How much do law firms typically spend on outsourced marketing? Most small firms outsource $2,000 to $10,000 a month — but treat every published benchmark sceptically, because almost all of them come from self-selected surveys with small samples.
The figure everyone quotes for legal marketing spend usually traces back to a vendor survey of its own customers. That is not a benchmark.
- 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.
What Firms Actually Outsource
With the caveats in the next section firmly attached, these are the bands that match what firms report paying.
- Solo practitioners: commonly $1,000 to $5,000 a month, with a wide spread. A large share outsource nothing and rely on referrals.
- Two to five attorneys: commonly $2,500 to $10,000, usually one agency handling most channels.
- Six to twenty attorneys: commonly $10,000 to $30,000, often split across a primary agency and one or two specialists.
- Twenty-plus attorneys: $30,000 and up, frequently with an internal marketing hire coordinating external vendors.
Note that these include advertising spend in most firms' accounting, which is why they look larger than agency fee quotes. A firm reporting $8,000 a month may be paying a $3,500 fee and $4,500 to Google.
Why the Benchmarks Are Weak
This is worth saying clearly, because precise-sounding figures get repeated in this industry for years without anyone checking their source.
- Most data comes from vendor surveys. A marketing company surveys its own clients and prospects, then publishes the result as an industry figure. The sample is firms who already buy marketing, which is the opposite of representative.
- Samples are small. Several widely-quoted legal marketing statistics rest on a few hundred responses, sometimes fewer, across a profession of over a million lawyers.
- Nothing is verified. Respondents estimate their own spend from memory, and firms routinely forget subscriptions, sponsorships and their own time.
- Definitions drift. Does marketing spend include the website? Sponsorships? Client events? Intake staff? Two surveys with the same headline number may be measuring different things.
- Averages hide the shape. A handful of mass-tort firms spending millions pull any average far above the median, and the median is what a solo actually wants to know.
So when you see a confident figure for what law firms spend on marketing, the useful question is who was asked, how many, and who paid for the survey.
What Actually Drives the Variation
Firm size explains less of the spread than three other factors.
Practice area. Personal injury and mass tort sit at the top because case values support enormous acquisition costs and competitors bid accordingly. Estate planning, immigration and family law sit much lower. The gap between a personal injury solo and an estate planning solo is larger than the gap between a solo and a twenty-attorney firm in the same area.
Market. A click that costs $12 in a mid-sized metro can cost $60 in Los Angeles or Miami. Same practice area, same firm size, four times the media budget.
Referral dependence. A firm with twenty years of referral relationships can run on almost nothing. A new firm has to buy its first clients, which is why the percentage-of-revenue rules fail at the start.
A Better Benchmark Than the Industry Average
Your own cost per signed case, tracked monthly, tells you more than any published figure ever will — because it is measured on your market, your practice area and your intake.
- Total monthly marketing cost, fee plus media plus subscriptions.
- ÷ signed cases attributable to marketing that month, not leads.
- = your cost per signed case. Compare it to your average fee. Most firms are comfortable when it sits between 10 and 25 percent.
Track it for six months and you have a benchmark nobody can sell you. Rising cost per case means either competition has intensified or the programme has degraded, and both are worth a conversation. Falling means it is compounding.
This is also why our pricing is published rather than quoted: $2,500, $3,500 or $4,500 a month, with advertising billed to your firm directly by Google so the two numbers stay separate and your cost per case is actually calculable. No setup fee, month to month with 30 days' notice. And the day 0 baseline plus day 14 report means the measurement starts before the first invoice rather than after a year of estimates.
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
Solos commonly outsource $1,000 to $5,000 a month with a wide spread, two-to-five-attorney firms $2,500 to $10,000, six-to-twenty-attorney firms $10,000 to $30,000, and larger firms $30,000 and up. These figures usually include advertising spend, which is why they exceed agency fee quotes.
Treat them sceptically. Most come from vendor surveys of their own clients and prospects, which samples firms that already buy marketing; sample sizes are often a few hundred across a profession of over a million lawyers; spend is self-estimated and unverified; definitions of what counts as marketing drift between surveys; and averages are pulled upward by a few very large spenders.
Practice area more than firm size — personal injury case values support acquisition costs that estate planning cannot. Then market, since a click costing $12 in a mid-sized metro can cost $60 in Los Angeles. Then referral dependence, because a firm with twenty years of relationships can run on almost nothing while a new firm must buy its first clients.
Your own cost per signed case: total monthly marketing cost including fee, media and subscriptions, divided by signed cases attributable to marketing that month. Compare it to your average fee — most firms are comfortable between 10 and 25 percent. Six months of that figure beats any published benchmark because it is measured on your own market.