Leads

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Overview

Leads is your firm’s front door for prospective clients. Every firm has a public lead form that works with zero setup — share its link or embed it on your website, and every submission becomes a card on the Leads pipeline with the prospect’s screening answers attached. The prospect gets a branded acknowledgement, your team gets a notification, and when you hire them, one click converts the lead into a client and case — with the answers they already gave carried into their profile and reused across their intakes later. Find the pipeline under Leads in the console sidebar. Your form’s link is waiting for you on Settings → Lead form — see configuring the form.

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The lead form

Prospects walk through a short, step-by-step form:

• Contact details — name, email and/or phone (one is required), and preferred language.
• Case type — the prospect picks from the case types your firm offers, and “I’m not sure yet” is always an option.
• Screening questions — five case types come with a tailored question bank: marriage-based family, family petition, naturalization, affirmative asylum, and EB-2 NIW. Every other case type asks the basics plus a short free-text summary.

A few things to know:

• Languages. The form can be offered in English, Spanish, Turkish, and Arabic — you choose which on the settings page. It opens in the visitor’s browser language when your firm offers it (English otherwise), and the language switcher sits in the form header on every step, not just the first.
• Nothing is saved until Submit. Refreshing or closing mid-fill loses the answers, by design — there are no partial-lead drafts. If the submit itself fails, the answers stay on screen with a Retry.
• The acknowledgement email. After submitting, the prospect gets a branded acknowledgement in the language they filled the form in (English, Spanish, Turkish, or Arabic; anything else falls back to English). It deliberately carries no links or case detail. A prospect who left only a phone number gets no email.
• Repeat submissions. A prospect who already has an open lead and submits again is added to that lead — no duplicate card, and no second acknowledgement.
• Confirmation. The final screen thanks the prospect and shows your firm’s name and a link to your website.
• Spam protection is invisible to prospects, and submissions are rate limited.

An unknown, regenerated, or switched-off link shows one indistinguishable “form no longer available” state — a visitor can’t tell which, on purpose. A prospect mid-fill when the link changes sees the same message without losing what they typed.

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Share and embed

The hosted link lives on Settings → Lead form, next to a copy-paste embed snippet for your website. The snippet is a mount <div> plus a small inline script — nothing external to load. It builds the form’s iframe at runtime so it can:

• Forward campaign parameters. utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign from the page the visitor is on are passed into the form, so source attribution survives into the pipeline and reports. The hosting page’s address arrives as the referrer for free.
• Size itself. The frame keeps its height in sync as the prospect moves through steps.

The lead form is the only page of Lexfill that can be embedded — everything else refuses framing.

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The pipeline

The Leads page has two working views — a kanban board (the default) and a list — toggled from the toolbar. Your choice is remembered per browser, and ?view=board / ?view=list deep-link either one. The board has seven fixed stages: New → Contacted → Consult scheduled → Consult done → Agreement sent → Hired / Lost. Drag cards between columns as you work them:

• Dropping onto Hired or Lost opens a dialog first — convert, or pick a lost reason — and cancelling puts the card back. Every other move applies immediately.
• Hired cards can’t be dragged — once a lead is converted, its card is fixed. Lost cards stay draggable, and dragging a Lost card onto Hired is a legitimate convert.
• Terminal columns empty themselves. A Hired or Lost card leaves the board 30 days after settling — still in the list.

Each card shows the lead’s name, case type (“Not sure yet” when they weren’t), assignee, and source — the campaign’s utm_source when the form captured one (or the source you typed on a manual lead), otherwise the channel: Web form, Phone call, Walk-in, Referral, or Other. Filters: case type, assignee (including Unassigned), source, Due, and Archived — plus status in the list view (the board always shows all seven columns). The list sorts by newest or by due date and pages 50 at a time.

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Due leads

Leads shouldn’t go quiet. New and recently touched leads resurface with a Due flag once your firm’s follow-up timer runs out (48 hours by default, configurable) — the Due filter shows exactly the ones waiting on you. On an overdue lead’s page, Lex offers to pick it up: one click hands the lead’s context to the Desk with the request already written — draft the follow-up email, or plan how to revive it — leaving you to edit and send rather than start from a blank composer.

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Lead detail

Clicking a card or row opens the lead’s own page — the same page notifications, search results, and the dashboard widget link to. It shows the lead’s details and screening answers, the source block (channel, UTM parameters, referrer), and an activity timeline; add notes, log contacts, change status, reassign, edit details, or archive from here. A converted lead’s details are read-only, but notes and archive stay available.

