One Firm in Three Wrote Back: The First Reply Decides the Client

In Clio’s 2024 secret shopper study of 500 US law firms, only 33 percent answered a prospective client’s email, down from 40 percent in 2019. Of the firms that did answer, 18 percent gave clear next steps or cost information. A foreign client who writes to a firm has often written to others as well, and what comes back first is the firm’s real brochure: a name, a next step and a price, or nothing.

Speed matters more than most partners believe. In a study of 1.25 million sales leads, companies that tried to reach a prospect within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker as those that tried even an hour later (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, Harvard Business Review, 2011). For a client abroad, that hour often falls in the firm’s night. The firms that win these clients set a reply standard on the client’s clock, send a named person with one next step and its price, and test themselves before a client does.

Two firms in three said nothing

The 2024 figures come from a simple exercise. A third-party research company contacted 500 US law firms with a short list of questions a potential client might ask (Palmer, 2Civility, 2024, reporting the Clio Legal Trends Report). Just 33 percent replied to the email. On the phone, 40 percent answered, against 56 percent in 2019, and 48 percent of firms were in effect unreachable by phone (Ambrogi, LawSites, 2024).

The firms that replied were not slow. Of the email replies, 84 percent came within eight hours. They were empty. Only 18 percent gave clear next steps or cost information, and 2 percent referred to similar cases, as the shoppers had asked. On the phone, 41 percent of firms offered rate information, 12 percent gave a cost estimate, and 36 percent explained the process or the next step. In the end, 73 percent of the shoppers were unlikely to recommend the firms they had contacted (Ambrogi, LawSites, 2024).

So the first reply fails twice. Most firms send nothing, and most of the rest send a quick note that leaves the prospect where they started, holding a question with no idea what happens next or what it will cost.

The sample is American, and none of it measured cross-border work. The mechanism carries anyway. A family choosing a residency lawyer, a wealth adviser or a buyer’s agent abroad writes the same kind of message and waits the same way, with less freedom to pick up the phone.

The client wrote to three of you

The earlier Clio report explains why the silence is so expensive. In its 2019 survey of 2,000 US consumers, 57 percent of those who had shopped for a lawyer said they contacted more than one firm, and 44 percent believed they had to talk to more than one to find the right one. Yet 42 percent said that if they liked the first lawyer they spoke with, they would not need to speak with any others (Clio, 2019). The comparison has a finish line, and it is the first good conversation.

Expectations were set in hours. Ten percent of consumers expected a reply within an hour, 24 percent within a few hours and 45 percent within 24 hours, so a firm that answers after a day has already missed the expectations of 79 percent of the people who write (Clio, 2019).

The same survey asked people why they did not hire a lawyer they had contacted. 64 percent had contacted a firm that never responded. 65 percent got no indication of what to do next, and 64 percent got no sense of what their case would cost (Clio, 2019). Those are the three things a first reply can fix on its own, before any lawyer has done any legal work: being there, naming a next step, and naming a price.

One hour, measured on whose clock

The Harvard Business Review research is the reason speed deserves a written rule. The authors audited 2,241 US companies by sending each a web-generated test lead. 37 percent responded within an hour, 16 percent within one to 24 hours, 24 percent took longer than 24 hours, and 23 percent never responded at all. Among the companies that replied within 30 days, the average wait was 42 hours (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, 2011).

The seven-fold finding comes from a separate study in the same article, of 1.25 million leads at 29 consumer and 13 business-to-business companies. Firms that tried to reach a prospect within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead, defined as a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker, as firms that tried an hour later, and more than 60 times as likely as firms that waited 24 hours or more. These were commercial sales leads, not a study of law firms, and the exact multiples should not be carried across. The direction should. Interest cools by the hour.

Now put the firm and the client on different clocks. Take a firm in New York that works nine to six, on a Tuesday at the end of September 2026, while New York is on daylight time (offsets from the IANA Time Zone Database).

For the client in Singapore or Sydney, the most disciplined office in New York, answering the minute it opens, lands in the client’s evening. The first chance to act on the reply during working hours is Wednesday morning, about 23 hours after the client wrote. If the client writes on a Friday morning, the reply arrives on Friday night and the next working hour is Monday. The firm believes it answered first thing. The client experienced a three-day silence.

A reply that lands while the client sleeps is read tomorrow, however fast the firm thinks it was.

The HBR authors also named reasons for the delay, and every one has a counterpart in a firm. Leads were pulled from databases once a day instead of continuously. Sales forces focused on generating their own leads rather than reacting quickly to a customer’s interest. Leads were shared out by geography and “fairness.” In a firm, that is the enquiry inbox checked each morning, the message forwarded to the partner who owns the practice area, and the partner in a hearing until four.

What the first reply has to carry

A good first reply is short and carries three things. It is signed by a named person, the one who will handle the first step, with a direct line and working hours stated in the client’s time zone. The client is choosing a person, and “our team will be in touch” gives them no one to choose. It offers one next step with a date, such as a call on Thursday at 8:00 the client’s time, or a request for the one document the firm needs to judge the case. Three options send the decision back to the client. And it states what that step costs, in writing. The whole matter cannot be priced from one email. The first consultation can.

It also answers in the channel the client used. In the 2019 study, 53 percent of the email replies asked the shopper to phone the office instead, and 15 percent carried no information at all beyond the request to call (Clio, 2019). For a client twelve hours away, “please call the office” means an international call in the middle of the client’s night. It turns a written question into a second, harder task.

On price, one regulator has already set the floor. Since 6 December 2018, solicitors’ firms in England and Wales that publicise immigration work (asylum excluded) must display price and service information: a total cost or an average or range, the basis of the charges, likely disbursements, the key stages, typical timescales and the qualifications and experience of the people doing the work (Solicitors Regulation Authority, Price transparency). The rules require the cost information to be “clear and accessible and in a prominent place on your website” (SRA Transparency Rules). A firm anywhere that will not state the cost of a first meeting in writing is behind a standard set in England and Wales in 2018.

This is not legal advice. What a firm may say about fees, outcomes and timing in a first reply is governed by its own bar’s rules, and those rules come first.

Shop yourself before a client does

Firms overrate their own speed. In Clio’s 2019 survey, 89 percent of legal professionals said they responded to phone and email inquiries within 24 hours. In the same report, 60 percent of the 1,000 firms the shoppers emailed never replied at all (Clio, 2019). The samples differ, but the gap is hard to miss. Nobody inside the firm sees the enquiry that went unanswered, so the belief survives.

Clio’s method can be copied at small scale. Ask someone outside the firm to send three enquiries a quarter, each from a different time zone the firm serves, through the contact form, direct email and the phone number on the website, plus any messaging app the site advertises. Write each enquiry the way a real client writes, with a real-sounding situation and a question about cost. Then score four things: hours to the first reply on the client’s clock, whether a named person signed it, whether it named one next step, and whether it gave the cost of that step.

Publish the score internally, next to the numbers the partners already watch. The standard only holds if someone can see when it slips.