What should a law firm marketing agency promise in writing? Six: countable deliverables, named ownership of domain and accounts, notice period and handover, reporting cadence with a baseline, who does the work, and the fee with its exclusions. Guaranteed rankings and guaranteed case volume should appear nowhere.
A promise you cannot check at month's end is not a promise. A promise nobody can control is worse.
- 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 Six That Belong in Writing
A marketing agreement does not need to be long. It needs to settle six things, each of which can be verified at the end of a month rather than argued about at the end of a year.
- Deliverables, as countable items. Pages per month, channels managed, campaigns run, reports delivered.
- Ownership, named asset by asset. Domain, hosting, website files, content, ad account, profile.
- Notice period and what handover includes. Days of notice, what is transferred, in what format, within what timeframe.
- Reporting cadence and the baseline. How often, containing what, measured against a starting position recorded in writing.
- Who does the work. Named, with any subcontracting disclosed.
- The fee, with exclusions listed. What the monthly figure covers and what will be invoiced on top.
Anything in a proposal that matters to you and does not appear in one of those six categories should be moved into the agreement before signature. The test is not whether the agency is trustworthy. It is that documents outlast the people who negotiated them, and the salesperson who made the assurance is frequently gone by month seven.
Deliverables as Counts
The most common defect in these agreements is scope written in adjectives.
"Ongoing SEO optimisation," "comprehensive content strategy," "continuous campaign refinement." Each describes effort rather than output, and effort cannot be unmet. If the agency does nothing in a given month, no clause has been breached, because no clause specified anything.
The repair is mechanical. For each line of scope, ask: could I count this at month's end? Then rewrite it so you can.
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| Ongoing content creation | Four pages of 800+ words per month, submitted for approval before publishing |
| Comprehensive SEO | Technical audit in month one; on-page optimisation of named pages; monthly profile management |
| Google Ads management | Named campaigns managed, reviewed weekly, with negative-keyword maintenance |
| Regular reporting | Monthly report by the 10th, containing rankings for named terms, calls by channel, and spend |
An agency that resists this rewrite is usually resisting accountability rather than paperwork, and that is a useful thing to learn before signing.
Ownership, Named
A single sentence about ownership is not enough, because the assets are held differently from one another and a blanket phrase papers over the differences.
The agreement should name each one. The domain, registered to the firm. Hosting, in an account the firm controls or can be transferred without rebuild. The website files, deliverable in a standard format on request. The content, assigned to the firm rather than licensed for the term. The Google Ads account, created in the firm's name with the agency as manager. The Google Business Profile, with the firm holding primary ownership.
The ad account is the one most often misunderstood. Ownership follows whoever created the account; adding your firm to an agency-created account grants a permission that can later be withdrawn, and the campaign history — which has real value — stays with the account.
Notice and Handover
Exit terms are where agreements are least specific and where the consequences are most concrete.
Three things should be stated: the notice period in days; what is handed over, listed; and the timeframe for handing it over. "Reasonable assistance with transition" is not a commitment. "All website files, content, account access and campaign data delivered within ten business days of termination" is.
Worth adding explicitly: that nothing is withheld pending final payment. This clause rarely matters and when it does it matters enormously, because a departure dispute is exactly when a site going dark does the most damage.
On notice length — thirty days is a meaningful accountability mechanism. An agency that must earn the following month behaves differently from one already paid for it. Longer notice periods are not automatically unreasonable, but they should buy you something in return.
Two Promises That Are Warnings
Some written promises indicate a problem rather than a protection.
Guaranteed rankings. No agency controls Google's algorithm, so a guaranteed position is either meaningless or achieved against a term nobody searches. The usual mechanism is a guarantee on a long, specific phrase — your firm name plus a practice area plus a neighbourhood — which you would rank for anyway. A guarantee that can only be met trivially is a sales device.
Guaranteed case volume. Whether a call becomes a client depends on your intake, your consultation, your fees and your availability — none of which the agency controls. An agency promising signed matters is either going to miss it or is counting something other than signed matters. Ask what happens when the number is not met; the answer is usually a credit toward more of the same service.
There is a legitimate version of performance commitment and it looks different: a defined baseline, a stated expectation of directional movement by a specific month, and a clean exit if it does not arrive. That puts the agency at risk without promising something nobody can deliver.
Attorney Pro Marketing's version of each of the six: deliverables stated as page counts per tier rather than adjectives; domain, hosting and ad account set up in the firm's name; month to month with 30 days' notice and handover of files and access on request; a day 0 baseline with reporting measured against it; Alon Darvish — 17 years in practice, over 5,000 cases filed named as the person doing the work; and published pricing at $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 with hosting and call tracking inside the tier.
There is no ranking guarantee and no promised case volume, for the reasons above. What there is instead: a day 14 report showing movement against the baseline before you are billed for that period, which is a commitment that can actually be checked.
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
Six things: deliverables as countable items rather than adjectives, ownership named asset by asset, the notice period with a listed handover and timeframe, reporting cadence measured against a documented baseline, who personally does the work with subcontracting disclosed, and the fee with its exclusions listed.
No — a guaranteed ranking is either meaningless or achieved against a term nobody searches. The usual mechanism guarantees a long phrase combining firm name, practice area and neighbourhood, which the firm would rank for regardless. A guarantee that can only be met trivially is a sales device.
It should not. Whether a call becomes a client depends on intake, the consultation, fees and availability — none of which the agency controls. Agencies promising signed matters either miss the number or are counting something else, and the remedy is usually a credit toward more of the same service.
As counts that can be verified at month's end. 'Four pages of 800+ words per month, submitted for approval before publishing' instead of 'ongoing content creation'; 'monthly report by the 10th containing rankings for named terms, calls by channel and spend' instead of 'regular reporting'.