{
  "last_reviewed": "2026-08-23",
  "stats": [
    {
      "id": "AH-01",
      "value": "40.9%",
      "label": "did not provide a response to an after-hours phone call",
      "source": "S2",
      "scope": "1,000 personal injury firms, 25 U.S. cities, calls outside regular business hours",
      "note": "Applies to the sampled personal injury firms and calls, not all U.S. law firms."
    },
    {
      "id": "AH-02",
      "value": "29.2%",
      "label": "of firms advertising 24-hour availability were reported as failing to answer",
      "source": "S2",
      "scope": "Subgroup of the 1,000-firm after-hours study",
      "note": "The paper reports 29.2%. A supplementary report also states 221 of 737, which is approximately 30.0%; CallShift preserves the paper's reported percentage and flags the arithmetic inconsistency rather than recalculating a false precision."
    },
    {
      "id": "WEB-01",
      "value": "26%",
      "label": "did not respond to a business-hours website lead within seven days",
      "source": "S1",
      "scope": "1,333 firms; forms submitted 10 a.m.-12 p.m. local time in Q1 2025",
      "note": "This is a daytime web-form study, not an after-hours benchmark."
    },
    {
      "id": "WEB-02",
      "value": "25%",
      "label": "responded to a website lead in under five minutes",
      "source": "S1",
      "scope": "2025 business-hours web-form inquiries",
      "note": "Response thresholds are cumulative; 33% responded within 10 minutes and 56% within one hour."
    },
    {
      "id": "WEB-03",
      "value": "13 min",
      "label": "median response time to online leads",
      "source": "S1",
      "scope": "2025 business-hours web-form inquiries",
      "note": "Median among the study's measured responses; non-responses are handled separately by the publisher."
    },
    {
      "id": "PHONE-01",
      "value": "40%",
      "label": "answered the initial phone call in Clio's 2024 secret shop",
      "source": "S3",
      "scope": "500 law firms contacted by phone and email",
      "note": "The public study page does not state the time of day; do not call this a business-hours or after-hours rate."
    },
    {
      "id": "PHONE-02",
      "value": "48%",
      "label": "were unreachable by phone even after firms had a chance to return messages",
      "source": "S3",
      "scope": "500-law-firm 2024 secret shop",
      "note": "52% were reached by phone including callbacks."
    },
    {
      "id": "EMAIL-01",
      "value": "33%",
      "label": "responded to email in Clio's 2024 secret shop",
      "source": "S3",
      "scope": "500 law firms contacted by phone and email",
      "note": "Among firms that responded to email, a Clio press summary reports 84% responded within eight hours."
    },
    {
      "id": "TREND-01",
      "value": "56% -> 40%",
      "label": "initial phone answer rate in Clio secret shopping, 2019 to 2024",
      "source": "S3",
      "scope": "2019: 500 calls; 2024: 500-firm outreach study",
      "note": "Useful directional comparison, but treat as two studies rather than a controlled longitudinal panel."
    },
    {
      "id": "TREND-02",
      "value": "40% -> 33%",
      "label": "email response rate in Clio secret shopping, 2019 to 2024",
      "source": "S3",
      "scope": "2019: 1,000 firms emailed; 2024: 500-firm outreach study",
      "note": "Methods are similar in purpose but not necessarily identical enough for causal interpretation."
    },
    {
      "id": "SCHED-01",
      "value": "23%",
      "label": "of solo respondents reported online consultation scheduling through the firm website",
      "source": "S5",
      "scope": "ABA 2024 Marketing & Communications survey",
      "note": "Reported adoption, not tested availability."
    },
    {
      "id": "SCHED-02",
      "value": "18%",
      "label": "of respondents from firms with 2-9 attorneys reported online scheduling",
      "source": "S5",
      "scope": "ABA 2024 Marketing & Communications survey",
      "note": "Firm-size respondent percentages: 23% solo, 18% 2-9, 14% 10-49, 15% 100+."
    },
    {
      "id": "CONSUMER-01",
      "value": "80%+",
      "label": "would contact another attorney if they did not hear back within 48 hours",
      "source": "S6",
      "scope": "~1,850 prior users of Martindale-Avvo legal network sites",
      "note": "A stated consumer preference from a directory-user sample, not observed hiring behavior across the general U.S. population."
    },
    {
      "id": "CONSUMER-02",
      "value": "61.5%",
      "label": "listed attorney responsiveness as helpful when looking for an attorney",
      "source": "S6",
      "scope": "~1,850 legal consumers",
      "note": "Respondents could select multiple criteria."
    },
    {
      "id": "CONSUMER-03",
      "value": "78.9%",
      "label": "of consumers who ultimately hired contacted more than one attorney",
      "source": "S6",
      "scope": "Consumers in the 2023 survey who ultimately hired a lawyer",
      "note": "Survey-based and drawn from users of legal-network sites."
    },
    {
      "id": "TECH-01",
      "value": "53% / 28%",
      "label": "higher revenue reported among solos / small firms using a group of client-intake technologies",
      "source": "S7",
      "scope": "Clio 2025 solo and small firm analysis",
      "note": "Observational association with use of e-signatures, online search ads, online schedulers, online intake forms and text messaging; not proof that the tools caused the difference."
    },
    {
      "id": "TECH-02",
      "value": "10% / 10%",
      "label": "improved conversion associated with e-signatures among solos / small firms",
      "source": "S7",
      "scope": "Clio 2025 solo and small firm analysis",
      "note": "Publisher describes improved conversion rates among firms using the feature; observational association."
