Should my law firm hire an agency with direct experience in legal practice? Ideally both — but they are separate credentials, and if you can only have one, practice experience matters more for content and compliance while marketing experience matters more for channels and measurement.
Having practised law and having marketed law firms are different qualifications. Most agencies have at most one.
- 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.
Two Different Credentials
These get conflated constantly and they are not the same thing.
Direct practice experience means having carried files, taken the calls, met the clients, declined matters, and worked under the advertising rules. It produces knowledge about legal matters and legal clients.
Legal marketing experience means having run campaigns and search programmes for law firms. It produces knowledge about which channels work for which practice area, which terms waste money, how legal buyers behave in aggregate, and what the measurement should be.
A lawyer who left practice last year has the first and possibly none of the second. An agency that has served forty law firms for a decade has the second and possibly none of the first. Each is genuinely valuable and they do not substitute for one another.
Which Deliverable Needs Which
- Practice-area content on complicated matters → practice experience. Decisive, and not substitutable by research.
- Advertising-rule flagging → practice experience, mainly. Someone who worked under the rules recognises when a sentence needs checking.
- Call and matter assessment → practice experience. Judging whether a caller was a matter worth taking is a legal judgement.
- Channel selection by practice area → legal marketing experience. Knowing that criminal defence needs the Map Pack and ads while estate planning needs content comes from running both.
- Which terms to exclude on day one → legal marketing experience. A specific exclusion list is accumulated across accounts, not derived from having practised.
- Measurement and attribution design → legal marketing experience. Knowing to measure signed cases rather than form fills, and how to attribute calls by channel.
- Technical site and ad account work → neither. A separate, general competence that must be checked independently.
If You Can Only Have One
Most firms face this trade-off, and the right answer depends on your practice area's dominant channel.
Choose practice experience if your practice area is content-led — estate planning, business formation, employment, immigration petitions, bankruptcy, complex family matters. These win on pages that address complications at depth, and that is the thing marketing experience cannot manufacture. The channel knowledge you need here is comparatively learnable.
Choose legal marketing experience if your practice area is paid-led — competitive personal injury, DUI and criminal defence in a contested metro. These are won in auctions and in the Map Pack, where account structure, exclusion lists, bid discipline and speed to contact dominate. Content matters less and the compliance surface is narrower.
Either way, check technical competence separately. Neither credential confers it, and a slow site or an unstructured ad account undoes both.
When One Person Has Both
Uncommon, and it is the combination worth looking for, because the two credentials compound rather than merely add.
Someone who practised and then marketed a practice has seen both sides of the same account: which search term produced the client who walked in, which call recording described a matter worth taking, which page the client said they had read. That connection is not available to either credential alone — an agency sees the terms and not the matters; a lawyer sees the matters and not the terms.
Two checks when you find it. Does that person do the work, or own the company? Ownership without involvement delivers neither credential to your account. And is the marketing experience current? Having marketed a practice ten years ago is a different thing from doing it now, because the platforms have changed substantially.
At Attorney Pro Marketing both credentials sit with the same person: Alon Darvish practised for 17 years and filed over 5,000 cases, then did all of that firm's own marketing — bringing in 40 to 50 new cases a month. The practice experience and the legal marketing experience were acquired on the same account, which is where the connection between terms and matters comes from. He does the work personally rather than running a team, and law firms are the only clients.
On the third column — the technical work neither credential covers — the check is yours to run: rankings recorded on day 0 against up to 30 keywords of your own choosing, movement reported on day 14, nothing billed for that period if it has not moved enough to continue. 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
Practice experience means having carried files, taken calls, met clients and worked under the advertising rules — it produces knowledge about matters and clients. Legal marketing experience means having run campaigns for law firms — it produces knowledge about channels, wasteful terms, buyer behaviour in aggregate and measurement design.
Three: practice-area content on complicated matters, where it is decisive and not substitutable by research; advertising-rule flagging, since someone who worked under the rules recognises when a sentence needs checking; and call and matter assessment, because judging whether a caller was worth taking is a legal judgement.
It depends on your dominant channel. Choose practice experience for content-led areas — estate planning, business formation, employment, immigration, bankruptcy — which win on depth that marketing experience cannot manufacture. Choose legal marketing experience for paid-led areas such as competitive personal injury and DUI, won in auctions and the Map Pack.
Two things. Whether that person does the work or owns the company, since ownership without involvement delivers neither credential to your account. And whether the marketing experience is current, because having marketed a practice ten years ago is different from doing it now — the platforms have changed substantially.