Signed retainers by source: what the Avvo bill answers to

This is analysis, not data. We publish no benchmark for which sources convert, because we have not measured one across firms and the answer is different for every firm. The point is that your own number is available and usually is not being looked at.

Leads are not the number

A directory listing reports inquiries. An ad platform reports clicks and form fills. A referral relationship reports nothing at all. The firm pays for the first two and thanks the third, and none of the three tells it what happened next. An inquiry that never got a reply, a consult that was never held, and a retainer that was never signed all count as a lead. Only the signature counts as a client.

Why the source is lost

• • The form does not ask. "How did you hear about us" is the first field a designer cuts.
• • The phone does not capture it. A call from a directory listing looks like any other call unless the number is tracked.
• • The referral is never written down. A colleague sends a case, the person calls, and nobody records who sent them.
• • The hand-off loses it. The source was in the intake system; the matter opened in the case management software without it.

What the intake captures

A required source field on the form with the firm’s real options: Google, Avvo, FindLaw, the website, a past client, a referring attorney by name, another. The voice agent asks the same question and records the answer. The UTM tags on the booking link record the campaign and the language. The referring attorney’s name goes on the card as a tag, so the report can show which colleagues actually send cases and which stopped, which in Coral Gables is the report that matters most.

What the report shows

Inquiries, consults, retainers sent, retainers signed, and estimated fee value, in a row per source. Time to first reply by source, because a directory that sends inquiries at night and a firm that answers in the morning is a bad match regardless of the directory. And the language split within each source, because a Spanish-language campaign that produces English-only follow-up shows up here first.

What to do with it

Usually two things. The source with many inquiries and few signatures is not a bad source; it is an intake that loses that source’s people at a specific stage, and the report says which stage. And the referring attorney who sent four cases last year and none this year gets a call, before the reason becomes permanent.

Questions we get asked about this

Related