Two-Thirds of Law Firms Don’t Answer an Email. Here’s What That Costs.

In the summer of 2024, Clio ran a secret-shopper study on 500 law firms with the market research agency Lux. Real inquiries, sent to real firms, and then somebody counted what happened. Not a survey asking firms how responsive they are — observed behavior. It is the best piece of research in the legal profession and it is uncomfortable reading.

Two-thirds of firms did not answer an email from somebody trying to hire them. And it is getting worse, not better — both response figures dropped since 2019.

If that is how firms treat a prospective client with money in hand, you can guess how they treat a client whose matter closed two years ago.

The client who was satisfied and is not coming back

Clio’s 2025 Legal Trends Report asked 1,000 US adults through a market panel about hiring a lawyer. 24% of clients who recently hired one say they would be unlikely to rehire them.

A quarter of the clients your profession just served are gone. Not after a bad outcome — the survey does not segment on outcome. Gone anyway.

This is the oldest finding in the customer literature wearing a new suit. Jones and Sasser, “Why Satisfied Customers Defect,” HBR, November 1995, made the case that the gulf between satisfied and completely satisfied customers can swallow a business. That is a thirty-year-old argument and the legal profession is still producing fresh evidence for it.

Most of your revenue already comes from people you know

Thomson Reuters’ 2023 State of U.S. Small Law Firms report — 400 respondents at firms of 29 attorneys or fewer, fielded July to August 2023 — found that 53% of firms say less than half their annual business comes from new clients.

Most of the money is already coming from people who have worked with you before, or who were sent by someone who did. Now look at where the firm’s attention goes. The origination credit, the compensation formula, the marketing budget, the partner meeting — all of it points at the finder. Almost none of it points at the minder.

The compensation model is aimed at the smaller half of the revenue.

Three numbers I threw out, and why

I want to be specific about this, because the legal marketing space is full of figures that do not survive being looked up.

“59% of legal clients come from referrals.” This traces to Clio, but Clio measured something else: 59% of consumers who sought a referral while searching for a lawyer. That is not a channel breakdown, the categories overlap, and it cannot be read as “59% of clients originated from a referral.”

“A Philadelphia family-law firm added simple retention touches and saw referrals jump 37% in six months.” I searched the marketing agency’s own site for this case study. It does not exist. Somebody invented it, or invented enough of it that the original is unfindable. It was the most persuasive paragraph in the draft I was handed and it is fiction.

“Acquiring a client costs six to 12 times more than retaining one.” Vendor content with no study behind it. The related figure I can stand behind is First Page Sage’s legal-services acquisition cost of $749, updated January 2026 on 2022–2025 data — but only with two qualifications. It is the B2B figure; their B2C number is $189 to $457. And First Page Sage is a marketing agency drawing on its own client base, which is vendor data, not research.

Beyond that, the honest answer is that no client-acquisition-cost or lifetime-value benchmark exists for law outside marketing agencies, and the ABA publishes nothing at all on how clients choose lawyers. If somebody hands you a confident number in this category, ask where it came from.

What actually stays in touch with a former client

A newsletter does not. A firm-news email does not. The client who has been trained by the Clio numbers to expect no answer from a law firm is not opening your quarterly update on changes to the statute.

Federal data says mail sent to someone with a prior business relationship is read at 64%, against 36% for mail to strangers (USPS Household Mail Survey FY2025). A card with your signature in it is the plainest version of that there is.

One practical caution specific to your profession, and then I will stop, because I am a printer and not a lawyer. Your state bar’s advertising rules may treat a communication differently depending on what is in it. A card carrying a holiday message and a signature generally sits in a different category than one carrying a solicitation, a case result, or a comparative claim about your services. Rules vary by state and they are worth ten minutes with your own rules of professional conduct before you mail anything to a list. The safe version is also the version that works better: no offer, no case results, no ask.

Send it to the clients whose matters closed. Send it to the attorneys who refer to you, which in most practices is a shorter and more valuable list than the client one. Sign them yourself. Say one specific thing.

Two-thirds of firms will not answer an email. The bar for being remembered in this profession is lower than it has ever been.