Your marketing is probably fine. Your intake is losing the cases.
Direct answer: Law firm marketing should be measured by cost per signed case, not cost per lead, because legal keywords are the most expensive in advertising and intake routinely loses a third of the calls they produce. We run an intake economics calculator with you, check ad copy against ABA Model Rules 7.1 to 7.3, fix intake, then buy the leads.
Legal has the most expensive clicks in advertising, and firms buying them routinely let a third of the resulting calls go to voicemail. Before you spend more on leads, it is worth finding out what your existing ones are already costing you per signed case.
Every stage between the click and the signature
Most firms know their cost per click and their cost per lead. Very few can state their cost per signed case, which is the only figure that decides whether a campaign is worth running. Pay attention to what the intake sliders do.
Cost per signed case calculator
Defaults reflect a mid-competition practice area. Nothing is stored or sent.
Competitive injury and criminal terms routinely exceed $100.
Voicemail, after-hours and missed calls. This is the slider to watch.
Drag the answer-rate slider from 65% up to 95% and watch what happens to cost per signed case. For most firms that single change beats anything an agency can do to the campaign, and it costs a staffing decision rather than a media budget.
This is the uncomfortable finding in legal marketing. Firms buy the most expensive clicks in advertising and then route the resulting calls to a receptionist handling three other things, or to voicemail after five o'clock, when the person calling has just been in a car accident and will call the next firm on the list within the hour.
Published guidance on speed varies by practice area but points the same direction: under five minutes for personal injury and criminal defense, where the decision is urgent and emotional, and under an hour for estate planning, family and business matters. Beyond those windows, response rates fall off sharply.
Your marketing copy is regulated, and the grievance has your name on it
Every state regulates attorney advertising through its own version of ABA Model Rules 7.1 through 7.3. A marketing agency that writes non-compliant copy faces no consequence. You face the bar complaint.
That asymmetry is the single most important thing to understand about hiring anyone to market a law firm. Vendor conduct can become your grievance, which includes what a lead generator's intake script says to a prospect on your behalf.
Tap any line below to see how it reads against the rules.
Nothing on this page is legal advice, and it cannot be. The ABA Model Rules have no force until a state adopts them, states adopt them unevenly, and your own bar's version governs you. What we can do is write marketing that is built to survive that review, flag the copy we think will not, and refuse to publish claims we believe cross a line. The final compliance call is yours and your bar's.
The state-by-state gap is wider than most firms expect
Florida operates one of the most detailed regimes in the country, with specific disclaimer formatting requirements, a rule that many advertisements be filed with the Bar for review before they run, and mandated language that past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
New York requires the words "Attorney Advertising" on a firm's home page, holds firms to multi-year retention of their advertisements, and has told lawyers they may not use "specialist" or "expertise" without accredited certification.
If you practice across state lines, you are subject to the rules of each jurisdiction where you advertise, and the strictest one effectively sets your standard for shared creative. That is a planning constraint, not an afterthought.
Reviews now carry a second layer
Since late 2024 the federal government regulates consumer reviews directly, on top of whatever your bar requires. That means fake reviews, undisclosed incentives for reviews, and testimonials that misrepresent typical outcomes carry exposure beyond the professional conduct rules.
A genuine client saying the team kept them informed is fine in most jurisdictions. A testimonial edited to read as a promised verdict is a problem under both regimes at once.
Paid leads and the fee-sharing line
Lawyers may generally pay the reasonable costs of generating leads. What a lead generator may not do is recommend or vouch for you, and in most states non-lawyers cannot own a share of a law firm or its fees under Rule 5.4. That makes the structure of a pay-per-case arrangement worth reading carefully rather than assuming.
On solicitation, the line runs roughly where initiation does. A prospect who requested information is permissible. Cold outreach to identified accident victims is not. Many states also require disclosure that a lead was paid for.
The most expensive auction in advertising, and why
A routine signed auto case is commonly worth five figures in contingency fees. The auction knows that, which is why legal clicks are priced the way they are. Nothing about this market is irrational, it is just expensive.
| Channel | Typical cost | What you are actually buying |
|---|---|---|
| Search ads, competitive practice areas | $100+ | Per click, frequently more in injury and criminal defense. Immediate placement against the highest-intent moment there is, at a price that punishes weak intake severely. |
| Purchased legal leads | $30–$1,200+ | Per qualified lead, varying enormously by practice area and expected case value. Shared leads cost less and are being worked by three other firms simultaneously. |
| Local Services Ads and map placement | Lower | Generally the cheapest paid contacts a small firm can buy, and review-driven. Usually where we start rather than broad search. |
| Local SEO and content | Time | The lowest compliance exposure of any channel, since informational content raises none of the testimonial and results-claim problems. Slow, compounding, and the strongest position for a small firm. |
| Broadcast television | High, sustained | Requires saturation spend held for quarters to build recall, which is why it belongs to volume firms. See radio and TV advertising. |
| Referral relationships | Structural | Adjacent professionals and prior clients. No media cost, real relationship cost, and subject to the Rule 7.2 prohibition on paying for recommendations. |
Where a small firm can actually win
Not in the broad auction. Large firms dominate generic injury search and broadcast, and outspending them is not a strategy available to a three-attorney practice.
