Law firms do not buy marketing the way software companies or ecommerce brands do. You live under advertising rules. You often sell to people at a moment of pain or urgency. Your intake process can make or break return on ad spend. And your practice mix shapes everything, from the channels to the creative to the follow-up cadence. Hiring a legal marketing agency is not about finding the flashiest portfolio. It is about matching business model, ethics, capacity, and measurement.
I have sat in partner meetings where firms spent six figures on campaigns that drove form fills at $40 each, then discovered half the leads did not answer because intake took a day to respond. I have watched personal injury practices grow from two cases a month to a steady “drumbeat” of thirty qualified intakes, largely on the back of a disciplined blend of local SEO, conversion-focused landing pages, and ruthless tracking. The difference was never one tactic. It was alignment between goals, accountability, and the right agency fit.
This guide walks through the practical decisions, the red flags, and the trade-offs that matter for a firm choosing a legal marketing agency, whether you run a boutique appeals practice or a high-volume personal injury shop.
Start with your economics, not your logo
A professional logo and a crisp tagline feel tangible. They rarely decide your marketing ROI. Your economics do.
Work backward from the outcome you need. A contingency PI firm that wants five new signed cases a month cares about cost per signed case, not cost per click. A business immigration practice might care about lifetime value and referral flywheel because matters repeat. A defense firm chasing general counsel work lives or dies on relationship marketing and credibility, not paid search. Until you know the numbers behind a feasible acquisition plan, any agency conversation becomes theater.
Look closely at three ratios:
- Intake speed and conversion. How fast do you answer, and how many leads become signed cases or booked consults? For inbound phone calls from paid search, a 30 to 60 second answer time is the difference between a signed client and a voicemail. If your signed rate from qualified leads is below 20 percent, paid traffic will bleed cash. A great legal marketing agency will test and help fix intake before scaling spend. Realistic cost per case or consult. In competitive metros, paid search clicks for personal injury marketing can exceed $100. It is common to see $800 to $2,500 spend per signed case in PI, higher for mass tort and lower for niche local practices that capture highly specific queries. Organic traffic and referrals change the blend, but the point stands. Demand a forecast that links channel CPC or CPM to lead quality and conversion, then pressure test it. Capacity and throughput. If you cannot service more than three new matters a week, the “go big on PPC” plan is not a fit. Channels must match your bandwidth and sales cycle. For appellate or complex litigation, a digital marketing agency for lawyers might emphasize content, thought leadership, and targeted outreach over volume.
Put those numbers on paper. They become the lens for every agency pitch, statement of work, and monthly report.
Choosing the right type of partner
Not every legal marketing agency offers the same craft. The labels sound similar, but the operating models differ.
A generalist digital shop with a few attorney clients can execute standard SEO and PPC workflows. They may struggle with attorney advertising rules, intake workflows, lead quality filters, and the high-stakes nature of PI or criminal defense.
A niche digital marketing agency for lawyers brings pattern recognition. They know what a spam lead looks like in your CRM. They understand how to route calls after hours and how to structure Google Ads with location modifiers that match your venue strategy. They can push back when your landing page demands five form fields that tank conversion.
Then there are channels where domain skill compounds. Mass tort acquisition, TV to call tracking, and Spanish-language intake require specialized teams. If a firm sells you “full service” across all of it, ask who actually executes. Many agencies front a glossy project manager but offshore or subcontract core pieces. That is not inherently bad, but you should know who is responsible for each part.
Partnership is also about cadence. Do you want a boutique team that attends your weekly pipeline call and helps coach intake? Or do you need a scalable engine that can deploy six figures a month in paid media and iterate on ad creative daily? Both can be right. Match the level of service to your goals and case mix.
Vetting beyond the case studies
Every agency has a deck with charts that go up and to the right. You want the boring details underneath.
Ask for a walkthrough of two live accounts similar to your practice. Not screenshots, but a shared screen in Google Ads or a look at anonymized CRM data. The goal is to see naming conventions, negative keyword lists, location targeting, and how they handle performance volatility. An agency that is comfortable letting you look under the hood usually has their process in order.
