Law firm intake questions fail for a reason that has nothing to do with software. They are written in the language lawyers use with each other, and the person answering them is stressed, distracted, and reading the way a normal person reads. Rewriting the wording costs you nothing and changes who finishes your form.
Why Do Law Firm Intake Questions Lose People?
Adult reading levels in the United States are falling, not rising. The share of adults performing at the lowest literacy proficiency level rose from 19 to 28 percent between 2017 and 2023, measured by the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, the federal assessment run by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Education does not insulate anyone from this. Among adults with more than a high school education, the share at that lowest level rose from 6 to 13 percent over the same period, and average literacy scores for that group fell from 294 to 287.
One caveat belongs with those numbers. NCES reports that response rates for the 2023 collection were relatively low and advises caution in interpreting the results, so treat the direction as informative rather than the decimal points.
Now add context. A prospective client filling out an intake form has often just been injured, arrested, served, or fired. Comprehension under that kind of stress runs worse than comprehension on an ordinary afternoon, and the form is usually being read on a phone.
What Makes Legal Language Hard to Read?
Four specific features do most of the damage, and none of them is the legal concept itself. Research published in Cognition in July 2022 analysed a corpus of roughly 10 million words and found contracts carry unusually high proportions of:
- Center-embedded clauses, which bury one clause inside another and stretch the distance between words that depend on each other
- Low-frequency jargon, meaning words rarely used in everyday speech
- Passive voice constructions
- Non-standard capitalization
Two experiments with 184 participants then tested whether those features actually impair reading. They did. Excerpts containing them were recalled and comprehended at lower rates than excerpts of equivalent meaning without them, even among experienced readers. Center-embedded clauses inhibited recall more than any other feature.
The title of that paper states the finding plainly: poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives processing difficulty in legal language. Difficulty is a drafting choice rather than a property of law, which means it can be edited out.
Do Clients Expect Their Lawyer to Sound Like a Lawyer?
Lawyers themselves prefer the simpler version, which settles the objection most firms raise first. Two preregistered experiments published in PNAS in May 2023 tested 105 verified US attorneys each, recruited through law school and law firm email addresses or bar numbers.
The attorneys comprehended and recalled plain-English contracts better than legalese versions of identical meaning. They also rated the plain-English versions:
- Significantly higher in overall quality
- No less enforceable
- More likely to be signed by a client
- Written by someone they would more readily hire
Researchers concluded that lawyers write in a complex register out of convenience and template reuse rather than preference. Nobody is asking for the harder version. Firms are copying it forward from documents that were themselves copied forward.
How Do You Rewrite an Intake Question?
Read each question aloud and cut anything that survives only out of habit. Four edits handle most of the work:
- Replace jargon with the word a client would use. “Sustained injuries” becomes “hurt.”
- Unstack the clauses. One idea per sentence, and never a clause inside a clause.
- Switch passive to active. “Were you involved in a collision” becomes “did a car hit you.”
- Ask for one fact at a time, since a compound question produces a compound answer nobody can route.
A worked example shows the difference.
Before: “Please indicate whether, at the time of the incident giving rise to your claim, you were operating a motor vehicle in which you sustained injuries requiring medical attention.”
After: “Were you driving when it happened?” followed by “Did you see a doctor?”
Both versions collect the same two facts. One of them gets answered. Length is not the variable that matters here, since the rewritten pair is two questions rather than one. Lawbrokr workflows carry whatever wording you choose, so the rewrite is an editing job rather than a technical project, and the questions worth asking will differ by practice area.
Frequently Asked Questions
What reading level should law firm intake questions be written at?
No standard sets a required reading level for private law firm forms. Federal literacy data showing 28 percent of adults at the lowest proficiency level argues for plain, short sentences as a default. Write for someone reading quickly under stress rather than for a colleague.
Does simplifying intake questions make a firm look less professional?
Attorneys in the 2023 PNAS study rated plain-English contracts higher in overall quality than legalese versions and rated their authors more hirable. Simpler wording read as better work to other lawyers, which is close to the opposite of the fear most firms have about it.
What is a center-embedded clause?
A center-embedded clause sits inside another clause, separating words that depend on each other. “The form the client the paralegal called completed was incomplete” is center-embedded. Cognition researchers found this feature inhibited recall more than jargon, passive voice, or unusual capitalization.
Should intake questions avoid legal terms entirely?
Some terms have no plain equivalent and should stay, with a short explanation beside them. The test is whether a term is doing work or is present out of habit. Statute of limitations earns its place in a question about timing, while “aforementioned” never earns anything.
How many facts should one intake question ask for?
One. Compound questions produce answers that cannot be routed cleanly, because a single response covers two fields. Splitting a two-part question into two questions adds a few seconds and removes the ambiguity from everything downstream.
Rewrite Your Law Firm Intake Questions This Week
Pull up your current intake form and read the first question out loud. If you would not say it that way to someone sitting across a desk from you, it needs an edit. Rewriting the wording requires no developer, no budget, and no new platform. Lawbrokr runs intake workflows that carry whatever language you write into them.
Book a free demo to see one, or contact us online with a question first.
