What marketing agency should an intellectual property law firm hire? One that builds national authority rather than local search — IP practice is federal, the buyer researches like a professional, and the trademark end competes directly against low-cost filing platforms.
Nobody searches for a patent attorney near me and means it. They search for someone who has prosecuted in their technology area.
- 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.
National, Not Local
Patent prosecution happens before a federal office; registered practitioners may act for clients anywhere in the country. Trademark practice is similarly federal. Most of the work is done by filing and correspondence.
The consequence is that IP is the practice area where local search matters least. The Map Pack, city-plus-practice-area terms and neighbourhood content — the backbone of most legal marketing — are peripheral here. A firm whose programme is built on them is competing for a small fraction of its actual market.
What replaces it:
- Technology and industry-specific authority. Buyers search for expertise in their field — medical device, software, mechanical, biotech, consumer products — not for a generalist nearby.
- Procedural depth. Office action responses, restriction requirements, continuation strategy, opposition and cancellation proceedings. Searched by people who know the vocabulary.
- Content under named practitioners, because this buyer checks who would actually do the work and what they have prosecuted.
- Local search funded modestly, since some clients do prefer proximity — but never as the engine.
Trademark and Patent Are Different Markets
They share a practice area name and behave nothing alike, and running them as one programme serves both badly.
Trademark. Higher volume, lower fees, less sophisticated buyers, and direct competition from low-cost filing platforms. Searches are commercial and comparison-driven: how much does a trademark cost, do I need a lawyer to file, what if my application is refused. The buyer is frequently a small business owner or founder who has never used a lawyer.
Patent. Lower volume, far higher fees, and a buyer who is frequently technical and sometimes has in-house counsel. They are assessing prosecution experience in a specific art area, not comparing prices. Searches skew procedural and technical, and the long-cycle consideration period means content does most of the work.
There is also a third segment worth separating: enforcement and litigation — infringement, cease-and-desist responses, oppositions, counterfeit and marketplace takedowns. Event-triggered, urgent, high value, and reached by a searcher with an immediate problem rather than a plan.
Competing Against $199 Filing
The trademark end of an IP practice competes with online filing platforms in a way almost no other legal service does, and pretending otherwise loses the argument before it starts.
Three things work:
Engage with the comparison honestly. A page explaining what a filing service does and does not do — and when it is genuinely adequate — converts far better than one ignoring the alternative your prospect has already priced. It also screens out the people who were always going to use a platform.
Target the failure point. The most valuable trademark searches are from people whose self-filed application has run into trouble: an office action, a likelihood-of-confusion refusal, a specimen rejection, an opposition. These searchers have tried the cheap route, have a deadline, and now want a lawyer. Pages for each refusal type are high-intent and barely competed.
Publish fees. With the government fees separated out, because the prospect's comparison is against a headline platform price and silence loses to a number.
What Authority Looks Like Here
This buyer is the most research-capable in the profession, which changes what persuades. Four things do.
Technical specificity. Writing that demonstrates competence in a technology area, not general IP commentary. A software founder is looking for someone who has prosecuted software claims and understands the subject-matter eligibility problem.
Named practitioners with technical backgrounds. Engineering degrees, prior industry work, registration details. One of the few practice areas where credentials genuinely persuade the client rather than only colleagues.
Substantive procedural writing. How to respond to a particular kind of rejection, what a restriction requirement means for strategy, whether to appeal or continue. Read by prospects and by referring lawyers.
Nothing that reads consumer-grade. Free consultation banners, urgency language and superlatives damage credibility with this buyer, as they do in business litigation.
Exclusions before launch: free patent attorney, legal aid, patent it yourself, provisional patent template, poor man's patent, trademark search free tool, plus the technology areas you do not prosecute.
What to Require of an Agency
- A national content strategy, with local search as a minor line rather than the plan.
- Separate trademark, patent and enforcement programmes.
- Direct engagement with filing platforms in the trademark content, not avoidance.
- Refusal and office-action pages, which are the highest-intent trademark searches available.
- Technology-area content rather than general IP writing, built from your practitioners' actual experience.
- No consumer urgency language, which this buyer reads as a downgrade.
Attorney Pro Marketing builds IP programmes nationally rather than locally, with the three segments separated and the refusal-stage pages built out — at Dominate ($4,500) that extends to a dedicated landing page per practice area, which is what a firm running trademark, patent and enforcement work actually needs. Content comes from Alon Darvish, a former attorney of 17 years, written from your practitioners' input on the technical and procedural substance, with you approving every page — which matters most in the practice area where a technical error is most visible to the reader.
Published pricing at $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month, month to month with 30 days' notice, everything in your firm's name, and rankings recorded on day 0 against up to 30 keywords of your choosing with the movement reported on day 14 before you are billed for that period.
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
Less than in any other practice area. Patent and trademark practice is federal, registered practitioners may act for clients anywhere, and most work is done by filing and correspondence — so the Map Pack and city-plus-practice-area terms are peripheral. A firm built on them competes for a small fraction of its actual market.
They are different markets. Trademark work is higher volume, lower fee, comparison-driven, and competes with online filing platforms — buyers are often founders who have never used a lawyer. Patent work is lower volume, much higher fee, and the buyer is frequently technical, assessing prosecution experience in a specific art area rather than price.
Engage with the comparison honestly, including when a filing service is genuinely adequate — which converts better than ignoring an alternative the prospect has already priced. Target the failure point: office actions, likelihood-of-confusion refusals, specimen rejections and oppositions are high-intent and barely competed. And publish fees with government fees separated.
Technical specificity in a named technology area rather than general IP commentary; named practitioners with engineering or industry backgrounds, since credentials genuinely persuade this buyer; substantive procedural writing on rejections and strategy; and the absence of consumer-grade signals like free consultation banners, which read as a downgrade.