Look carefully at intake linkage. Many firms report marketing success at the lead level, then rely on your staff to connect who actually signed. That gap breeds distrust. A disciplined legal marketing agency will push to integrate call tracking and form fills with your CRM or case management system. They should map “source” fields and agree on what counts as a qualified lead. If they resist, assume reporting will skew rosy.
Probe their legal compliance posture. For bar rules on testimonials, comparative claims, and dram shop around “specialization” language, you do not want to teach your agency the basics. Ask how they handle ADA compliance on landing pages. Ask how they prevent HIPAA issues on contact forms when medical details come up for PI or med mal. The right answer involves minimal PHI collection, SSL everywhere, role-based access, and clear intake disclaimers.
Finally, ask how they get paid. Agencies that tie a piece of compensation to signed matters, or at least to qualified leads, tend to think more like you. Flat fees can work for SEO or content, where output is the product. For paid media management, a flat fee paired with transparent media spend is often healthier than a percent-of-spend incentive that rewards higher budgets without regard for efficiency.
Matching channels to practice type
Channels are not commodities. They behave differently by practice area and market maturity.
Personal injury marketing in a dense metro rewards speed, local trust signals, and persistent remarketing. It is common to run tightly geofenced Google Ads on accident queries, supported by Local Services Ads for the “near me” intent. Layer in landing pages with click-to-call, SMS follow-up, and a short form. Organic content plays a longer game: case type hubs, FAQ schema, and E-E-A-T signals via attorney bios and media mentions. If you add broadcast or OTT, track through vanity URLs and unique numbers, then adjust for brand lift in search.
Criminal defense skews heavily to mobile and after-hours. Your intake script matters as much as ad copy. Be ready for bilingual callers. Local SEO and reviews weigh heavily because someone is choosing in minutes. PPC can work if you fight on brand terms and selective intent phrases, but waste piles up fast on broad match. Here, a digital marketing agency for lawyers that knows how to train Google’s algorithm with offline conversions can save you thousands.
B2B-heavy practices like corporate, employment defense, or insurance coverage rely less on high-intent search and more on content, events, and targeted outreach. LinkedIn becomes a credible channel if you focus on genuine insight and not brochure posts. A strong email cadence tied to client alerts builds credibility. SEO still matters, but you are playing to long-tail queries that signal sophisticated needs. A generalist agency that promises quick wins through PPC will likely disappoint in these categories.
Family law sits in between. Trust factors, education, and clear pricing expectations help. Intake has to balance empathy with triage. You will often see success in blended models: LSAs, PPC on specific phrases, and a steady content stream that answers practical questions. Do not underestimate the power of reviews. A few dozen, recent, specific testimonials can shift conversion rates on both organic and paid traffic.
The table stakes on SEO, without the fairy dust
SEO for law firms has accumulated lore that is part useful, part myth. Here is the ground truth I see hold up across markets.
Technical health is binary. Your site either loads fast enough on mobile, is structured with clean internal links, and avoids basic crawl traps, or it is not. Fixing that rarely requires magic, only competence and the willingness to prune bloat.
Content wins when it demonstrates real experience. Generic “What is negligence?” pages do less than a case study with anonymized facts and court citations, or a step-by-step on how your state applies comparative fault with relevant jury instructions. It takes longer to produce, but it attracts better backlinks and better readers. An agency that pitches 50 blog posts a month filled with generic copy will flood your domain with noise.
Local SEO lives or dies on your Google Business Profile, consistency of NAP data, reviews, and proximity. If you moved offices, clean the citations before you chase new backlinks. Photos, Q&A, and timely responses to reviews are not busywork, they influence rankings and clicks. A legal marketing agency that treats GBP as an afterthought is telling you they do not do local well.
Link building is not a vending machine. Paid guest posts from random domains with barely relevant content might move a graph for a month. They often regress, or worse, invite penalties. Earned links come from doing something worth mentioning: publishing a local safety report, partnering with community organizations, or contributing expert commentary to journalists. It is slower, but it compounds. Ask the agency for three examples of links earned in the last quarter and the story behind them.