The positions that work are narrower. A specific niche within a practice area, where the auction is thin because the volume is low. Hyper-local search and a genuinely maintained Google Business Profile. Referral relationships with professionals who see your clients before you do. And exclusive leads with tight geographic and practice-area filters rather than shared ones.
All four share a property: they are places where being smaller is not a disadvantage. That is the whole game for a firm that cannot win on budget.
Sources: ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct 7.1 through 7.3 and Rule 5.4, and published summaries of state variations including Florida Rule 4-7.13 and New York's attorney advertising requirements; published 2026 legal PPC cost reporting and lead pricing benchmarks; industry guidance on speed-to-lead windows by practice area. State rules change and vary; verify against your own jurisdiction's current rules rather than relying on any summary, including this one.
What we do for a law firm
In this order, because spending on media before intake is fixed converts an operational problem into an expensive one.
Intake measurement first
How many calls are answered live, how fast, and what happens after hours. Recorded, counted and reported before any campaign changes. This usually finds the largest available gain.
Compliance review of everything
Ads, landing pages, review requests and any lead vendor script, read against your state's rules before a dollar goes behind it. We flag what we think will not survive review.
Search and Local Services Ads
Usually starting with map placement and local search rather than the broad auction, because that is where a smaller firm's money goes furthest. See PPC management.
Content built for the questions
Informational content carries the lowest compliance exposure of any channel and compounds. It is also what answer engines quote when somebody asks a legal question.
Landing pages that match the claim
One practice area per page, the phone number visible without scrolling, and a form that asks for what intake actually needs. Detail on conversion optimization.
Reporting to signed cases
Cost per signed case by channel, not cost per lead. That requires connecting your case management data to the campaign, which is the step most reporting skips.
Where after-hours coverage is the constraint, an AI intake assistant that captures the details and books the consultation is frequently the cheapest fix available, and we cover the honest limits of that on AI marketing. Where the constraint is that prior clients never hear from you again, that is marketing automation. Where the firm's identity is indistinguishable from four competitors on the same billboard, that is branding and design.
Everything is measured to the signature rather than to the click, which is the discipline behind our work as a conversion rate optimization agency.
Six ways to fix intake that do not require hiring anyone
If the calculator told you intake is your largest gain, here is what that actually looks like in practice. Most of these are a decision rather than a budget line, and you can act on all six without us.
1. Find out what your real answer rate is
Not what anyone believes it is. Put call tracking on every advertised number, review a month of records, and count what went to voicemail, rang out, or was answered by somebody who took a message. Nearly every firm we do this with is surprised, and the surprise runs in one direction.
2. Decide who owns the phone during hearings
The predictable failure is that everyone is in court at once and the calls route to a voicemail nobody clears until evening. That is a scheduling decision, not a staffing one, and naming a person for each block of the day fixes most of it.
3. Cover the hours your clients actually have problems
Injury and criminal matters do not arrive between nine and five. Evenings and weekends are when people have accidents and arrests, and a firm reachable then competes against firms that are not. An answering service that captures details and books a consultation beats voicemail by a wide margin, and an AI intake assistant costs less than either.
4. Call web form submissions back immediately
A form filled at eleven at night and answered at ten the next morning is usually a client who has already retained someone else. Published guidance points to under five minutes for urgent practice areas. Even a text acknowledging receipt and offering a time holds the position far better than silence.
5. Write down what qualifies a matter
If whoever answers the phone cannot tell a viable case from a non-viable one, they will either waste attorney time on both or turn away good matters on instinct. A one-page qualification script is unglamorous and typically moves the qualification rate more than any campaign change.
6. Follow up more than once
A prospect who did not answer your callback is not a lost case, they are a case you tried to reach once. Three attempts across two days, with at least one outside business hours, recovers a meaningful share of what most firms write off after the first voicemail.
When to call us, and when not to
Call us if
- You cannot state your cost per signed case by channel
- Calls go to voicemail after hours or during hearings
- You are buying leads and cannot tell which vendor produces signed cases
- Your website has not been read against your bar's current rules
- You are a smaller firm being outspent in the broad auction
- You practice across state lines with shared creative
- Your prior clients never hear from you again
Do not call us if
- You want us to promise a number of cases, which nobody can honestly do
- You want copy that guarantees outcomes or claims uncertified specialization
- Nobody is available to answer the phone and nobody will be
- You want the cheapest available shared leads and no measurement
- You need legal advice on your bar's rules, which requires a lawyer
- You expect results inside a month in a competitive practice area
- You want reporting on leads rather than on signed cases
Why us
Search Converts has been building marketing systems since 2012 for businesses across the United States and Canada, and we sell every channel rather than one. In legal that matters more than usual, because the vendors in this vertical are unusually motivated. A lead seller concludes you need leads. A television buyer concludes you need television.
