Did you get more leads, or did the same people contact you twice?

Agree on what one inquiry means

Start by asking what the report calls a lead. A phone call, a person and a request for help are different things. Use these four terms with intake and marketing so they count the same thing.

• A call and a form about the same request can be two events and one inquiry.
• One person can ask about a separate new matter. Follow the firm’s screening and reporting rules before treating it as the same inquiry.
• Two family members may share a phone but need separate help. Do not merge their identities or immigration matters because the number matches. The firm decides how to structure the legal work.

Check the contacts that may belong together

Have the intake lead compare the record IDs, contact details, dates, channels and requests. A matching name or phone number is a reason to check, not proof of a match. Use the firm’s approved identity and screening steps. Do not reveal details from another record to ask whether the caller is that person.

Check both identity and the request. The same person may call from a new number about an old inquiry. They may also use the same number to ask for different help. Keep separate requests apart even when the person is the same.

Use the decisions below. These decide how the contact enters this report. They do not replace screening, a conflict check or an attorney’s decision.

• Keep the intake record and its open work together

Link the inquiry without losing the work

You do not need to delete or merge records to make the first report. Use a small map: event E01 belongs to inquiry Q01, E02 also belongs to Q01, and E03 is still under review. That lets the team check the count before changing the CRM.

For a confirmed match, keep the original source, each later channel and all contact times. Preserve the person’s contact limits, open questions and follow-up tasks. If two staff members are chasing the same request, settle who takes the open work before stopping the duplicate task.

Take a person who sends a form through paid search, then phones about it. Keep the paid-search form and the later call. Replacing the source with ‘phone’ hides how the inquiry began. If the original source is missing, record it as unknown rather than choosing the most recent channel.

A duplicate CRM row is not always another contact. If one form was imported twice, keep one form event in the report and record the extra row as a data error. Otherwise, a report can inflate both contacts and inquiries.

Do not mark an unanswered inquiry as spam just to clear the queue. A lack of reply tells you nothing by itself about whether the request was real or belonged to another record.

Work through one count

Take a report with 12 inbound contact events in one week. These are calls, forms and messages, not extra copies made by an import. Intake checks which request each event belongs to.

• Seven events belong to four confirmed new inquiries. Three of those seven are repeats beyond each inquiry’s first contact.
• The other five are two contacts about an older inquiry, one existing-client contact, one test and one unresolved event.
• The full count is 7 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 12 contact events. Report four confirmed new inquiries and one unresolved event. Do not call four the final total while E12 remains open.

Ask why the marketing report differs

Ask your marketing provider to name what each report counts. Is it form submissions, calls, tracked conversions, people or new inquiries? Which date puts an item in this week? Which channels are included? How are repeats, tests and older inquiries handled? Different answers can produce different totals without either report being broken.

Google Ads lets you choose ‘One’ or ‘Every’ for each conversion action. In Google’s example, one person submits forms for two different conversion actions. Even with ‘One,’ that produces two conversions: one for each action. The choice applies to a tracked action after an ad interaction; it is not a single count of every person or legal request across your firm.

The practical point: a Google Ads conversion total cannot, on its own, settle your new-inquiry count. Ask the provider to explain the setup and compare it with the intake map. Keep the original channel evidence. Do not change the source or erase repeats just to make the two reports match.

The same care applies to conversion rates. If two of the four confirmed new inquiries above later sign by your review date, that group has a signing rate of 2 ÷ 4 = 50%. Dividing those same two by all 12 contact events gives about 16.7%, but it answers a different question. No extra client appeared when the denominator changed.

Follow the same inquiry group when checking later results. E12 may change the final group once it is resolved. Keep the review date and open decisions visible, and keep signatures separate from payments.

• Google Ads Help: conversion counting options

Use the sheet and check the next report

Use this sheet for the contacts the team needs to review. Keep sensitive details in the firm’s system; the review sheet can point to record IDs. Set the period before counting new inquiries, and use the original opened date once the request is matched.

• For E02 above, the sheet could say: ‘Linked to Q01. Same request confirmed through the firm’s checks. New inquiry already counted at E01. Keep E02 as a later contact; no extra new inquiry.’ The team still keeps any question or task from E02.
• For E12, record what needs checking and who will do it. Do not force a match to finish the report. The person can still need a reply while the reporting question is open.
• At the next review, show contact events, confirmed new inquiries, repeats within those new inquiries, older-inquiry contacts, excluded contacts and unresolved events. Show why each exclusion was made.

Fix the cause, not just the total

Ask intake and marketing to bring one repeated cause from the review. If an import copied forms into new rows, the person who manages that connection should fix the import. If people used a second channel because no one answered the first, intake needs to address the wait. Those are different problems.

Agree on one change and a date to check the next group. Use the same counting rules and periods. Look for the specific error you meant to fix, and check that real new requests still reach the right person.

A lower corrected lead count does not show worse marketing. A higher corrected signing rate does not show better sales. First get the count right. Then use it with the outcomes from those inquiries to judge the work.

For help putting the shared record and follow-up process in place, see Intake & CRM setup.