October at a glance

"First contact" is how each new client found the firm, taken from Clio Grow's source field and CallRail's call tracking. Seven of the 19 came through referrals, which cost nothing; nine came through Google, which cost money. The centre number does not change when you switch ranges; the slices and the counts beside them do.

A matter is a file opened in Clio. 24 were opened in October: the 19 new clients plus five existing clients who came back with new work (a second closing, a will after a green card). Closings are the most frequent matter but not the most valuable; see the fees list below. We only see the practice area and the date, never who the client is.

Each bar is a step on the way to a client, as a share of everyone who enquired. The biggest drop is between enquiry and a booked consultation: 17 of the 61 never booked, mostly because their matter was outside your practice areas or outside New York. The next biggest is the six no-shows, which is the Monday problem on the Overview tab. Fix the no-shows and you would have had roughly three more clients this month without spending another dollar.

Every engagement letter DocuSign has sent but not received back is money the firm has agreed but not secured. In October, 43% of the people who got a follow-up call from a paralegal signed within a week; the rest were left to decide on their own and most did not. Drag the slider to see what a few calls are worth. We never see who the letters are for; DocuSign tells us only the count, the dates and the fee field.

So you can see where each number on this tab comes from and when it was last read. Read-only connections through each platform's official API; we never hold your passwords. If a connection breaks, its card turns red and we fix it before the next morning.

Google ranks Local Services Ads partly on how fast the firm answers, so the 15-minute figure decides how many leads you are shown for. 88% is good; the misses are the Monday morning rush. The show rate is the share of booked consultations that took place. The review figure is the share of closed-matter clients we asked who then left a review; one in three is high for a law firm, because people are asked by the attorney, not by a form.

LinkedIn is not where clients find you; it is where other attorneys do. The referral series is written for lawyers at firms that do not practise immigration or real estate, so that when their client asks, they send them to you. Three of October's 19 new clients came that way, at no cost. We draft every post; you approve it before it goes out.

Immigration is 58% of billing, real estate 20%, estate planning 22%. That mix is a risk as well as a strength: a change in federal processing can slow a majority of the firm's income at once. That is the business reason behind the estate-planning landing page and ads, which are the two steps on the Approvals tab; they grow the part of the firm that does not depend on Washington.

Only lines that changed by more than $300 are shown. The paralegal cost is the one to watch: it tracks immigration volume, so it is a good cost, but if it stays above $3,000 a month for a quarter it is cheaper to hire. The filing fees are passed through to clients and come back as receivables; they are not really a cost, which is why the bar is yellow. The insurance renewal is annual and will not repeat until next October.

These are the words that convince the next client. We quote only the public review, with initials, and we leave out anything that would say what the matter was or when it concluded. The themes repeat across all 187: responsiveness, patience and a fee that matched the quote. Those three things are what the firm's advertising should say, so that is what it says.

A reply that confirms someone is a client can breach confidentiality under Rule 1.6, and a reply that argues a bad review makes the firm look worse to the next reader. Replying at all matters: Google shows that the firm answers, and people trust an answered one-star review more than an ignored one.