We also say the thing that costs us money. The most common finding in a law firm engagement is that the campaign is adequate and the intake is not, and the fix is a staffing and process decision rather than a larger media budget. We would rather lead with that on a public page than discover it three months into a retainer.
On compliance, our position is narrow and firm. We are not lawyers and cannot give you legal advice about your bar's rules. What we will do is write to the stricter reading, flag copy we think is exposed, and decline to publish guarantees or uncertified specialist claims even when a client asks for them. The grievance would have your name on it, not ours, and that asymmetry is exactly why we treat it as our problem too.
There are no invented case studies here and no borrowed logos, which on this page is also a compliance position: results claims are precisely the category the rules police most closely. Every figure is published research with the source named. The first useful thing we do is measure how many of your calls get answered, and that costs nothing.
Law firm marketing questions, answered directly
The media is the expensive part. Clicks in competitive practice areas routinely exceed $100, and purchased legal leads range from about $30 to $1,200 or more depending on practice area and expected case value. The reason is straightforward: a routine signed auto case is commonly worth five figures in contingency fees, and the auction prices accordingly. What matters is not the click price but the cost per signed case, which depends as much on your intake as on your campaign.
Every state regulates it through its own version of ABA Model Rules 7.1 to 7.3. Broadly: nothing false or misleading, no guaranteed outcomes, no unverifiable superlatives like "best," no claiming specialist certification you do not hold, every ad must identify a responsible lawyer or firm, and restrictions apply to direct solicitation. A statement can violate Rule 7.1 even when literally true, if omitting a fact makes the overall message misleading. We are not lawyers, so treat this as orientation and verify against your own bar's current rules.
In many states yes, with conditions, and it is one of the most closely policed categories. The concern under Rule 7.1 is creating unjustified expectations, so a large verdict presented without context implies a typical outcome it does not represent. Several states mandate specific disclaimer language that past results do not guarantee future outcomes, and Florida requires certain advertisements be filed with the Bar before running. Because the requirements vary so much, results advertising is the area where checking your specific jurisdiction matters most.
Almost always intake. Between the inquiry and the signature sit four filters: whether anyone answered, how fast, whether the matter qualified, and whether the prospect chose you. A firm answering 65% of inquiries is discarding a third of the most expensive leads in advertising before anyone evaluates them. Published guidance suggests responding within five minutes for personal injury and criminal defense and within an hour for estate planning, family and business matters. Improving answer rate typically beats any campaign optimization available.
Generally permitted, with real conditions. Lawyers may pay the reasonable costs of generating leads, but the lead generator cannot recommend or vouch for you, and under Rule 5.4 non-lawyers cannot in most states own a share of a law firm or its fees, which makes the structure of pay-per-case arrangements worth reading closely. On solicitation, a prospect-initiated inquiry is permissible while cold outreach to identified accident victims is not. Many states also require disclosure that the lead was paid for. A vendor's conduct can become your grievance, so their scripts are your problem.
Only with accredited certification. Rule 7.2 draws a bright line: a lawyer may not state or imply certification as a specialist unless certified by an approved organization. Naming the certifying body is generally expected where the claim is made. New York has told lawyers they may not use "specialist" or "expertise" without accredited certification at all. Describing what you actually do, such as a practice concentrated in family law, is a different statement and generally safe, but the wording matters more here than almost anywhere else in your marketing.
Usually, and there are now two regimes to satisfy rather than one. Your bar's rules govern whether a testimonial creates unjustified expectations, and since late 2024 the federal government regulates consumer reviews directly, covering fake reviews, undisclosed incentives and misrepresentation of typical outcomes. A genuine client describing their experience of the service is generally fine. A testimonial edited to read as a promised verdict is a problem under both at once. Some states impose additional disclaimer requirements on testimonials specifically.
Not in the broad auction, which large firms dominate on budget. Four positions work better: a specific niche within a practice area where volume is low and the auction is thin, hyper-local search with a genuinely maintained Google Business Profile, referral relationships with professionals who encounter your clients first, and exclusive leads with tight geographic and practice-area filters rather than shared ones. What these have in common is that being smaller is not a disadvantage in any of them. Faster intake is also a genuine competitive edge against a large firm with a slow process.
We start by counting how many calls you actually answer
Your practice areas, your state, and roughly what you spend. The first thing we report is your answer rate and your cost per signed case, because those two numbers decide everything that comes after.
Or call and we will walk through it:
+1 720-712-8615Your information is never sold or shared. Please do not include confidential client information. We respond within one business day.
Related pages
The same principles, applied to neighbouring industries and the channels that feed them:
- Healthcare marketing — Healthcare marketing agency that fixes the phone before buying ads.
- Dental marketing — Dental marketing agency that looks at unscheduled treatment before your ad budget.
- Lead generation — Lead generation agency that fixes lead response before selling you more traffic.