Observed web-form test
2025 business-hours website lead response
Hennessey Digital contacted 1,333 U.S. law firms in Q1 2025. Fictitious inquiries were submitted through website forms between 10 a.m. and noon in each firm’s local time.
| Response milestone | Share of firms |
|---|---|
| Under 5 minutes | 25% |
| 10 minutes or less | 33% |
| Within 1 hour | 56% |
| Within 7 days | 74% |
| No response within 7 days | 26% |
13 minutesMedian response time reported by the study.
What the study measured
The clock started when the web form was submitted and stopped at the first personal outreach from the firm. A response after seven days was treated as non-responsive for the study.
What it did not measure
It did not test after-hours web inquiries. It also does not establish that five minutes is a universal causal threshold at which a legal lead will or will not convert.
Survey-reported expectations
Consumer expectations provide a different kind of benchmark
Martindale-Avvo’s 2023 consumer survey asked approximately 1,850 prior users of its legal network sites how long they would wait to hear back before contacting another attorney.
| Wait | Share |
|---|---|
| 1–8 hours | 18.6% |
| 9–23 hours | 21.8% |
| 24–48 hours | 41.9% |
| 3–6 days | 11.3% |
| 1 week or more | 6.4% |
Internal measurement
What a law firm should measure internally
- Median time to first human response, by channel
- Percentage responded to within 5, 15, 30, and 60 minutes
- Percentage responded to within the firm’s stated service standard
- Percentage receiving no successful response within 24 hours
- After-hours response time separately from business-hours response time
Citing this page
Use the original study and this interpretation together.
For the 2025 web-form finding: Hennessey Digital, 2025 Lead Form Response Time Study, 1,333 U.S. law firms; inquiries submitted 10 a.m.–12 p.m. local time.
When citing an individual statistic, cite the original publisher as well as CallShift whenever practical.