CRM for Law Firms: Free Legal Intake CRM from Google Sheets

Small firms lose more revenue at intake than anywhere else. A prospective client calls about an estate plan, the consult gets scheduled, the consult happens — and then the retainer agreement sits unsigned for two weeks while the attorney is buried in an active matter. By the time anyone follows up, the prospect has retained someone who called back faster. Nothing about the firm's lawyering failed. The pipeline did.

Most solo attorneys and small partnerships track that pipeline in a Google Sheet, and for good reason: practice management suites charge per user and per month for intake features buried under billing, documents, and trust accounting you may already handle elsewhere. But the raw sheet has no urgency. It doesn't flag the consult that happened five days ago with no retainer sent, and it can't tell you which referring attorney has sent you four matters this year — the single number that should shape where your business development lunches go.

There's a way to get a real intake CRM without a migration, a new subscription, or moving client data into yet another vendor's system: have AI build the interface directly on the spreadsheet the firm already maintains.

Step 1: Start With Your Intake Sheet

Keep your existing structure — one row per prospective matter. A layout that covers most small-firm intake:

A note on Matter type: family, estate, PI, business — however your practice divides. It becomes a filter later, so you can see intake by practice area. Many firms also keep a short conflict-check note per row; a simple "Conflicts: cleared 7/15" column travels into the CRM like any other field.

Step 2: Create a Free Account

Sign up at lovespreadsheets.com. The free tier builds and runs the CRM. Private logins for each attorney and staff member, on the firm's own domain, are available on the paid tier — relevant here, since intake data should not sit behind a public link.

Step 3: Describe the Firm's Intake Process

Choose the CRM template and set out the process in plain language, as you would for a new intake coordinator:

• "A prospective matter moves Inquiry → Consult scheduled → Consult done → Retainer sent → Signed → Declined."
• "Signed means the retainer agreement is executed — that is the only definition of won."
• "Every row has a next follow-up date. Anything past due appears first when we open the app."

Requests that pay off in a legal practice:

• Consult no-show and post-consult follow-ups — reminders when a consult date passes without a stage change, so no one falls through after the meeting
• Per-attorney views — each attorney sees their own prospective matters; the managing partner sees the full intake picture
• Referral-source reporting — signed matters grouped by referral source, so you know which attorneys and past clients actually send you work

Upload the sheet and run the build. The AI Optimize button will sharpen a rough description, and the AI may ask a clarifying question before it starts. Expect the build in roughly 15–20 minutes.

Step 4: Intake You Can See Across the Firm

What comes back is a private web app: the intake pipeline by stage, each prospect opening to a full record, overdue follow-ups surfaced on arrival, and matter types filterable in one click. It syncs with the Google Sheet in both directions, in real time — your assistant can keep working in the sheet while attorneys work in the app, and both always show the same state.

The sheet remains the system of record, in the firm's own Google account. No prospect data is re-homed into a third-party CRM database.

Why Small Firms Keep the Sheet

One recovered matter funds years of nothing. A single signed engagement lost to a slow follow-up is worth more than most annual CRM subscriptions. A free system that closes that gap has an easy business case.

The firm's data stays the firm's data. Confidentiality obligations make attorneys rightly wary of scattering prospect information across vendors. Here the sheet never leaves your Google account — the app is a controlled window onto it.

Referral sources are the marketing budget. For most small firms, other attorneys and former clients drive the docket. When the sheet can report signed matters by source, thank-yous and lunches go where the work actually comes from.

Common Questions from Law Firms

Is this appropriate for confidential intake information? The sheet stays in your Google account as the source of truth, and the app can be restricted to private, per-attorney logins rather than an open link. Apply the same judgment you would to any tool that touches prospect data.

Can we track intake separately by practice area? Yes. Matter type is a column, so family, estate, PI, and business intake each get their own filtered view of the same pipeline.

We already use practice management software. Does this conflict? No — this covers the pre-retainer gap most PM suites handle poorly. Once a matter signs, it proceeds into your existing system as usual.

Build Yours

Take the intake sheet the firm already keeps, go to lovespreadsheets.com, and describe how an inquiry becomes a signed matter at your firm. In about 20 minutes, the consults that used to go quiet start getting followed up — and the pipeline stops leaking where the money is.