Measure SEO like a business owner. Track how many organic visitors turn into calls or consults, which pages contribute, and what the time-to-conversion looks like. Ranking for “car accident lawyer” is nice, but ranking for “ankylosing spondylitis long term disability denial appeal” might bring a client tomorrow.
Paid search and LSAs without the waste
Google Ads can mint money or set it on fire. The difference lies in four levers: intent, matching, messaging, and data feedback.
Intent targeting begins with specificity. Exact or phrase match on terms that show legal need, not curiosity. Negative keywords are your guardrails. Build them aggressively. In PI, block “lawyer salary,” “free template,” “small claims,” and location terms outside your venue footprint. In criminal defense, exclude “expungement DIY,” “public defender phone,” and educational terms.
Ad extensions and copy should do the filtering for you. If you do not take property damage only, say so. If you answer calls 24/7, put it in the headline and prove it with your answer time. Landing pages should echo the ad, show social proof above the fold, and make calling or texting effortless. When agencies split-test cosmetics while ignoring the phone workflow, you pay for their experiment.
Local Services Ads remain powerful because they ride trust cues and show your reviews. They are not set-and-forget. The intake team must confirm bookings in the dashboard to train the system. Dispute invalid leads promptly. If your category has sub-verticals, adjust your toggles based on the cases you want.
The strongest gains in paid media come from feeding offline conversion data back into the platforms. If you tag calls that convert to consults or signed cases, and push those events into Google as conversions, the algorithm can hunt similar users. This requires a disciplined CRM setup and a marketing team willing to map fields and test. It is worth the trouble.
Intake and follow-up decide your ROI
Most agencies do not own intake. Most firms underestimate its impact. The math is brutal. If you spend $10,000 on paid media and generate 100 qualified inquiries, your ROI swings wildly based on how many you convert to signed matters. Moving from 10 percent to 20 percent signed doubles your return without changing a single ad. This is why a smart legal marketing agency obsesses over call recordings, response time, and scripts.
I once reviewed a quarter of call logs for a PI firm that complained about lead quality. A third of calls went to voicemail between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. Another third got a “we will call you back” without collecting the incident facts. The agency was not perfect, but the leak was obvious. We built a simple escalation: after-hours answering service trained on five screening questions, SMS follow-up with a scheduling link, and a morning huddle to chase missed connections. Signed matters rose 40 percent in six weeks with the same ad spend.
Follow-up cadence cannot be a single email. For contacts who prefer text, get consent and use it. For form fills, call within two minutes. For consult no-shows, attempt at least three touchpoints over 48 hours. These are small operational choices that let your marketing dollars compound instead of evaporate.
Contracts, pricing, and the right incentives
Agency contracts often bundle multiple services into a flat retainer. That can be fine if the outputs and outcomes are clear. Trouble starts when scope is fuzzy, goals are vague, and exit terms are punitive.
Push for month-to-month after an initial build period, or a short minimum term with a 30-day out. If the agency is confident in their performance, they will not need to trap you with a long lock-in.
Be specific about deliverables and KPIs. For paid media: target cost per qualified lead, expected volume ranges, and speed to optimization. For SEO: technical fixes within a set month, a content plan tied to keywords that match your practice, and a quarterly review of rankings and conversions with commentary on what changed and why.
Avoid proprietary hostage-taking. If the agency builds landing pages, ensure you own them and the domains. If they set up ad accounts, they should live under your business manager with admin access retained by you. You want the option to switch teams without losing history.
Performance bonuses can work if they use metrics you both trust. A personal injury marketing bonus tied to signed cases can align incentives, but it requires clean attribution and agreement on how to treat referrals, brand spillover, and multi-touch journeys. If that sounds messy for your firm, consider a bonus tied to qualified lead volume with a floor on lead quality definitions.
How to read reports like a partner, not a passenger
Good reporting does not drown you in charts. It tells a story that links dollars to decisions.
Expect a weekly pulse and a monthly deep dive. Weekly, you want highlights: spend, lead volume, cost per lead, and glaring anomalies. Monthly, you want source-to-signed views, keyword insights, call outcomes, and plans for the next period.
Ask the agency to separate brand from non-brand performance. If most of your conversions come from people searching your firm name, you are subsidizing the inevitable and calling it success. Brand protection can be smart, but growth comes from net-new.
