Reading a pipeline

You'll be able to: read a practice pipeline at a glance and say where your prospective clients are stuck.

Each practice pack gives you its own pipeline: a board with columns (stages) and a card for each prospective client. One board per practice area, because a criminal matter and an immigration matter do not move the same way. A shared board with mixed matters hides where each one stalls.

Typical stages look like this:

New inquiry → Contacted → Conflict check → Consult scheduled → Consult done → Deciding → Retainer sent → Retained

(Plus a closed column for people who did not engage, with a reason.)

Your packs adjust that to the practice, because intake actually stalls in different places:

• Personal injury: New lead, contacted, consult scheduled, retainer sent, signed, matter opened. The clock on Retainer sent is what a PI attorney watches, because the person is often still talking to two other firms.
• Immigration: Inquiry, consult booked, documents requested, documents received, retainer sent, retained. The documents stages exist because that is where immigration intake stalls.
• Family: Inquiry, conflict check, consult scheduled, consult done, deciding, retainer sent, retained. Deciding is a real stage, because the decision takes weeks.
• Criminal: After-hours call, captured, attorney reached, retainer sent, retained. Speed is the whole game.

Reading a board takes 30 seconds once you know what to look for:

1. Piles. A column with many cards is where people get stuck. Six cards in Documents requested means your document list is the problem, not your marketing.
2. Age. Each card shows how long it has sat in its stage. A card three days old in New inquiry is a person who never heard back.
3. Empty columns. Nobody in Consult done for two weeks, with a full Consult scheduled? Look at your no-shows (Module 5).

Do it in LegalCRM

1. Open Opportunities, then Pipelines. Find the three pipelines from your packs.
2. Open each and read the stage names left to right.
3. Rename any stage whose name does not match how you work. Keep the order.
4. Look at your test cards from Lesson 1.2 and note which stage each landed in.

Ask the Guide

Paste this into the AI guide, without client names or matter facts:

"My [practice] pipeline has these stages: [list]. Where would you expect people to stall, and what should I watch?"