The Firm Operating Manual
Everything in the other seven publications produces numbers. This one is about what to do with them: which to look at, how often, in what meeting, and what decision each one is allowed to trigger. It is the least exciting document here and the one that decides whether any of the rest compounds.
Four parts, roughly a twenty-minute read. Published in full on this page. There is no gated version, no download wall, and no form. If you want it as a PDF, print the page — it is styled for it.
Part 1 — The metric hierarchy
| Metric | Tier | Cadence | Decision it triggers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per signed viable case | Headline | Monthly | Channel budget reallocation; whether the programme continues |
| Cost per case surviving records review | Headline | Monthly | Whether inquiry quality or inquiry volume is the constraint |
| Signed cases | Headline | Monthly | Capacity planning for the next quarter |
| Review queue depth and age | Operational | Weekly | Whether to throttle demand this week |
| 90th-percentile time to first contact | Operational | Weekly | Staffing and escalation rules |
| Contact rate | Operational | Weekly | Same |
| Screen-out reasons by category | Optimisation | Weekly | Targeting and negative lists |
| Records-obtained rate | Optimisation | Weekly | Chase cadence ownership |
| Cost per inquiry | Appendix | Monthly | None. It is diagnostic only. |
| Impressions, CTR, rankings | Appendix | Monthly | None. |
Part 2 — The meeting cadence
Three meetings. Each has one question, a fixed attendee list, and a decision it is allowed to make. Adding a fourth is how this stops working.
| Meeting | Length | Who | The one question | Decision it may make |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly operations | 20 minutes | Intake lead, records coordinator, marketing | Is the queue growing, and is anything ageing? | Throttle or open demand for the coming week |
| Monthly economics | 45 minutes | Managing partner, marketing, intake lead | What did a signed case cost us, all in? | Move budget between channels; change the target |
| Quarterly strategy | 90 minutes | Partners, marketing | Should the ceiling move, and what is the disposition mix? | Capacity investment; retain / co-counsel / refer policy |
The weekly meeting is the one that gets cancelled and the one that matters most. It is twenty minutes and it prevents the queue problem that no monthly review can undo after the fact.
Part 3 — The forecast model
Forecast from capacity, not from spend. This is the inverse of how nearly every agency forecast is built, and it is why nearly every agency forecast is missed.
- Start with weekly review capacity — see the planner.
- Multiply by the period to get maximum reviews.
- Apply your measured viability rate to get maximum viable matters.
- Apply your measured signature rate to get maximum signed cases. This is the ceiling for the period, and no budget raises it.
- Work backwards to the inquiry volume needed to fill that capacity.
- Work backwards again, through your six conversion rates, to the spend required — see the keyword model.
| Step | Spend-first (usual) | Capacity-first (correct) |
|---|---|---|
| Starts from | The budget | Weekly review capacity |
| Produces | A signed-case number that may exceed what the firm can assess | A signed-case ceiling the firm can actually reach |
| When it is wrong | Discovered at quarter end, as a miss | Discovered at planning, as a capacity decision |
| What it recommends when short | Spend more | Raise capacity, then spend more |
Part 4 — The dashboard
One screen. If it needs scrolling, it is a report, and reports get read once a month at best.
| Block | Contents | Refresh |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Economics | Cost per signed case, cost per case surviving review, signed cases this month and last | Monthly |
| 2 · The constraint | Review capacity, queue depth, age of the oldest item, weeks of headroom | Daily |
| 3 · Speed | Median and 90th-percentile time to first contact, contact rate, after-hours share | Daily |
| 4 · Mix | Screen-out reasons by category, inquiries by channel, signed cases by channel | Weekly |
What must not be on the dashboard. Impressions, clicks, cost per click, rankings, and social engagement. Every one of them is diagnostic, none of them is a decision input at partner level, and putting them on the same screen as cost per signed case invites exactly the wrong conversation.
Related: the flagship playbook for the system these metrics measure, and the tools for computing each of them from your own data.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau — County Population Totals and Components of Change, Vintage 2024 — births by county, 2021–2024
- U.S. Census Bureau — County Business Patterns, 2023 — NAICS 541110, Offices of Lawyers; establishment counts by county
- CMS Care Compare — Maternal Health · Hospital — PC-02, PC-07a, PC-07b, SM-7; 2024 reporting period
Cite this analysis
Free to reproduce with attribution, including commercially. Charts may be embedded as published.
Birth Injury Marketing. “The Firm Operating Manual.” 24 August 2026. https://birthinjurymarketing.com/library/firm-operating-manual/
Journalists and researchers: we will cut this data to your specification — by state, by county, by hospital, by year — and send the underlying CSV, free and without conditions. Ask for a custom cut. We will also tell you what the data cannot support.
Other publications
The Birth Injury Case Acquisition Playbook
The whole system, front to back: sizing the market, buying demand, screening it, and measuring to the signed case.
The Medical Screening & Intake Manual
The operational system around the constraint that actually limits case volume. The document nobody else has written.
Legal Advertising Compliance for Birth Injury Marketing
A framework for staying inside bar advertising rules in the most heavily scrutinised category in legal marketing.
All eight → · The tools that come from these → · Have us run it →
Authorship & review
- Author
- Kevin Schwaner, Founder; Chief Marketing Officer. Credentials.
- Last reviewed
- Legal review
- Not yet assigned. This page describes marketing practice, not law, and gives no legal advice. Rules cited are linked to the primary source so you can read them directly. See Editorial Standards.
- Corrections
- Found an error? Tell us and it goes in the dated corrections log, whether or not it flatters us.