How can I recover my website from a marketing agency? Request six things in writing as a routine backup, before you give notice — and if the answer is no, you can reconstruct most of what matters from public sources, because your content is visible to anyone.
Ask for a backup, not a handover. The same request has a very different success rate depending on which word you use.
- 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.
Timing Decides the Outcome
The identical request succeeds or fails largely on when it is made and how it is framed.
From a current client, framed as a backup: administrative. Most agencies produce it without a conversation, because keeping your own copy of your own site is an entirely normal thing to want.
From a departing client, framed as a handover: a negotiation, sometimes with a fee attached, sometimes with delay, occasionally with a refusal.
So make the request now, before you have decided anything, and keep the copy regardless of what you decide. This is the single most valuable paragraph on this page.
The Six Items to Request
- 1. The site files. A complete archive of the site as deployed — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, templates. Ask for a zip.
- 2. A content export. Every page's text with its URL, in a document or spreadsheet. Separate from the files, because this is the part that survives any redesign.
- 3. The image library. Original resolution files, particularly real photographs of your office and attorneys, which are expensive to reproduce.
- 4. The URL list. Every live URL. You can crawl this yourself, and asking anyway confirms nothing is hidden from a crawl.
- 5. Database or CMS export, if the site runs on a content management system. This is what makes the site reproducible rather than merely readable.
- 6. DNS and hosting details. Where the domain points, where the site is hosted, and in whose account each sits.
Send it as one short email: “For our own records I would like a full backup of the site. Could you send the following six items?” No explanation is required and none should be offered.
If the Answer Is No
Three things to establish, in this order, because they determine how much the refusal actually costs you.
Is it a refusal or an inability? A proprietary platform often genuinely cannot produce portable files. That is a different problem from unwillingness, and it means rebuilding rather than recovering.
What does the agreement say? Look for the intellectual property and transition clauses. Content may be assigned to you, licensed for the term, or unaddressed. Where it is assigned, you have a contractual basis for the request; where it is licensed, you do not have the right to republish it even if you hold a copy.
Is the domain yours? Run a public WHOIS lookup. If your firm is the registrant, you control where the domain points, which is the thing that carries your accumulated ranking history. That single fact determines whether a refusal is an inconvenience or a reset.
Where the content is licensed rather than yours, the practical answer is usually to rewrite rather than fight. Rewriting 20 pages is a known cost; a dispute over a licence clause is not.
What You Can Reconstruct Without Them
Worth knowing, because it lowers the stakes of the whole conversation. Your website is public, which means most of it is recoverable by anyone, including you.
- Crawl your own site. A free crawler captures every URL, title, meta description and heading in minutes. No access required.
- Save each page's visible text from the browser. Slow but complete, and it needs nobody's permission.
- Pull images from the live pages at whatever resolution is published. Not originals, but often usable.
- Check public web archives for older versions of pages, which also shows you what the site looked like before changes you may not have approved.
- Export Search Console data if you have access, which tells you which pages actually earn impressions — and therefore which 20 pages must survive, out of a site that might have 60.
That last point is the one that makes this manageable. You rarely need to recover everything. You need the pages that produce, and Search Console tells you which those are.
Confirming a Complete Handover
When you receive the files, verify before relying on them: unzip and open the homepage locally; spot-check five page files against the live pages; confirm the image folder is populated and not placeholders; and check the content export covers every URL on your crawl list rather than a subset.
Incomplete handovers are more often sloppiness than strategy, and a specific follow-up naming what is missing usually resolves it.
Attorney Pro Marketing never creates this situation: the site is built on standard, portable code with the domain, hosting, website files and content registered in your firm's name, content assigned to you rather than licensed, and Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads and the Google Business Profile in your name too. There is nothing to recover because nothing is held on our side, and if you leave, the site simply keeps working.
For a firm currently rebuilding because recovery failed: the site is built and launched within three days with no setup fee, and your rankings are recorded on day 0 before launch, which doubles as the migration safety line. Published pricing at $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month, month to month with 30 days' notice.
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
Request six items in one short email framed as a routine backup rather than a handover: the site files as a zip, a content export of every page's text with its URL, the image library at original resolution, the full URL list, a database or CMS export, and DNS and hosting details. Ask while you are still a client.
Establish three things: whether it is refusal or genuine inability, since proprietary platforms often cannot produce portable files; what the agreement's intellectual property clause says about whether content is assigned or licensed; and whether your firm is the domain registrant, which determines whether this is an inconvenience or a reset.
Largely, because your website is public. Crawl your own site to capture every URL, title and heading; save each page's visible text from the browser; pull published images; check public web archives for earlier versions; and use Search Console to identify which pages actually earn impressions and therefore must survive.
Unzip and open the homepage locally, spot-check five page files against the live pages, confirm the image folder contains real files rather than placeholders, and check the content export covers every URL on your own crawl list rather than a subset. Incomplete handovers are usually sloppiness and a specific follow-up resolves them.