Push for cohort views. If leads from Local Services Ads convert to signed matters at 18 percent and PPC leads convert at 9 percent, your budget split should reflect that, all else equal. Beware of channels with cheap leads that never convert. They look great on a spreadsheet until you look at revenue.
When a month goes south, ask why without accusation. Markets move. Competitors launch TV campaigns that lift their brand and digital jack up your auction prices. New LSAs categories open and flood your area with entrants. What matters is whether your agency acknowledges the conditions, adapts, and communicates clearly what they will try next.
What a healthy first 90 days looks like
The fastest way to spot a mismatch is to watch the first three months. You should see momentum, not perfection.
In the first two weeks, the agency audits your assets, proposes a plan with cost and volume ranges, and begins technical fixes. Access gets sorted quickly. They draft ad copy, landing pages, and a content calendar that reflects your practice priorities. You review not just for brand voice, but for accuracy and compliance.
By day 30, campaigns are live with conservative budgets, negative keywords are building, and call tracking is verified. Technical SEO improvements are deployed. Reviews strategy is in motion, which often means identifying happy clients and making a direct ask with a simple, ethical process.
By day 60, data begins to stabilize. The agency has cut wasteful queries, refined location targeting, and is testing next-level variables like ad schedule, device bids, and remarketing audiences. Content starts to publish. You have listened to call recordings together and adjusted intake scripts.
By day 90, you should have enough signal to decide whether to scale. If qualified leads and early signed case counts are within the forecast, raise the budget. If not, assess whether the blockage is channel fit, creative, intake, or expectations. A competent agency will bring a point of view, not vague reassurance.
A short checklist you can use in vendor meetings
- Show me two anonymized accounts like ours, live, and walk me through targeting, negatives, and naming. Map how calls and forms will connect to our CRM, and define a qualified lead. Who is responsible for each field and action? Outline your first 90-day plan with specific deliverables and ranges for cost and volume. Where might it fail? Confirm we own accounts, landing pages, and data. What are the exit terms? Tell me about a campaign that did not work. What did you change, and what did you learn?
The edge cases worth planning for
Multi-location firms often wrestle with cannibalization. If you open a second office in the same metro, Google may cluster or split your local presence in ways that hurt one profile. Plan your service areas, local content, and categories to avoid overlap where possible. A legal marketing agency that has navigated this will prepare a playbook for citations, GBP categories, and review distribution.
Handling language diversity goes beyond translating pages. A Spanish-language landing page that routes to an English-only intake team will underperform. So will a Google Ads campaign that mixes languages within ad groups. If your market has significant non-English speakers, resource intake, and build creative that respects dialect and idiom.
Mass tort spikes demand operational elasticity. When a product recall breaks, lead costs can swing by 2x or 3x in days. A nimble agency will have prebuilt landing pages, compliant creative, and a decision tree for budget reallocation. They will also warn you when a tort’s economics or venue outlook looks weaker than the hype.
When to build in-house instead
Not every firm needs an agency forever. If you have stable channels, a predictable intake process, and the desire to hire, in-house can make sense. An internal marketer can live closer to your attorneys, sit in on strategy calls, and spot opportunities faster. Hybrid models work well: keep SEO and content internal once the foundation is built, and retain an agency for paid media and specialized projects.
The inflection point often shows up between $500,000 and $1 million a year in marketing spend, or when you have a partner who enjoys steering the engine and wants tighter control. If you pivot in-house, negotiate with your agency to transition knowledge and assets. The best partners help you graduate gracefully.
Final thoughts from the trenches
The smartest firms treat marketing like any other line of business. They set clear economic targets, assign accountability, and expect transparency. They know that a legal marketing agency is not a magician, but a specialized operator who can compound results when paired with a disciplined intake team and a culture that values measurement.
It is fine to ask for beautiful creative and clever ideas. Just start with the questions that affect outcomes. What does a signed case cost in our market? How fast do we answer? Which channels reflect how our clients actually seek help? Who owns the data?
Get those answers, and the choice of agency stops feeling like a gamble. It becomes a decision grounded in your numbers, your values, and your appetite for growth.