How important are law firm marketing case studies when choosing an agency? Less important than almost anything else you can check — they rank sixth of seven kinds of evidence, above only awards and badges, because they are selected, unauditable and survivorship-biased.
Rank your evidence by what it costs the agency to produce. Case studies cost a designer an afternoon.
- 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 Evidence Hierarchy
Not all evidence is equal, and ranking it by what it costs the agency to produce sorts it quickly. Strongest first.
- 1. What you can inspect yourself. A client's live site on your phone. Page source. Whether they rank for their own terms. Archived versions of client sites. Nobody curated any of it.
- 2. Structural commitments that cost them something. Published pricing, 30-day exit with no fee, assets in your name, no guarantees offered. Each is a permanent surrender of advantage.
- 3. A named person's verifiable background. Specific, checkable, and attached to an individual rather than a company.
- 4. References from clients who left. Cannot be curated, which is exactly why asking is informative whether or not you call.
- 5. Their own published work. Read a practice-area page they wrote. On the legal half, you are the expert in the room.
- 6. Case studies. Selected, unauditable, survivorship-biased. Useful for shape, weak as proof.
- 7. Awards, badges and partner statuses. Frequently indicate payment or participation rather than performance. Near zero information.
Most firms spend their diligence time on items 6 and 7 and almost none on items 1 and 2, which is the wrong way round and takes longer.
Why Case Studies Rank Low
Four structural problems, and none requires anyone to be dishonest.
Selection from an undisclosed base. Four strong outcomes from twelve clients is a real signal. The same four from four hundred is close to what chance produces. You are never told the denominator and it is the whole story.
Survivorship. Clients who left do not appear, and they are the people who know how the agency behaves when things go badly.
Unauditable arithmetic. A percentage increase needs a base period, a statement of whether fees were billed or collected, and an attribution method. None of it is visible, all of it is decisive, and a figure can be perfectly true and entirely uninformative.
Attribution error. Many firms cannot distinguish a marketing-sourced client from a referral, so the underlying data behind a case study may be wrong without the agency or the client realising.
What Case Studies Are Still Good For
Three legitimate uses, none of them proof.
Shape. What does the agency think success looks like? A case study leading with impressions tells you something different from one leading with cost per signed case. That is a window onto their values and it is genuinely useful.
Resemblance. Is there a client like you — your practice area, your market size, your budget? Not proof it will work, but evidence they have met your situation before.
Specificity as a character test. A case study with a named base period, stated collected fees, and a cost per signed case indicates an agency comfortable being checked. One with a bare percentage indicates the opposite.
Reading One Properly
- Find the base. “400 percent more leads” from two to ten is 400 percent. Ask the two numbers.
- Ask billed or collected. A 30 percent write-off rate makes a revenue claim 30 percent wrong.
- Ask what the client paid, all in. An outcome at $15,000 a month says nothing about $3,000.
- Ask who did the work and whether they are still there. A result from three years ago may belong to a departed employee.
- Ask how clients were attributed. If the answer is that the firm reported it, referrals are probably inside the number.
- Ask for the denominator. How many law firm clients in total. The one question that recontextualises everything else.
Attorney Pro Marketing deliberately substantiates on items 1 through 3 rather than 6: pricing published at $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month; month to month, 30 days' written notice, no cancellation fee, no setup fee; your domain, website files, content, Google Ads account and Google Business Profile in your firm's name with advertising billed to your firm directly by Google; a named person — Alon Darvish, 17 years in practice, over 5,000 cases filed, who marketed his own firm to 40–50 new cases a month; and no outcome or ranking guarantees, because nobody controls Google's results.
And rather than asking you to weigh someone else's case study, the structure produces your own evidence first: rankings recorded on day 0 against up to 30 keywords of your choosing, the movement reported on day 14, and nothing billed for that period if it has not moved enough to be worth continuing.
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
They belong near the bottom of the evidence hierarchy — sixth of seven, above only awards and badges. Stronger evidence, in order: what you can inspect yourself, structural commitments that cost the agency something, a named person's background, references from departed clients, and their own published work.
Four structural reasons: they are selected from a base whose size you are never told; departed clients are absent though they know most about poor engagements; the arithmetic cannot be audited for base period, billed versus collected fees or attribution method; and many firms cannot distinguish marketing clients from referrals.
Three things, none of them proof. Shape — what the agency thinks success looks like, since one leading with impressions differs from one leading with cost per signed case. Resemblance — whether they have met your practice area and market size before. And specificity as a character test, since a checkable case study indicates an agency comfortable being checked.
Six: what the base numbers were, since 400 percent from two to ten is 400 percent; whether fees were billed or collected; what the client paid all in; who did the work and whether they are still there; how clients were attributed to marketing; and the denominator — how many law firm clients in total.