What questions should I ask a marketing agency about past results? Ask nine — and weight the two that cost the agency something to answer honestly: how many current legal clients it has, and whether you may speak to two who left.
Case studies are selected and unauditable. Questions that an agency cannot answer selectively are worth more than any of them.
- 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 Nine Questions
- 1. How many law firms are current clients right now? The denominator. Without it, every case study is a fraction with the bottom half missing.
- 2. How many were clients twelve months ago, and how many of those still are? Retention, which is harder to curate than a testimonial.
- 3. May I speak with two clients who left? Plus permission to contact them. The reaction is informative whether or not you call.
- 4. Show me a client in my practice area and market size. Not your best client — one that resembles me.
- 5. In that case, what was the baseline, dated, before you started? If there was none, the result is unverifiable regardless of its size.
- 6. Was that increase in billed or collected fees? And were referrals and repeat clients excluded?
- 7. What was the cost per signed case, including ad spend? The number that makes a result comparable to your own economics.
- 8. Tell me about a client this did not work for, and why. Every agency has them. The answer separates candour from script.
- 9. Who did the work on that account, and are they still here? A result produced by someone who has left is a historical fact about a different company.
The Two That Carry Most Weight
Questions 1 and 3, because they cost the agency something to answer honestly, which is what makes them informative. A testimonial costs nothing to produce; a referral to a departed client does.
Question 1 — the denominator. Four excellent case studies from a base of twelve clients is a strong signal. The same four from a base of four hundred tells you only that four hundred attempts produced four good outcomes, which is roughly what chance would produce. Agencies very rarely volunteer the base.
Question 3 — departed clients. Nobody has a 100 percent retention rate, so an agency claiming it has told you something. A straightforward answer — “yes, here are two, they left for these reasons” — is the single strongest signal available in this process. Deflection is also an answer.
Reading the Answers
Specific beats impressive. “A family law firm in a mid-sized metro went from position 14 to position 3 on four terms over seven months, at a cost per signed case of about $900” is checkable in shape and internally consistent. “We tripled their revenue” is not.
Watch for the missing baseline. Any percentage increase without a stated starting point is uninterpretable. Going from two calls a month to six is a 200 percent increase.
Note which questions get redirected. An agency that answers 4 through 7 with a different client each time is assembling a composite that does not exist.
Candour on question 8 is worth more than performance on 4. An agency that can describe a failure precisely is an agency that diagnoses, which is what you will actually need in month five.
Why Case Studies Are Weak Evidence
Notice that none of the nine questions above asks to see a case study. That is deliberate.
A case study is an answer the agency chose to give before you arrived. Every one of the nine questions is an answer it has to produce on the spot, and several of them — the denominator, the retention figure, the departed clients — cannot be curated at all. That difference is the whole reason the list is shaped the way it is.
Which does not make case studies worthless. It makes them weak as proof and useful as a window onto what the agency thinks success looks like: a case study leading with impressions is telling you something different from one leading with cost per signed case. Our page on how much weight to give case studies sets out where they sit against every other kind of evidence, and how to read one properly.
The practical rule for a consultation: let them present the case study, then ask question 1. The answer to question 1 recontextualises everything in the presentation, and it takes four seconds to ask.
This is why Attorney Pro Marketing substantiates differently: with facts you can check before any call rather than outcomes you cannot audit. Pricing is published — $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month, on the site. The terms are month to month with 30 days' notice and no cancellation fee. The work is done by Alon Darvish, a former attorney of 17 years who filed over 5,000 cases, so question 9 has a permanent answer. Your domain, website files, content, Google Ads account and Google Business Profile are in your firm's name. And your rankings are recorded on day 0 with the movement reported on day 14, before you are billed for that period — which means the result you weigh is your own rather than someone else's case study.
Each of those costs us something, which is the property a testimonial lacks. Our page on questions to ask a marketing agency covers the rest of the diligence.
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
Nine questions: how many law firms are current clients, how many were twelve months ago and remain, whether you may speak with two who left, to see a client resembling you in practice area and market, what the dated baseline was, whether figures are billed or collected, the cost per signed case including ad spend, a client it did not work for, and who did the work.
Four structural reasons: the outcomes are selected after the fact from an undisclosed base; departed clients are absent though they know most about poor engagements; the arithmetic cannot be audited for base period, billed versus collected or attribution; and many firms cannot distinguish marketing clients from referrals, so the source data may be wrong.
Whether you may speak with two clients who left, plus permission to contact them. Nobody has perfect retention, so the answer cannot be curated the way a testimonial can. A straightforward yes with reasons is the strongest signal available; deflection is also an answer.
Ask for the starting point, because a percentage without a baseline is uninterpretable — going from two calls a month to six is a 200 percent increase. Then ask whether the figure is billed or collected fees, whether referrals and repeat clients were excluded, and what the cost per signed case was including ad spend.