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Logging a contact

A status column says where a lead is; it doesn’t say who has actually spoken to them, or how often. Log contact records each attempt — who reached out, how, and what came of it — so the timeline shows the work behind the stage, and the By team member report can tell you whose approach converts. On the lead’s page, Log contact sits in the header of the Add a note composer card. In the list view it is the phone button at the end of each row. Both disappear on hired and archived leads; a Lost lead can still be logged — calling a lost lead back is a real workflow, and it never changes the status. The dialog (“Log contact with Name”) asks for three things:

• Channel — Call, Email, Text, In person, or Other. It is pre-selected from the prospect’s preferred contact method (phone → Call, email → Email, WhatsApp → Text).
• Outcome — Reached, Voicemail, or No answer. Nothing is pre-selected, on purpose: the outcome is the part worth getting right.
• An optional note — what was discussed, next steps.

The timeline gets a row for it: the channel’s icon, a line reading “Name called this lead” (or emailed / texted / met in person / reached out to), an outcome pill, the time, and the note. Logging a contact also resets the lead’s follow-up timer, exactly as adding a note does. Reached on a New lead moves it to Contacted. The dialog says so before you save, and a “Moved to Contacted” toast confirms it afterwards. Any other outcome, and any other starting stage, leaves the status where it is — a voicemail on a New lead is recorded as an attempt, and the lead stays New.

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Scheduling a consultation

Prospects who won’t book themselves can be booked by you. The Consultation card on the lead’s page reserves a slot on their behalf — their name, email and phone are carried over, so you only pick the consultation type and the time. The card then tracks the reservation:

• Awaiting payment shows the deadline, and lets you send or resend the payment link, copy that link to paste somewhere yourself, record an offline payment, or cancel.
• Confirmed shows when and where, with the meeting link once there is one.
• Past and canceled consultations stay listed underneath, so the history of who was booked when is on the page.

Every step lands on the timeline: the reservation, an offline payment, and the confirmation. The lead also moves to Consult scheduled when the booking confirms, if it hadn’t moved on already. Booking, deadlines and released holds are covered in full under Booking for a lead.

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Adding leads manually

Not every prospect arrives through the form. New lead (on the Leads page header) captures calls, walk-ins, and referrals: name, preferred language, email and/or phone (one is required), how they arrived — Phone call, Walk-in, Referral, or Other — a free-text Source line (“who or what sent them”), case-type interest, an owner (defaults to you, reassignable in the dialog), and a “What did they say?” summary. For the five case types with a question bank, an expandable section offers the same screening questions the public form asks.

• The acknowledgement email is a choice here. The dialog carries a “Send the acknowledgement email” toggle — on by default the moment you enter an email address, disabled without one. When it’s on, the prospect gets the same localized acknowledgement the public form sends, and the timeline records it.
• Manual leads never ring the team’s bell — the in-app new-lead notification is for form submissions only, whatever the toggle says.
• The Source line is the only place attribution is hand-entered, and it is what the reports group by; leave it blank and the lead is attributed to its channel instead.

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Losing a lead

Marking a lead Lost asks for a reason — hired another firm, no response, cannot afford services, not a fit for the firm, not eligible for the benefit, or other — plus an optional note for the timeline. The reasons feed the Lost reasons report, so a quarter’s worth of “cannot afford” tells you something a gut feeling doesn’t. Lost isn’t final: a Lost lead can still be converted — dragging its card onto Hired works — and converting it clears the lost reason.

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Converting a lead

There are two ways a lead becomes a client: you convert them by hand, or you send them a retainer and the first payment converts them for you. Convert to client — from the lead’s page, or by dragging its card onto Hired — creates the client and case from the lead, carrying the screening answers over.

• Email is required. The client signs in with this address, so the dialog always asks for one (leads can arrive phone-only).
• A real case type is required. An “I’m not sure” lead picks one in the dialog.
• The invitation is off by default. The Send intake invitation now checkbox is unchecked, so the client isn’t contacted until you review the drafted client record and send the invite from there — check it to invite immediately.
• Answers fill empty fields only. Screening answers are harvested into the client’s profile where nothing is there yet — anything the record already holds (attorney-typed, intake-collected, document-filled) always wins.

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When the email already belongs to a client

If the email you type matches an existing client of your firm, Lexfill offers to add a case to that client instead. The lead is marked Hired and linked to the existing client; this adds a case rather than updating the client — the harvest fills only empty fields in their profile, and nothing they already have is overwritten.

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Sending a retainer

The faster path to Hired is to let the retainer do the converting. The Retainer card on the lead’s page opens a three-step Send retainer wizard; the lead gets one link to read, e-sign and pay, and their first payment turns them into a client with a case and a paid first invoice — no dialog, nothing to convert by hand.

