Automated milestone tracking for a surrogacy attorney
6-8x
improvement in
operational productivity
Surrogacy cases are coordination-intensive. Intended parents, gestational carriers, clinics, and attorneys all need to stay aligned across 15-20 milestones per case—legal contracts drafted and signed, medical clearances confirmed, insurance verified, parental rights established. Each milestone triggers time-sensitive follow-ups. Miss one, and the entire timeline can slip.
The Story
Melissa Torto, a surrogacy attorney, was tracking everything manually in Google Sheets.
No automated reminders. No system to flag overdue steps. Just a spreadsheet and the mental overhead of remembering which cases needed attention.
The manual tracking wasn't just tedious—it was capping her growth. She didn't have time to take on more clients when every case required this much administrative overhead. Things were starting to slip through the cracks.
The Goal
Reduce the administrative overhead so Melissa could take on more clients—without needing enterprise software or changing her existing workflow.
The Strategy
Melissa didn't need a new system. She needed her existing system to work harder.
Her Google Sheet already contained the data: client names, milestone dates, follow-up status. The problem was that the sheet couldn't do anything with that information. It couldn't remind her when something was overdue. It couldn't draft the follow-up email. It couldn't log that a reminder had been sent.
I built an automation layer on top of the existing workflow using Make.com.
Tactics
Make.com automation integrating Google Sheets, Gmail, and Google Calendar—with conditional logic for milestone-specific messaging and error logging for visibility.
Calendar Integration. For upcoming milestones, the automation checks whether a calendar reminder exists. If not, it creates one—ensuring nothing gets forgotten even before it's overdue.
Email Drafting. Rather than sending emails automatically (which would remove attorney judgment from client communication), the system drafts personalized emails based on the milestone type. Melissa reviews and sends with one click.
Milestone Monitoring. The automation reads her Google Sheet daily, checking each case against a defined set of milestones—outreach to intended parents, engagement letter sent, gestational carrier communication, contract status, and so on.
Follow-Up Detection. For each milestone, the system checks: Has the milestone date passed? Has a follow-up been sent? If three or more days have elapsed without a follow-up, the automation triggers.
Error Handling. Any failures in the automation are logged to a separate sheet for review, ensuring the system fails visibly rather than silently.
Logging. Every action is recorded back to the Google Sheet: when reminders were sent, which milestones were flagged, what follow-ups are pending. The spreadsheet becomes a living audit trail.
The Results
Melissa now starts each day with pre-drafted emails waiting for review and calendar reminders already in place. The mental overhead of tracking case status is gone. The system does the remembering—and she has the capacity to grow her practice.
87%
reduction in time spent on reminder management.
20-35 hours
reclaimed every month—the equivalent of half a work week returned to billable client work.
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Time per reminder | 12-20 minutes | ~2 minutes |
| Monthly reminders managed | ~125 | ~125 |
| Hours spent on follow-up management | 25-40 hours | 4-6 hours |
| Missed follow-ups | Frequent | Rare |
“The automation has saved time and has made work much more streamlined.”
— Melissa L. Torto, Esq.
Professionals often assume they need enterprise software to get enterprise-level organization. They don't. They need their existing tools to work together.
This automation didn't replace Melissa's spreadsheet—it made the spreadsheet proactive. The same data that was sitting passively now triggers actions, drafts communications, and maintains its own audit trail.
The pattern applies beyond legal work: any professional managing complex, multi-milestone client engagements—financial advisors, consultants, project managers—faces the same coordination challenge. The solution isn't always a bigger system. Sometimes it's making the system you already have do more.
