Meridian Legal Group , CRM Overhaul and Deduplication
The Problem
Meridian Legal Group operated across three office locations with a single HubSpot instance that had become a data graveyard. Duplicate contacts from intake forms, webhooks and manual entry numbered in the thousands. Leads were assigned randomly, SLA timers did not exist and partners had no visibility into which intake channels actually produced revenue.
The firm was paying for HubSpot Enterprise but using roughly 15% of its capability. Workflows were built by a junior marketing hire two years ago and had never been audited. The result: 40% of new contacts were duplicates, lead response time averaged 6 hours and the managing partner was manually reassigning leads every morning.
Architecture
The rebuild started with data hygiene. I implemented search-before-create deduplication at the webhook ingestion layer , every incoming contact is matched against existing records using email, phone and custom Typeform response ID before any create operation fires. Matches update the existing record. Non-matches create new contacts with full field mapping.
Lead routing was rebuilt from scratch. Each intake channel (Typeform, website chat, referral, walk-in, Google Business Profile, email) feeds into a scoring model that evaluates practice area fit, urgency signals and office proximity. The model assigns leads to the correct office and practice group within 10 seconds of submission.
SLA timers track response time per lead. If a lead is not contacted within 2 hours, the system escalates to the managing partner. If not contacted within 4 hours, it reassigns to the next available attorney. Every escalation is logged.
Before
40% duplicate contacts. 6-hour average response time. Manual lead reassignment every morning. No visibility into channel performance. Workflows built by junior hire, never audited.
After
94% fewer duplicates. Sub-10-second lead assignment. Automatic SLA enforcement with escalation. Real-time channel performance dashboard. Fully documented and auditable workflow layer.
Results
Within 30 days of deployment, duplicate contacts dropped by 94%. Lead response time went from 6 hours to under 10 seconds for automated routing. The managing partner stopped spending 45 minutes every morning on manual reassignment. Channel attribution became accurate for the first time , the firm discovered that referrals produced 3x the revenue of Google Ads but had been under-resourced for months.
The system has been running for 8 months with zero maintenance interventions. All workflows are documented, version-controlled and auditable.
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