Which legal marketing companies are worth hiring? Any agency is worth hiring only if its total cost per signed case stays under roughly a quarter of your average fee — run that number before you shortlist anyone.
The same agency is a bargain at one firm and a disaster at another. The difference is in your books, not theirs.
- 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.
Start With Your Own Numbers, Not Their Reputation
Whether an agency is worth hiring is a function of three things, two of which are yours.
Your average fee per signed case. Not per matter opened — per matter that generates revenue.
Your conversion rate from inquiry to signed client. Count the last ninety days honestly, including the inquiries nobody called back.
The agency's total monthly cost, meaning the management fee plus advertising spend. Agencies that bundle the two make this arithmetic impossible, which is one reason to insist on the split.
From those three, the only number that matters: your total cost per signed case. As a rough sustainability marker, acquisition costs above roughly 25 to 30 percent of average fee become difficult to carry in most practice areas once overhead is accounted for.
A Worked Example
- Firm A: $6,000 average fee, signs 1 inquiry in 4. At $4,000 a month total, it needs 3 signed cases to break even at 25% — so 12 inquiries. Achievable in most markets. Worth it.
- Firm B: $1,200 average fee, signs 1 in 12. The same $4,000 needs roughly 13 signed cases, so around 160 inquiries a month. Not worth it, at any agency, until the conversion rate changes.
Nothing about the agency differs between those two rows. Firm B's problem is not vendor selection, and hiring a better agency will not solve it — which is exactly why the arithmetic belongs before the shortlist rather than after the disappointment.
Which Agencies Clear the Bar
Once you have your number, the field narrows on facts rather than impressions:
Agencies whose total cost you can establish before signing. If the management fee and the media spend arrive as one figure, you cannot run the calculation. Insist on the split in writing; if it is refused, you have learned something.
Agencies that bill media directly to you through Google. It makes the advertising half verifiable rather than reported.
Agencies whose published price lets you model before a sales call. Most will not publish one.
Agencies that will tell you when the numbers do not work. Firm B above should be told plainly that no agency is worth hiring this quarter, and that fixing conversion comes first. Very few will say it, because it costs them the sale.
Reducing the Risk of Being Wrong
Even with the arithmetic done, you are forecasting. Three things reduce the cost of a wrong forecast: a short contract, so a mistake costs one month rather than twelve; a recorded baseline, so you can tell what actually changed; and a defined failure condition agreed before work starts.
Attorney Pro Marketing is built on exactly those three. Pricing is published at $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month so you can model it tonight. Advertising spend is billed to your firm directly by Google, so your total cost is a figure you can verify rather than accept. We work month to month. And your rankings are recorded on day 0 and reported on day 14, with nothing billed for that period — so the first thing you receive is the evidence you need to run the calculation properly.
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
Work out your total cost per signed case — management fee plus advertising spend, divided by the cases actually signed — and compare it to your average fee. Above roughly 25 to 30 percent of average fee, acquisition becomes difficult to sustain in most practice areas once overhead is accounted for.
Because the two variables that dominate the outcome belong to the firm, not the agency: average fee per signed case and conversion rate from inquiry to client. A firm signing one inquiry in four at a $6,000 average fee can sustain costs that would be ruinous for a firm signing one in twelve at $1,200.
Yes, and insist on it in writing. Bundled into one figure, you cannot calculate your true cost per signed case, and you cannot verify what was actually spent on media. Advertising billed to your firm directly by Google makes that half of the equation checkable rather than reported.
When the arithmetic does not work at any price — typically a low average fee combined with a weak conversion rate, where the required inquiry volume is unreachable in your market. In that situation the constraint is conversion or case mix, and fixing it comes before hiring anyone.