Associate a Case to a Lead

The following workarounds are available to associate a Lead with a Case in Salesforce:

Option 1: Convert Lead Before Case Association

Convert the Lead to an Account/Contact prior to associating the Case to the Contact. You will need to consider if this solution will fit within your current business process for Lead conversion. Perhaps you can use a custom status field on the Contact to track a certain phase the Contact is in. 

Option 2: Use a Custom Lookup Field

Create a custom lookup field on Cases to the Leads object. This will allow you to associate a Lead to the Case, and have a Cases related list on the Lead record. However, it's important to note that once you convert the Lead to a Contact, the case information will not automatically be associated to the new Contact. The only ways to associate the Cases to the newly created Contact record are:

                                             a. To manually update the Contact field on the Case record. 
                                             b. Use APEX code to associate the Cases to the new Contact upon convert. 

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