It was the best response to a Sales Project kick-off meeting I’ve ever had.

“I’ve been silently tracking my calls for the past two years – would you like to see the spreadsheets?”

(By the way, “YES!” is the only answer to “Would I like to see the spreadsheets?”)

The Problem

Revenue in this law firm was steady, but the process felt opaque. Could improvements be made? Was somebody dropping the ball? Even worse – was there an outstanding producer being unrecognised, and at risk of departure?

These are the questions that keep managing partners up at night. And without data, the answers are guesswork dressed up as intuition.

What We Did

Here’s what Como Legal Coaching was able to do with this law firm:

1) Identify multiple tracking categories. Source of the leads. Type of work being requested. Team members receiving referrals, and the team member actually engaged to deliver the work. Seasonality, and more – a dozen variables ready to be tested.

2) Connect data sources. Naturally, the silent enquiry log ended when the lawyer’s sales process began – but via the firm’s practice management software we had ‘truth’ data about which clients proceeded, with which lawyers, and for what value. Dots connected is data value multiplied.

3) Claude AI for the analysis. There was effort stripping down the data to anonymise for this examination, but that was a lot quicker than digging through 2,000 meetings and that dozen variables. AI doesn’t replace the thinking – but it makes the thinking possible at a scale that manual analysis simply can’t match.

What We Found

The headlines were revelatory:

• The producer who missed budget last year? Brought in six figures of work for junior lawyers that nobody realised.
• The “we’re always busy at that time” belief? A myth unsupported by thousands of phone calls.
• AI search for law firms? Absolutely real, and we now have a dollar value attached.

Reports for Thinking, Feeling, and Knowing

4) Report design matters. The cleaned data is all there for the Partner with a billion questions. The pretty charts are there for the ones who want to immerse themselves. And the headlines pop for the leader who can see three bullet points and immediately know what can be improved.

The report tells us “What is So” – but strategy means asking “So What?”

Six Specific Recommendations

From 2,000 records and 12 variables, we distilled six specific recommendations:

• We now have financial data about who is bringing in the work – because often, they’re not the lawyer best placed to do the work. Recognition, referral pathways, and specialisation all improved.
• Seasonal patterns revealed when to invest in marketing, and when to save the budget.
• Lead source data showed which channels actually convert – not which ones feel productive.

None of this was rocket surgery. But even the genius who was recording all that data for years wasn’t in a position to extract any meaning from it all.

The Lesson for Every Business

You don’t need a two-year secret tracking log to start (though if you have one, please call me immediately). You need three things:

1. Data you’re already collecting – CRM, practice management, even a shared spreadsheet
2. The right questions – “What’s happening?” and also “What should we do about it?”
3. The willingness to be surprised – because the data will challenge your assumptions

What’s hiding in your data?