Choose the question your first cohort needs to answer
A useful pilot gives your managing partner and intake lead a decision they can make together. For example: can this delivery arrangement supply matters that fit our approved profile, with a workload our team can handle and acquisition costs we can evaluate? Write that question before the order starts.
Keep the initial scope specific: one delivery model, a defined case profile and geography, an agreed volume or delivery window, and a spending limit. Set a delivery stop and a later review date. Finishing an order does not mean every matter has reached a decision.
Agree what would justify continuing, what would require a correction, and what would stop further deliveries. Use your firm's own economics and capacity. A first cohort can reveal workflow problems and inform another purchase; it cannot promise how every future cohort will perform.
Turn the agreement into a short operating brief
Once the commercial scope is agreed, give everyone handling the pilot the same operating brief. Replace team names with named owners and backups. If two people believe the other is making the next call, the record has no effective owner.
| Decision | Record before launch | Suggested owner |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Delivery window, volume or spending limit, model and criteria version | Firm's buying lead |
| Receipt | Delivery destination, acknowledgment and failure escalation | Intake operations owner |
| Contact | Who calls, available hours, follow-up plan and backup | Named intake lead |
| Review | Acceptance definition, reviewer and unresolved-item route | Firm's designated reviewer |
| Exceptions | Reporting window, evidence required and supplier contact | Supplier liaison |
| Decision | Review date, required records and authority to reorder | Firm's buying lead |
Test the handoff before the first real delivery
Run an agreed test using clearly labeled synthetic data. Confirm that the receiving system creates the intended record, preserves the supplier identifier, assigns an owner and makes the required information available. Check what happens when a required field is missing or delivery arrives outside staffed hours.
Confirm the boundary of the purchased service. For form leads, your team may own the first contact and signing. For a live transfer, someone must be ready to receive the call. For a signed-retainer packet, assign receipt, document review and client onboarding explicitly. Follow the scope you agreed rather than inferring responsibilities from the product name.
The launch check ends when the intended recipient can find the test record and explain the next action. A successful transmission alone does not establish that intake can work the matter.
Give every delivered matter a clear review status
Build the cohort from unique matters first delivered within the agreed window. Keep a stable matter ID, supplier ID, receipt time and criteria version. Link corrections and replacements to their original records so the team's history remains understandable.
For this pilot, use three mutually exclusive review states. Accepted means the firm's designated reviewer recorded acceptance under its stated definition. Rejected means that reviewer recorded a decision not to accept, with a reason. Pending means a decision remains open, with a next action, owner and review date. If your system uses declined, map it consistently to rejected.
Keep contact, signature and onboarding events in separate fields. An unanswered call does not automatically mean rejection; a signed document does not automatically mean acceptance. Your firm decides how these events affect its review.
At each report date, accepted plus rejected plus pending should equal the unique matters in scope. Investigate missing records and duplicate rows before interpreting the percentages.
Turn early feedback into an assigned correction
Review the first deliveries while there is still time to correct the process. Discuss missing information, routing failures and unexplained delays using the matter ID and the requirement that applied. Keep sensitive case details in the firm's approved system; the supplier discussion should contain only what the agreed process requires.
Separate a supplier exception from a firm decision. A matter can meet the purchased criteria and still be rejected by the firm. A missing required field can need correction while acceptance remains pending. Record the actual reason instead of collapsing both into a label such as bad lead.
Close each discussion with an owner, an action and a due date. If you change targeting, criteria or intake coverage, record the change and its effective delivery date. That gives the next review a fair basis for understanding what changed.
Keep a cost record beside the intake record
Track the supplier charges attributable to this cohort, confirmed credits and the internal work needed to reach review decisions. Include relevant setup charges using a stated allocation. Keep credit requests separate until confirmed, and avoid subtracting a credit twice when it already appears on an invoice.
Show supplier cost and additional intake or review expense separately. If staff time is estimated, label the estimate and explain the basis. An acceptance-cost figure is more useful when a second person can trace both the spend and the accepted count.
Use the cost-per-accepted-case guide for the full calculation and the calculator for planning scenarios. Actual pilot reporting uses recorded decisions; the calculator uses assumptions. With no accepted matters, show costs and review counts instead of presenting a zero cost per accepted case.
Make the next decision at a stated review date
Bring the buying lead, intake owner and designated reviewer together with one dated cohort report. Show delivery counts, review states, age of pending matters, reasons for rejection, attributable costs and unresolved supplier exceptions. Confirm whether the team completed the agreed follow-up before drawing conclusions about supplier fit.
Continue within the same scope when the records support the firm's pre-agreed requirements and intake has capacity. Adjust a specific issue when the pilot exposes a fixable gap, then define how the next cohort will test that correction. Stop or hold new deliveries when the required evidence, economics or operating capacity does not support another order.
If pending matters could materially change the decision, set a further review date and assign the remaining work. Preserve the earlier snapshot. Do not change unresolved records merely to finish the report.
Any volume increase needs its own buying decision: who will handle the added work, what spending is authorized and when it will be reviewed. A useful pilot ends with that written decision, including an explanation of what the evidence still cannot tell you.
Check how your CRM translates the pilot into reports
Your software's labels may differ from your review definitions. Clio Grow, for example, documents Intake, Hired and Not hired categories with configurable matter statuses. Its reporting documentation distinguishes a matter's creation date from its latest status date. See the two Clio references below for those product details.
Map your pilot definitions explicitly and preserve the first delivery date. A report filtered by record creation or latest status change may describe a different group from your delivery cohort. Test the report against a few underlying records before using it for a reorder decision.
Questions law firms ask
How many leads should a personal injury pilot include?
Choose a bounded cohort that fits your approved spend and review capacity and can inform the decision you named. There is no universal count in this framework. Treat a small cohort cautiously and record what a further evaluation would need to establish.
Who should own intake during the pilot?
Name one firm-side intake owner and a backup. Assign each step according to the purchased handoff, including any supplier work. The firm's designated reviewer owns its acceptance decisions even when the supplier handles contact and signing.
Should the pilot end when the last lead arrives?
That ends the delivery window. Continue the agreed review of those matters and report pending work separately. Use a stated review date and preserve later updates to the same cohort.
Does a successful first cohort justify increasing volume?
It can support considering another order. Review remaining uncertainty, intake capacity, case mix and authorized spend before increasing volume. Record the next scope and review point instead of assuming the initial result will repeat.
Sources and further reading
Define a first cohort your team can evaluate
Bring your case profile, intake capacity and handoff requirements to a law-firm acquisition review.
Discuss your pilot scope