. Consults held come from the calendar; signed agreements from the e-signature history or the matters opened in the practice management system. This number isolates the problem: plenty of consults and few signatures points at fee presentation and follow-up, not at advertising. Why consults don’t sign is a hand-off of its own, with its own follow-up machinery.

If nobody can produce a callback time for last Tuesday’s 7 p.m. call, nothing records the first reply, and that blank is the first finding.

3: envelope age at “sent” — the number between yes and signed

Every fee agreement that has been sent and not signed has an age. Formula: for each envelope at “sent,” today’s date minus the sent date; report the count older than seven days and older than 30, and the oldest. The report is the e-signature service’s envelope list, filtered to engagement agreements. It takes minutes to pull.

Envelope age is the earliest warning the firm gets. A rising count at “sent” shows up weeks before a falling consult-to-signed rate does, because the rate waits for the period to close and the envelope list does not. Give each envelope one named owner and a follow-up schedule, and close the ones that run out of schedule with the firm’s non-engagement letter, in the form its attorneys approve.

4 and 5: unbilled time and days to collect

Intake ends at the signature, but the fee is not money until it is billed and paid, so two more numbers belong on the same page. Unbilled time age is the days between the work date of each time entry and the invoice that carries it; report the hours and dollars older than the firm’s pre-bill cutoff. The report is the practice management system’s unbilled time or WIP report. Days to collect is the days from invoice date to payment date, read from the A/R aging report as dollars in each age bucket. Added together, the two make lockup: the days between doing the work and holding the cash.

For an evergreen retainer, add one line: matters whose balance sits below the floor in the engagement agreement with no replenishment request on record, counted from the firm’s balance report — never from the trust account itself.

Personal injury firms on contingency read these two numbers differently. ABA Model Rule 1.5(c) has a contingent fee agreement in a writing signed by the client, stating how expenses are deducted, and a written statement to the client at the end showing the remittance. Operationally, the later numbers become days from settlement received to disbursement, and case costs advanced by case type, both from date and balance reports the firm already produces.

6: signed cases and fees by lead source — the number that ends the agency argument

When signed cases fall, the agency says intake is slow and intake says the leads are bad. Both can be checked, and they are two separate numbers, not one. Lead quality is the share of a source’s new contacts that were a real prospective client in a practice area the firm takes. Intake performance is first-reply time and the consult-to-signed rate for that same source. A source with good leads and slow replies is an intake problem; a source with fast replies and few real cases is a marketing problem.

Then the money: cost per signed case equals the spend on a source in the period divided by the fee agreements signed from it, and fees by source equals the fees collected on those matters. Both require a source field on every lead that survives into the matter record. For Google Local Services Ads, Google’s own help pages say the Leads page shows each lead’s charge status, and that a missed call during business hours is charged when the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds. Match the charged leads against the phone log and the matter list, and the firm can see what each charged call became.

If the matter record has no source field, the firm cannot say which spend produced its fees, and that blank is a finding worth more than any of the six numbers.

A one-page weekly sheet

The six numbers fit on one page, one row each, filled by named people before a short weekly meeting:

• First-reply time — call-detail export and form timestamps — median minutes by time band, plus new callers never reached — intake lead.
• Consult-to-signed rate — calendar and e-signature history — signed divided by held, by attorney and practice area — intake lead.
• Envelope age at “sent” — e-signature envelope list — count over 7 and over 30 days — intake lead.
• Unbilled time age — unbilled time or WIP report — hours and dollars past the pre-bill cutoff — billing.
• Days to collect — A/R aging report — dollars by age bucket — billing.
• Signed cases and fees by source — intake tool, matter list, ad accounts — cost per signed case by source — managing partner.

Illustrative example: in one week, the median after-hours reply is 14 hours, nine envelopes are older than seven days, and one source cost $1,200 per signed case against $400 for another. That is three decisions, not thirty: who covers the evening phone, who owns the nine envelopes, and whether the expensive source is a lead problem or a reply-time problem. The numbers are hypothetical; the firm’s own replace them.

When not to build a dashboard — and when not to hire anyone

Count the six numbers by hand for four weeks before buying any dashboard. If the hand count is easy and the numbers are steady, the spreadsheet is the dashboard. If a number cannot be produced at all, software will not produce it either until someone fixes the record behind it. A solo attorney who answers the phone and sends every fee agreement personally can track all of this on one page in an hour a month.

For a firm where nobody can say what last month’s calls became, the Revenue Review takes two weeks. It reads counts, dates and stages from the firm’s phone, intake, e-signature and billing records, exported de-identified wherever possible: no client or prospect names, no case files, no trust-account access, no client funds. The written report prices each leak and sets out a 90-day plan; any build afterward is scoped and priced separately.

Lumina is not a law firm and gives no legal or ethics advice. Below about $1 million a year in fees, the Review’s price does not fit the arithmetic, and the free 20-minute call says so plainly.