1. Content. Give the agreement a title and write it as a list of blocks — headings, paragraphs, bullets, notes, and a signature line (wrap words in ** for bold). Or press Generate with Lex: Lex drafts a complete retainer from the lead, the case type, and the fee, following any instructions you add (“the flat fee covers the I-130 only”). Regenerating replaces the title and every block, so generate first and edit after. If your firm has retainer templates, the step starts from one instead: the wording is locked and you fill in only its variables. A variable the template marks Filled by: Client — a phone number, a mailing address — shows a Client fills this in chip instead of an input; you don’t need to know it, and it never blocks Next. Preview PDF shows the page the lead will see, on your letterhead, with those blanks drawn as underlines.
2. Fee & schedule. Set the total fee and choose Pay in full or Installments. The lead pays the first installment on the sign page; the rest become installments on the first invoice, due a number of days after the day they pay — not after you send, and not after they sign. The wizard shows the dates as if the lead paid today.
3. Review & send. Read the rendered agreement once more — a note under it lists which blank lines are the client’s to fill — then check the send settings: Case to open on payment (the case type the new client’s matter gets — the retainer won’t send without an active one) and Link valid for (30 days by default, up to 365, counted from the moment you send). Send retainer emails the lead and moves them to Agreement sent.

The draft saves itself as you go — close the wizard and pick it up later with Resume draft on the card. Sending freezes the document: nothing you change afterwards can reach what the lead signs. The one thing that does is the lead’s own details — when the agreement has client-filled blanks, what the lead types on the signing page is printed into the document and it is frozen again, before they read and sign it (see the lead’s side). To change a sent retainer yourself, Void it and send a new one. After sending. The Retainer card follows the link — sent, opened, signed, paid — and offers Resend link, Remind to sign / Remind to pay, Void, the Audit trail, and, once signed, the Signed PDF. Automatic reminders nudge the lead every 3 days until they have signed and paid; switch them off per retainer from the card. Every reminder and every resend issues a fresh link and retires the previous one — see retainer agreements for what that means for the lead. Client details. When the agreement has client-filled blanks, the card carries a Client details block. It reads Awaiting client details — naming the fields — until the lead submits them, then Details received with each value shown read-only, exactly as the lead typed it, tagged as provided by the client on the signing page. Those values live with the retainer only; they are not copied onto the lead’s contact card. The Audit trail gains a line for each submission — The lead completed their details — Phone number, Mailing address — listing the fields, never the values, alongside the fingerprint of the document before and after. When the first payment lands, the lead becomes a client: the case is created, the client is invited to their portal, the first invoice is recorded in Invoicing as paid, and the signed agreement is filed in the client’s Documents. Your team is notified in-app and by email when the lead signs, and again when they pay. If the conversion fails after the payment — a case type switched off since you sent, a used-up case allowance — the card shows Needs attention with a Retry conversion button; nothing is charged twice. A paid or voided retainer frees the lead for another one: a second matter, or a corrected agreement.

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The lead’s side

The link opens the agreement on your letterhead with a three-step rail — Review, Sign, Pay (see retainer agreements). When the agreement has client-filled blanks, a Your details step comes first and the rail reads four steps:

• One field per blank — a text box, or a larger one for a multi-paragraph block — with required ones marked. What the lead types is printed into the agreement exactly as entered; a character the document can’t print (an emoji, say) is refused with the field named.
• Continue to the agreement saves the details, rewrites the document with them in place, and opens Review on the completed version — the lead reads and signs the same document you will file, blanks filled. Edit your details on the Review step goes back; every edit rewrites the document again, until they sign.
• When every field is optional, Skip for now goes straight to Review and the blanks stay as underlines in the signed copy.
• A required field that is still empty stops the signature — the page sends the lead back to their details.

A half-typed form survives a page refresh on the same device. Once signed, the details can no longer be changed.

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Retainer templates

Settings → Templates holds your firm’s approved retainer wording. Import template takes a .docx or .pdf: Lex converts the text into blocks, proposes a variable for anything that looks like it changes per client, and suggests a payment plan when the document spells one out — nothing is saved until you review the result. From then on, sending a retainer from that template fills in only the variables; the body stays locked. Open a template and you read the agreement the way a lead will, with every blank tinted by who fills it: amber for your team, blue for the client, and a neutral wash for values Lexfill fills automatically (client name, firm name, fee, date, schedule). The Blanks rail beside it lists those same blanks by filler. Select one to find it in the text; open it to change what the import decided:

• Label, Required, and, for a blank that stands alone as its own block, Multi-paragraph block.
• Filled by chooses who supplies the value: Your team, at send time, or Client, on the signing page before they sign. The import proposes Client for things only the client knows — phone, mailing address, date of birth — and you can flip any custom variable either way.
• A Default value for your team’s blanks, or a Fallback if empty for an automatic one.
• Add variable and Remove variable — every {{placeholder}} in the document must have a variable.

