For many UK law firms, the same frustration keeps resurfacing.

Marketing generates enquiries.

Intake teams qualify them.

Fee Earners take over.

And then, for anyone outside the matter team, visibility disappears.

Despite significant investment in technology, many firms still rely on spreadsheets, shared inboxes, and manual updates to track BD activity and marketing ROI. This is not because firms lack systems. It is because those systems were never designed to work together.

This is the underlying problem with CRM for law firms today. Intake, matters, and marketing data exist in silos, and most firms are feeling the cost.

Why do firms still fail to connect intake, matters, and marketing data?

Most law firms rely on Case Management Systems (CMS) to do a job they were never designed to do, which creates data gaps between Marketing, BD, and Fee Earners.

In multi-office firms, the problem is amplified. Enquiries enter the firm through different offices, teams apply different qualification standards, and ownership of relationships is often unclear. Without a shared CRM layer, firms unintentionally create duplication, internal competition, and inconsistent client experiences.

The majority of mid-sized UK law firms run their operational backbone on a Case Management System such as Partner for Windows (P4W), Mattersphere, or Visualfiles.

These platforms are good at what they were built for:

• Managing active Matters

• Recording time and billing

• Supporting compliance once instruction is confirmed

They are not designed to manage relationships, early-stage enquiries, or marketing attribution.

That distinction matters more than many firms realise.

The case management vs client relationship trap

Short answer: A CMS manages legal work. A CRM manages relationships and pipeline. Treating one as the other creates friction and lost data.

In practice, many firms attempt to use their CMS as a de facto CRM.

Marketing enquiries are logged manually.
Fee Earners are asked to update prospect records.
BD activity is recorded inconsistently, if at all.

This creates two immediate problems.

First, the admin burden falls on Fee Earners, who understandably prioritise billable work. Logging speculative enquiries or “not yet ready” prospects feels disconnected from their day job.

Second, Marketing loses visibility the moment an enquiry is passed to a fee earner or department. If it does not convert immediately into a Matter, it often disappears entirely.

Over time, this leads to fragmentation across offices and practice areas. The same contact may exist multiple times in different systems, BD activity is recorded inconsistently, and no single view of the relationship exists at a firm-wide level.

The cost of disconnected CRM data

Short answer: Disconnected data leads to lost future instructions, poor marketing decisions, and increased compliance risk.

The most visible impact is on future revenue.

Many enquiries do not convert immediately. They may take months, sometimes years, to turn into instructions. If those prospects are not properly tracked, the firm has no structured way to re-engage them.

For Partners, this is not simply a reporting issue. It directly affects the firm’s ability to understand which relationships drive long-term value, which practice areas justify further investment, and where future growth is genuinely coming from. Without connected data, strategic decisions are based on intuition rather than evidence.

Less visible, but equally important, are the operational and compliance risks:

• AML and KYC checks stored in email threads

• Inconsistent records of initial contact and advice

• No clear audit trail across intake and instruction

From a governance perspective, this creates unnecessary exposure. As regulatory scrutiny increases and firms are required to demonstrate clearer audit trails, these gaps move from being inconvenient to being a material governance risk.

For Marketing Directors, the challenge is different but related. Without connected CRM data, it becomes impossible to demonstrate:

• Which campaigns lead to fee-earning Matters

• Which practice areas generate long-term value

• Where BD and marketing investment should be focused

When reporting relies on assumptions rather than evidence, strategic decisions become harder to defend.

What CRM for law firms should actually do

Short answer: A CRM should act as the firm’s front office, capturing enquiries, managing BD activity, client relationships, and feeding clean data into the CMS once instruction is confirmed.

This is where platforms like HubSpot fit, when implemented correctly.

HubSpot is not a replacement for your Case Management System. It should never be positioned as one.
Instead, it sits upstream, managing:

• Marketing-led enquiries and referrals

• BD activity across teams and practice areas

• Relationship and engagement activities, before and after instruction

When an Engagement Letter is signed, only the relevant data flows into the CMS. The CMS remains the system of record for legal work. The CRM remains the system of record for relationships and growth.

That separation of roles is what most firms are missing.

When reporting relies on assumptions rather than evidence, strategic decisions become harder to defend.

How integration closes the gap between marketing and fee earners

Short answer: Integration ensures partners gain confidence in pipeline visibility as data is captured once, flows automatically, and remains visible across the firm without adding admin.

At Karman Digital, we see the same pattern repeatedly. The technology exists. The issue is architecture.

By integrating HubSpot with your CMS, firms can:

• Capture enquiries consistently at source and track their progress

• Avoid double keying

• Maintain a full history of client engagement activity

• Connect marketing attribution to  matters and revenue

When done properly, this removes the “black hole” between enquiry and instruction.

Marketing gains credible attribution reporting.

Partners gain confidence in pipeline visibility.

Fee Earners are not burdened with unnecessary admin

Most importantly, the firm retains institutional knowledge that would otherwise be lost.

A single source of truth without replacing your CMS

You do not need to rip out legacy systems. You need clarity on which system does what, and how data moves between them.

There is also a longer-term risk. When relationship history lives in inboxes, spreadsheets, or individual fee earners’ knowledge, firms lose institutional memory as people move on or retire. A connected CRM ensures that relationship value remains with the firm, not individuals.

For most mid-sized and larger law firms, the path forward is not wholesale replacement. It is thoughtful integration and clearer ownership of data.

• CMS for legal delivery and compliance

• CRM for intake, BD, relationship management and marketing insight

When those roles are defined and connected, firms move away from spreadsheets and into a more mature operating model.

Marketing can evidence its impact.,Partners can make informed growth decisions. Fee Earners can focus on client work.

A practical next step

If your firm recognises this disconnect, the starting point is not a software demo.

It is a data feasibility conversation.

Mapping how enquiries enter the firm.

Understanding what happens before and after instruction.

Identifying where data is lost, duplicated, or manually worked around.

If you would like a grounded discussion about whether your current CRM and CMS setup can support a genuine single source of truth, we are happy to explore the architecture with you, without pressure or preconceptions.

Get in touch.