Most signed clients sign quickly. In the Probative benchmarks, 55–70% of signed clients had signed within an hour of the inquiry, 55–70% within four hours, and 85–100% by the end of the same day. The first hours do most of the work, so the speed of your first answer matters more than a later follow-up.
Probative benchmarks, 2025–2026
How quickly inquiries become signed clients
| What is measured | Published figure |
|---|---|
| Signed within an hour of the inquiry | 55–70% |
| Signed within four hours of the inquiry | 55–70% |
| Signed the same day as the inquiry | 85–100% |
What does this mean for your firm?
- Treat the first hour as the window that counts. A reply that comes the next morning arrives after most signings have already happened.
- Measure your own time from inquiry to signed client, not only your time to first reply. The two can sit far apart.
- A band is a range. If your own share sits inside it, you are in line with the benchmark; if it sits below, look at who answers and when.
Why does answering speed matter so much?
A person who needs a lawyer usually contacts several firms in a row. The firm that answers first, with a real person, tends to be the one that gets the signed agreement. That is why the speed bands above are so high so early, and why a slow handoff between the person who answers and the person who signs costs clients that no ad budget can win back.
How do I read this table?
Each row is the share of signed clients who had signed by that point after the inquiry, so every row includes the rows before it. The downloadable file also holds the next-day, one-week, twenty-four-hour and thirty-day points and the typical time to sign. Bands are fifteen points wide and approximate.
The figures are bands and tiers, so treat each as approximate, plus or minus one step. How the benchmarks are made and protected.
Download this table and cite it
Each table is its own file. Free, with no email or login, under CC BY 4.0: copy and adapt it with credit to Probative Growth.
Cite this dataset: Probative Growth (2026). Probative benchmarks, 2025–2026 (v4.0.1) [Data set]. CC BY 4.0. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23735849. https://probativegrowth.com/research/benchmarks/speed-to-sign/
Embed this table
Paste this into your page. It shows the card and a credit line under it that names the dataset and its DOI. See the card.
Does your site remove iframes? Copy a table instead
The table holds the same figures as the card and carries the same credit line.
How each figure is made and protected · Probative benchmarks, 2025–2026