Law firm intake
Ask the matter questions first. Ask for the phone number last.
A generic form asking name, email and phone converts worse than a form that asks about the person’s matter first and collects contact details at the end. Nobody wants to fill in another contact form. People will answer questions about their own situation, and by the time they reach the contact fields they are invested enough to finish.
What should a law firm intake form ask?
Every question should either grade the enquiry or arm the intake call. If an answer does neither, cut the field.
Why does asking for contact details last improve conversion?
The generic form is the default because it is easy to build, not because it works. Name, email, phone, message. It tells you nothing, so intake has to call everyone to learn anything, and the prospect feels like they just handed their number to a stranger for no reason. Flip the order. Open with the questions only someone with a real matter can answer: what happened, when, what stage they are at, whether anyone else is already acting for them. Those answers do three jobs at once. They grade the enquiry before a human sees it, they give intake a real opening line instead of a cold script, and they make the person feel the form was built for their situation rather than harvested from a template. The contact fields go at the end, once there is a reason to give them.
Should the form be different for each practice area?
Does a longer form reduce enquiries?
How do the form answers get used after submission?
What does this do to cost per signed case?
How to decide what stays on the form
The test for every field is simple. Does this answer either grade the enquiry or give the intake call a better opening? If it does neither, it is friction with no return and it should be cut. Most firm forms fail this test on at least half their fields, usually because someone added a question once and nobody ever removed it.
Order matters as much as content. The first question should be the easiest one that still tells you something, because the job of question one is to get question two answered. Save anything sensitive, financial or identifying for the end, once the person has already invested a few clicks and can see the form was built for their situation.
Two practical notes from live accounts. Conditional logic beats length, so ask about the incident date only if it is a matter type where limitation windows bite. And never make the phone number the first field. It is the single most common reason someone abandons a legal enquiry form before you learn anything about their matter.
If you only change one thing
Move the qualifying questions onto the form. Not the call. It costs nothing, it takes an afternoon, and it changes what your intake team does all day. Everything else on this page is downstream of that single sequencing decision.
Last updated: 24 July 2026 · Law firm lead generation system · Client results