What the data says about responding quickly to new clients

Hennessey Digital is a marketing agency. It contacted law firms and recorded whether and how fast each one replied. Its study compares one year with the next.

• Measured by a marketing agency

  Hennessey Digital, Law Firm Response Time Study, 2022 (https://hennessey.com/press/hennessey-digital-releases-law-firm-response-time-study-2022): 67% of the law firms contacted responded in 2022, compared with 59% in 2021.

• Measured by a marketing agency

  Hennessey Digital, Law Firm Response Time Study, 2022 (https://hennessey.com/press/hennessey-digital-releases-law-firm-response-time-study-2022): 17% of the firms responded in 10 minutes or less. The firms that responded in both years improved their response time by a median of 53 minutes.

Clio ran a separate experiment with the agency Lux. Researchers posed as people seeking a lawyer and contacted U.S. law firms by email and by phone.

It was an experiment by Clio, not a nationally representative sample. The two studies have different organizers and methods, so their figures should not be compared directly.

• Mystery-shopper experiment, not a national sample

  Clio, Highlights from the Legal Trends Report 2024, 2024 (https://www.clio.com/blog/highlights-from-2024-legal-trends-report/): 500 U.S. law firms were contacted by email and by phone in the summer of 2024. 33% responded to the email, compared with 40% in 2019.

• Mystery-shopper experiment, not a national sample

  Clio, Highlights from the Legal Trends Report 2024, 2024 (https://www.clio.com/blog/highlights-from-2024-legal-trends-report/): 40% of the calls were answered, compared with 56% in 2019. Counting call-backs, 52% of the firms could be reached by phone, so 48% were essentially unreachable.

• Mystery-shopper experiment, not a national sample

  Clio, Legal Trends Report, 2019 (https://www.clio.com/about/press/clios-legal-trends-report-reveals-law-firms-struggle-to-respond-to-client-inquiries/): 1,000 law firms were contacted, and 82% of those that responded to the email did so within 24 hours. This is a historical figure from a different method.

This figure comes from a survey, so it describes what people said, not what they did. It is also older than the studies above.

• Survey: what people said

  Clio, Legal Trends Report, 2019 (https://www.clio.com/about/press/clios-legal-trends-report-reveals-law-firms-struggle-to-respond-to-client-inquiries/): in a survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers, 79% expected a response within 24 hours.

Clio ran a later survey of consumers. It is the vendor's own survey, and it describes what people said about their experience, not what a firm did.

• Survey: what people said

  Clio, Legal Trends Report 2025, 2025 (https://www.clio.com/resources/legal-trends/read-online/): in a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, representative by census, 70% of those who recently hired a lawyer found one easily. 24% would not hire their last lawyer again.

The studies describe the firms they contacted, in the years they were run. They do not describe every firm, and they do not show what happens to a firm that changes how it answers.

We do not link these figures to any result for a firm, and nothing here is a forecast.

• Decide who receives each new inquiry and who covers when that person is away
• Send a short acknowledgement so the person knows the request arrived
• Make sure calls and voicemail reach a person who will return them
• Record each inquiry in the case management system with its date and status
• Look at the firm's own response times before changing anything