Edits collect in the rail until you choose Save changes. Below the blanks, Payment plan shows the plan that pre-fills the wizard’s fee & schedule step for every engagement created from the template (each engagement can still adjust it before sending); Edit plan opens it, and an import that found no concrete schedule leaves it empty to set here rather than re-importing. Case types shows where the template is preselected in the send wizard. Changes to a template apply to engagements created from then on; drafts already open and retainers already sent keep the variables they were created with. Archived templates are read-only until restored.

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Reports

Reports is the third position on the view toggle (?view=reports), with its own window selector — 30 days, 90 days, or 12 months (30 by default). The pipeline filters don’t apply here, and the Leads page always reopens on the pipeline, not on Reports. Every series counts leads created in the selected window and not archived. Three consequences worth knowing: Hired and Lost leads stay in the reports (the 30-day auto-hide is a board rule only), archived leads leave them entirely, and a repeat form submission — which appends to an open lead rather than creating one — never counts. Under a header line (“N created · N hired · N% conversion” — the firm’s own totals over the window), the cards:

• By team member — the per-person funnel, described below. Shown full-width at the top when there is more than one person to compare.
• Pipeline by stage — where the window’s leads sit now.
• Leads created — arrivals over time.
• Conversion by source — hired ÷ created per source; converted and attached leads both count as hired. Source is the campaign’s utm_source verbatim when there is one (including the hand-typed Source line on manual leads), otherwise the entry channel. The top 12 sources by volume are shown and the rest fold into “Other sources” — a firm that types a distinct source for every referral will meet that bucket.
• Lost reasons — the breakdown the lost dialog feeds.
• Consult hosts — who ran the consultations, and how many of those leads hired. See below.

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By team member

The firm-wide conversion rate says how the firm is doing; this view says how each person is doing, so you can see whose approach turns contacts into consults and adjust. Every lead in the window is credited to exactly one person:

1. Whoever logged its first contact — the first Log contact on the lead, whatever the outcome.
2. Failing that, the lead’s assignee.
3. Failing both, an Unattributed row, which appears only when it has something in it.

Reassigning a lead does not move credit once a contact has been logged — the report reads the activity log, not the assignee field — and a late first contact on an old lead does move it to the caller. Each person gets a row with their photo and one horizontal bar. The bar’s full length is their Leads (scaled to the busiest member), and the stages Contacted, Consult booked, Consult held, and Hired are drawn over it from the same left edge in progressively darker blue — nested, not stacked, because each stage is a subset of the one before. Beside the bar sit Attempts (every contact they logged on the window’s leads, whatever the outcome — a week of voicemails shows as work done, not as zero), Hired as hired/leads n%, and Lost. Hover or focus a bar to see every step as reached/previous · n% — a step rate off the previous stage, not off the total — with — when nobody reached the previous step. The toggle at the top right switches to a plain Table with the same rows and every stage as a column. Stages are cumulative on the furthest point a lead got to, so a lead that reached Consult scheduled and was then lost still counts in Contacted and Consult booked, and in Lost. Every current firm member has a row, even at zero. The card doesn’t appear at all for a one-person firm with nothing Unattributed — there is nothing to compare.

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Consult hosts

A compact table of who hosted the window’s consultations: Host, Held (confirmed consultations whose time has passed — a no-show still counts as held), Hired (how many of those leads went on to hire, each lead counted once however many consults it had), and the Rate between the two. Canceled bookings don’t count, and only the host is credited — co-hosts aren’t.

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The dashboard widget

A Leads funnel widget is available from the dashboard’s widget picker — it doesn’t appear on its own. It always reads the 30-day window regardless of the Reports range, and links back to the Leads page. Its conversion rate and the Reports header’s are the same figure, computed once from the firm’s totals — with Reports on its 30-day window, the two always agree.

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Search and the Desk

Leads are part of global search, matched on name, email, and phone (as typed or normalized), with each result opening the lead. Two things worth knowing:

• Archived leads stay searchable — search is how you get back to one.
• Every firm member finds every firm lead. A lead has no case until you convert it, so per-case access restrictions don’t apply here.

The Desk finds leads too — its firm search returns them beside clients, cases, tasks, documents, and invoices, so asking the Desk about a prospect by name works.

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Notifications

A new web-form lead notifies every member of your firm — speed-to-lead is the whole point, so the fan-out is deliberately firm-wide. The notification opens the lead directly, and it lives under the Intake category in notification preferences. Manually added leads don’t notify — you just typed them in.

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Configuring the form

Everything about the form — which case types and questions it asks, languages, intro text, the follow-up timer, switching the form off, and regenerating the link — lives on Settings → Lead form. See Lead form settings.