    },
    {
      "id": "TECH-03",
      "value": "2% / 5%",
      "label": "improved conversion associated with online intake forms among solos / small firms",
      "source": "S7",
      "scope": "Clio 2025 solo and small firm analysis",
      "note": "Observational association; not an industry-wide conversion benchmark."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "id": "S1",
      "publisher": "Hennessey Digital",
      "title": "2025 Lead Form Response Time Study",
      "year": 2025,
      "url": "https://hennessey.com/2025-lead-form-response-time-study/",
      "sample": "1,333 U.S. law firms; personal injury, criminal defense and other practice areas.",
      "method": "Fictitious inquiries submitted through firms' website lead forms between 10 a.m. and noon local time in Q1 2025. First personal outreach measured; no response within seven days treated as non-responsive.",
      "commercial": "Yes - Hennessey Digital is a law-firm marketing company.",
      "use": "Business-hours website lead response benchmarks."
    },
    {
      "id": "S2",
      "publisher": "SSRN / authors Tiago Strammiello and Cal Stein",
      "title": "After-Hours Intake Response Rates Across 1,000 U.S. Personal Injury Law Firms",
      "year": 2026,
      "url": "https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6310399",
      "sample": "1,000 personal injury law firms in 25 U.S. cities.",
      "method": "Calls placed outside regular business hours. A human, answering service, or automated system counted as a response in the published abstract.",
      "commercial": "Yes - authors disclose affiliation with ClaireAI, an intake-services company.",
      "use": "After-hours phone response only; not a national all-practice prevalence estimate."
    },
    {
      "id": "S3",
      "publisher": "Clio",
      "title": "2024 Legal Trends - client engagement secret shopper",
      "year": 2024,
      "url": "https://www.clio.com/guides/client-intake-legal-trends/",
      "sample": "500 law firms contacted by email and phone.",
      "method": "Third-party research company contacted firms with a prospective-client inquiry. Public page reviewed does not specify time of day for outreach.",
      "commercial": "Yes - Clio is a legal technology provider.",
      "use": "Phone reachability, initial answer rate, email response, and information provided."
    },
    {
      "id": "S4",
      "publisher": "Clio",
      "title": "2019 Legal Trends Report",
      "year": 2019,
      "url": "https://www.clio.com/resources/legal-trends/2019-report/read-online/",
      "sample": "1,000 U.S. law firms emailed; 500 of those firms phoned. Equal representation across family, criminal, bankruptcy, business formation, and employment; firms of all sizes.",
      "method": "Third-party research company used practice-area-specific prospective-client inquiries and assessed responsiveness and quality of information.",
      "commercial": "Yes - Clio is a legal technology provider.",
      "use": "Historical comparison for email response, phone answering, callbacks, and client-service information."
    },
    {
      "id": "S5",
      "publisher": "American Bar Association",
      "title": "2024 Legal Technology Survey - Marketing & Communications / Solo and Small Firm TechReport",
      "year": 2024,
      "url": "https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/resources/tech-report/2024/2024-solo-and-small-firm-techreport/",
      "sample": "Marketing & Communications volume: 445 attorney respondents. Firm-size mix included solos, 2-9, 10-49, 50-99, 100-299 and 500+ attorney firms.",
      "method": "Survey of attorneys in private practice about technology use. Results are respondent-reported, not secret-shopper tests.",
      "commercial": "No vendor stake in the intake technology category; ABA is a professional association.",
      "use": "Online scheduling adoption by firm size."
    },
    {
      "id": "S6",
      "publisher": "Martindale-Avvo",
      "title": "Understanding the Legal Consumer 2023",
      "year": 2023,
      "url": "https://www.martindale-avvo.com/academy/research/understanding-the-legal-consumer-2023/",
      "sample": "Approximately 1,850 consumers who had previously used Avvo, Lawyers.com, Nolo, or Martindale.",
      "method": "Consumer survey focused on how prospective clients find, evaluate, contact and hire attorneys.",
      "commercial": "Yes - respondents came from Martindale-Avvo network sites and the publisher operates legal directories/marketing services.",
      "use": "Consumer expectations and stated willingness to contact another attorney after waiting."
    },
    {
      "id": "S7",
      "publisher": "Clio",
      "title": "2025 Legal Trends for Solo and Small Law Firms",
      "year": 2025,
      "url": "https://www.clio.com/blog/solo-small-law-firms-highlights-2025-legal-trends/",
      "sample": "Report draws on proprietary usage data and survey research; Clio describes its Legal Trends datasets as aggregated/anonymized data from tens of thousands of U.S. legal professionals, supplemented by surveys.",
      "method": "Observational comparison between firms using selected client-facing Clio features and firms not using them; results should be described as associations, not causal effects.",
      "commercial": "Yes - Clio is the provider of the features analyzed.",
      "use": "Associations between intake technology use and revenue, lead volume, conversion, and time to hire."
    },
    {
      "id": "S8",
      "publisher": "Legal Intake Lab",
      "title": "Law firm intake metrics: the numbers you can produce, and where the published benchmarks come from",
      "year": 2026,
      "url": "https://legalintakelab.com/research/intake-metrics/",
      "sample": "Source audit of high-ranking pages and the provenance of intake benchmark claims.",
      "method": "Secondary source-tracing review rather than original law-firm testing.",
      "commercial": "Independent research site; use as quality-control/traceability evidence, not as the primary source for operational rates.",
      "use": "Supports the decision not to publish an unverified universal inquiry-to-client conversion benchmark."
    }
  ]
}