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A new wills client is emailed the firm's questionnaire: fourteen pages in Word, covering family, assets, property, pensions, businesses, trusts, guardians and funeral wishes. They fill in the first few pages carefully, skip the sections they think do not apply, write 'not sure' next to the pension questions and post it back. The fee earner then spends the first meeting working out what is missing.
Family and employment teams have their own versions of the same thing, each with its own gaps.
Why questionnaires come back incomplete
Paper-style forms ask every question of every client. A single person with no children sees the same guardian section as a family with four. Clients cannot tell which sections really apply, so they skip some that do. Legal terms that are obvious to the fee earner are not obvious to the client, and there is nobody to ask while they fill it in.
Word forms also break: tables reformat, boxes shrink, clients print and scan. What comes back is often hard to read and has to be retyped into the practice management system.
| Form problem | Result |
|---|---|
| Every question for every client | Clients skip sections that actually apply |
| Legal terms without explanation | 'Not sure' answers and guesses |
| No save and return | Forms started and abandoned |
| Word or PDF format | Hard to read returns, retyped by staff |
What incomplete questionnaires cost
First meetings are spent gathering information instead of discussing the client's wishes or position. Follow-up emails asking for missing details delay the matter. Staff retype answers into the system, and errors creep in. For fixed fee work like wills, that extra time comes straight out of the margin.
Clients also find the experience tiring, which is not the impression the firm wants to give at the start.
Some clients never return the form at all. They meant to, found it daunting, and put it off. The matter sits with no activity until someone notices, and by then the client may have lost momentum or gone to a firm that made the first step feel easier.
How we build questionnaires clients finish
- Your questions, restructured: we take your existing questionnaires and turn them into online forms with branching, so answers early on (married, children, owns a business) decide which later sections appear.
- Plain explanations: each question has a short explanation written or approved by your fee earners, so clients understand what is being asked without it being advice.
- Save and return: clients can stop and come back, and can upload documents such as pension statements or payslips as they go.
- Completeness checks: the form checks for missing required answers and inconsistent ones (for example children named but none listed as minors when ages suggest otherwise) and asks the client before submitting.
- Into the matter: completed answers arrive as structured data in your practice management system or as a formatted summary on the matter, not a scanned form.
- Chasing: unfinished questionnaires trigger a reminder after the period you set, and the fee earner can see how far the client got.
What first meetings become
The fee earner opens the file to a complete, readable summary of the client's situation, with gaps already flagged. The meeting goes on the substance. Staff stop retyping handwritten forms. Clients answer fewer, clearer questions and can do it in their own time.
The same approach works across practice areas, with each team keeping its own questions.
Signs you need better questionnaires
- Client questionnaires are Word or PDF forms.
- Returned forms regularly have sections missing.
- First meetings are spent collecting basic information.
- Staff retype questionnaire answers into your system.
- Clients ask what particular questions mean.