At what revenue level should a law firm hire a marketing agency? Not a revenue figure — a test: the monthly fee should sit under roughly 10% of monthly revenue, and one additional signed matter a month should cover it. A firm with $4,000 cases passes at a far lower revenue than one with $800 cases.
Average case value decides this, not revenue. Two firms at the same revenue can sit on opposite sides of the line.
- Published pricing — $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month, on the site.
- Month to month. No contract is holding you anywhere.
- A former attorney of 17 years who filed 5,000+ cases works your account.
- You see your rankings move for 14 days before you are billed a dollar.
- Law firms only — no other industries, ever.
| Attorney Pro Marketing | Scorpion | FindLaw | Typical legal agency | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing published on the website | Yes — $2,500 / $3,500 / $4,500 per month | Not published | Not published | Rarely published |
| Contract term | Month to month, 30 days’ notice | Not published | Not published | Commonly 12 months |
| Who works on your account | A former attorney of 17 years, in every account | Assigned account team | Assigned account team | Account manager, often across industries |
| Your website is built on | Standard, portable code | Proprietary platform | FirmSite platform | Varies — ask before signing |
| See results before you are billed | Yes — 14 days, then you decide | No | No | No |
| Ad spend billed by Google directly to you | Yes, no markup | Ask | Ask | Often passes through the agency |
“Not published” means the figure does not appear on that company’s own website as of October 2026 — check for yourself before you sign anything, with them or with us.
Why There Is No Revenue Number
Firms want a threshold — "once you are doing $500,000 a year, hire someone" — and the number does not exist, because revenue is the wrong variable.
Consider two firms each billing $40,000 a month. The first does immigration work averaging $3,800 a matter, so roughly ten new matters a month. The second does high-volume traffic and minor criminal defence averaging $750, so over fifty. A $2,500 programme needs to produce less than one extra case a month for the first firm and more than three for the second. Same revenue, materially different decision.
So the question is not what you bill. It is what one more signed matter is worth and how many of them the fee has to produce before it pays for itself.
The Two Ratios That Matter
- Ratio one — the fee under about 10% of monthly revenue. This is a survivability test. Above roughly 10%, the payment starts competing with payroll and the programme gets cancelled for cash-flow reasons rather than performance ones.
- Ratio two — one additional signed matter roughly covers the fee. This is a plausibility test. If the programme has to produce five extra cases a month to break even, you are betting on a large change rather than a modest one.
Ratio one tells you whether you can survive the decision. Ratio two tells you whether it is likely to work. A firm that passes one and fails the other should usually choose a smaller programme rather than abandon the idea.
The Arithmetic, By Case Value
Taking a $2,500 programme — the entry tier — here is what breaking even requires at different case values, and the monthly revenue at which the 10% test passes.
| Average signed matter | Extra cases/month to cover $2,500 | Revenue where fee is 10% |
|---|---|---|
| $750 | 3.3 | $25,000 |
| $1,500 | 1.7 | $25,000 |
| $2,500 | 1.0 | $25,000 |
| $4,000 | 0.6 | $25,000 |
| $7,500 | 0.3 | $25,000 |
The right-hand column is constant because the 10% test depends only on the fee. What changes is the left side — the plausibility of the thing the fee has to achieve.
At $4,000 a matter, a $2,500 programme needs to produce roughly one extra case every two months to wash its face. That is a low bar and it is why higher-value practice areas can justify marketing at much lower revenue. At $750 a matter you need three and a third extra cases every month, consistently, which is achievable but is a real target rather than a rounding error.
Two adjustments worth making to this arithmetic before you trust it. First, use the amount you actually collect, not the fee you quote — collection rates in some practice areas are considerably below 100%. Second, if your matters generate downstream work or referrals, the first case is worth more than its own fee, and the table above understates the return.
Budgeting for the Ramp
The arithmetic above describes a steady state that does not exist in month one.
Paid search produces calls quickly. Profile work moves in weeks. Organic search — the part that compounds — takes three to six months. So the realistic shape of the first half-year is: little in month one, something in months two and three, and the break-even arithmetic starting to hold somewhere around month four to six.
Which means the number to test against your cash flow is not the monthly fee. It is the fee times six, largely unreturned. At $2,500 that is $15,000 of exposure before the programme is reasonably expected to be paying for itself.
If that figure is comfortable, the revenue question is answered. If it is not, the right move is the lower tier for longer rather than the higher tier briefly.
The Upper Limit Nobody Mentions
There is a ceiling as well as a floor, and it gets discussed less because it costs agencies money to mention.
Past a certain point, more spend on the same market stops producing proportionate returns. A solo in a mid-size market with one practice area will saturate the available search demand somewhere below what a large agency retainer assumes. Beyond that point, additional budget buys broader geography, additional practice areas, or paid media against progressively less relevant searches — all of which have worse economics than the core work.
The practical signal is that cost per signed case starts rising while volume growth flattens. When that happens, the answer is not a larger programme. It is capacity, a second location, or a different practice area — which are business decisions rather than marketing ones.
Attorney Pro Marketing publishes the fee so you can run both ratios before any conversation: $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month. Take your average collected matter value, divide the tier by it, and you have the number of additional cases the programme needs to produce. If that number looks implausible for your practice, the entry tier or a different approach is the honest answer, and we would rather say so at the start.
The day 0 baseline and day 14 report exist for the ramp problem specifically — it is the first piece of evidence about whether the arithmetic is going to hold, and it arrives before you are billed for that period.
See it before you pay for it.
We snapshot your rankings on day 0, build and launch your site within three days, and show you the movement on day 14. If it has not moved enough to be worth continuing, you owe nothing for that period and you keep the Google Business Profile work.
Related Questions
As a survivability test, the agency fee should sit under roughly 10% of monthly revenue — above that it competes with payroll and tends to get cancelled for cash-flow reasons rather than performance. Total marketing spend including media is commonly cited between 5% and 15% of revenue depending on growth ambition and practice area.
Divide the monthly fee by your average collected matter value. At a $2,500 fee: roughly one extra case a month at $2,500 per matter, 1.7 at $1,500, and 3.3 at $750. Higher-value practice areas break even on a fraction of a case, which is why they can justify marketing at lower revenue.
No fixed figure, because average case value matters more than revenue. Two firms billing the same amount can sit on opposite sides of the line — one with $4,000 matters needs half a case a month to break even on an entry programme, one with $750 matters needs more than three.
Roughly six months of the fee, largely unreturned. Profile work moves within weeks and paid search produces calls quickly, but organic search takes three to six months to compound, so break-even typically arrives between month four and month six. At $2,500 a month that is about $15,000 of exposure.