Leading and lagging indicators
You'll be able to: build a firm-wide dashboard that shows problems while they can still be fixed.
Lagging indicators tell you what already happened: signed matters, fee value, cost per signed matter. They matter, and they move slowly. Leading indicators move first and point at the cause: median time to first reply, after-hours share and how much of it reached a person, consults booked per inquiry, no-show rate, time from consult to retainer sent, and Retained to Matter Opened.
A Group dashboard needs both, by office and by practice:
- Top row (leading): time to first reply, consult booking rate, retainer sent within target.
- Middle row (conversion): consults that signed, Spanish versus English at each stage.
- Bottom row (lagging): signed matters, fee value, cost per signed matter by source.
When a lagging number drops, read up the dashboard to find the leading number that moved first.
Do it in LegalCRM
- Build the three-row dashboard with filters for office and practice.
- Set a target on each leading indicator from your intake standard.
- Share it with every office lead.
Ask the Guide
Paste this into the AI guide, without client names or matter facts:
"Here is our dashboard [tile names]. Sort the tiles into leading and lagging and tell me what is missing."