How do I know if my law firm's marketing agency is performing? Check six things monthly — and verify four of them yourself, because an agency's own dashboard is the one source that cannot tell you whether the dashboard is honest.
You can check rankings, your profile, your site's pages and your ad account without asking anyone. Do that first, then read the report.
- 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.
The Six-Metric Monthly Check
- 1. Map Pack position on your three most important terms. Moving up, flat, or down.
- 2. Organic position on the same three terms, plus two longer queries.
- 3. Pages created or edited, with URLs and dates. The direct test of whether work occurred.
- 4. Ad account change history, if you run paid. Shows exactly what was touched and when.
- 5. Answered-call rate. What share of tracked calls were answered by a person. Yours to fix, and it governs everything downstream.
- 6. Cost per signed case. Total monthly marketing cost divided by signed cases attributable to marketing.
Trends matter, single months do not. Ranking data is noisy month to month, and a firm reacting to one bad reading will keep firing competent agencies.
The Four You Can Verify Without Asking
This is the part that changes the relationship, because it means the report is a cross-check rather than the only source.
Rankings. Open a private or incognito window and search your terms. You are not seeing exactly what a stranger sees — location and history still affect results — but you will see whether you are on page one and whether you are in the Map Pack, which is the part that matters most.
Your Google Business Profile. Open it and look. Are there posts this month? Have reviews been responded to? Are the services and hours correct? All visible to you and to every prospective client.
Your site's pages. Ask the agency for the URLs of pages added or changed last month, then open them. If a page is new, it exists and you can read it. This single request resolves more performance disputes than any dashboard.
Your ad account. If the account is in your firm's name, the change history shows every adjustment with a timestamp. If you cannot see your own ad account, that is itself a finding.
Reading the Agency's Report
Reports are not useless. They are just written to be reassuring, and a few habits make them informative.
Read the chart axes. A dramatic line can cover a range of 40 to 44. Truncated axes are the most common cosmetic trick in reporting.
Watch for changed metrics. If last month led with calls and this month leads with impressions, calls probably fell. Metric substitution is the clearest signal in any report.
Ignore impressions on their own. Impressions can rise because you now appear for queries that will never convert. Rising impressions with flat calls usually means broader, worse visibility.
Look for what changed, not what was observed. “We monitored performance” is not work. “We added these 40 negative keywords and published these 3 pages” is.
When the Numbers Are Bad
- Separate the steps first. Are rankings down, or are rankings fine and calls down, or are calls fine and signings down? Each points somewhere different, and only the first is squarely the agency's.
- Check your own side before the call. Answered-call rate and response time. If 30 percent of calls went to voicemail, that is the conversation.
- Ask for the scope-and-hours summary for the last three months. The response is informative independent of its content.
- Set a 90-day measure with a date. Specific terms, specific target, specific review date.
Our engagements are structured so most of this check is available to you by default: the day 0 baseline gives you the starting line in writing, the day 14 report gives you the first reading before you are billed for that period, and the Google Ads account and Google Business Profile are in your firm's name, so the change history and the profile activity are yours to inspect without asking. Monthly Map Pack heatmap and ranking reporting is part of every tier, and from the Growth tier so is call tracking with recordings.
Published pricing at $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month, month to month with 30 days' notice — which means a bad trend is something you can act on rather than something to raise at a renewal.
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
Six: Map Pack position on your three main terms, organic position on those plus two longer queries, pages created or edited with URLs and dates, ad account change history, answered-call rate, and cost per signed case. Judge trends rather than single months, since ranking data is noisy.
Four ways, none requiring the agency: search your terms in a private browser window to see whether you are on page one and in the Map Pack; open your Google Business Profile and check for posts and review responses; ask for the URLs of pages added last month and read them; and read your ad account's change history if the account is in your firm's name.
Truncated chart axes making small changes look dramatic; metric substitution, where a report that led with calls last month leads with impressions this month; impressions presented alone, since they can rise through broader worse visibility; and language describing observation rather than action, such as “we monitored performance.”
Separate the steps first: are rankings down, or are rankings fine and calls down, or are calls fine and signings down? Only the first is squarely the agency's. Check your answered-call rate before the conversation, ask for a three-month scope-and-hours summary, then set a 90-day measure with specific terms and a review date.