Why

Under 10 inquiries a month, solo, all from LinkedIn and referrals means your real asset isn't the inquiry — it's the relationship with the attorney who sent it and the next case they'll send 6 months from now. A pipeline CRM would have you staring at empty stages most weeks. What you actually need is a contact list that nudges you to stay warm with the 20-40 attorneys and legal nurses who feed you work, plus a way to track each case from intake → records review → report → (occasional) testimony.

What you actually need

1. Notion (free) or Airtable (free tier) — two linked databases: "Contacts" (attorney, firm, last touch, referral source) and "Cases" (matter name, attorney, stage: Intake / Records / Report / Testimony / Closed, life care plan yes/no). One view filtered by "last contacted > 90 days ago" becomes your warm-list.
2. Calendly (free) — paste the link in your LinkedIn About section and email signature so intake calls book themselves instead of email tag with paralegals.
3. A habit — the Friday 30-minute relationship hour — every Friday, open the Contacts view sorted by "last touch", send 5 personal messages to attorneys you haven't spoken to in 90+ days. No pitch. Case win congratulations, an article, a check-in.

Do this today

Duplicate a free Notion CRM template (notion.so/templates → search "CRM"), rename the two databases "Attorneys" and "Cases", and add a "Last Contact" date field plus a "Referral Source" relation field to Attorneys. Then spend 20 minutes pasting in every attorney you've worked with in the last 18 months from your email and LinkedIn. By tonight you'll see, in one view, which referral sources have gone cold.

What to ignore

Skip HubSpot Free, Pipedrive ($14/seat/mo), and anything with "Sales Hub" in the name — they're built for outbound reps chasing 50+ open deals, not a solo expert nurturing 30 attorney relationships. If a Clio or MyCase rep pitches you their "expert workflow" add-on, say no — those are tools for law firms, not the consultants serving them.

What doing nothing costs you

At under 10 inquiries/month, the loss isn't dropped leads — it's the referring attorney who quietly stops thinking of you because 11 months passed without contact. One forgotten attorney relationship in med-mal/life-care-planning work is easily a five-figure consulting engagement walking to a competitor.

When to revisit this

When you start subcontracting cases to another legal nurse and need to track who's working what.