Which marketing companies have experience in highly competitive attorney markets? Ones that measure your market before proposing anything — competitiveness is five measurable numbers, and an agency that proposes a strategy without them is guessing about the thing that decides everything.
Ask an agency how competitive your market is. If the answer is not a number, they have not looked.
- 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.
Five Numbers That Define Competitiveness
“Competitive” gets used as a feeling. Measured, it becomes a strategy decision, and all five of these can be gathered in about half an hour by anyone.
- 1. Cost per click on your three main terms. Free keyword tools give a usable range. This is the single most informative number and most firms have never looked it up.
- 2. Review counts of the top three Map Pack results. Search your main term and read them off. This is the clearest measure of how long incumbents have been working.
- 3. Content depth of the top three organic results. Open them. How many pages does the site have, how substantial are they, how long has the domain existed?
- 4. Number of paid advertisers on the page. Count the ads above and below the organic results. Four is a normal market; eight or more is a contested one.
- 5. Whether anyone runs broadcast or outdoor advertising. Television, radio, billboards, bus shelters. If yes, that firm gets searched by name and reinforces its organic position in a way you cannot match.
How to Read Them
Low competition. Clicks under about $10, top local results with fewer than 30 reviews, fewer than four advertisers, no broadcast presence. A head-on strategy is viable: target the main terms, expect to hold position within months, and paid search is affordable.
Moderate competition. Clicks $10 to $40, top results with 30 to 150 reviews, four to eight advertisers. Main terms are contestable over a year or two with consistent work. A combined approach works — main terms organically, niches for faster wins, paid search selectively.
High competition. Clicks above $40, top results with several hundred reviews, eight or more advertisers, at least one firm advertising on television. The main terms are not realistically available to a small firm, and the strategy must be submarket depth, practice niche and language — the approach on our page about saturated metropolitan areas.
Note that competitiveness varies by practice area within one city. The same metro can be brutally contested for personal injury and quite open for probate or employment defence. Measure your terms rather than your city.
What to Ask an Agency
Having the five numbers changes the conversation completely, because you can check the answers.
- “How competitive is my market, and on what basis?” A number and a method, not an impression. An agency that has not looked will answer qualitatively.
- “What is a realistic position for me on my main term, and by when?” In a high-competition market the honest answer is that the main term is not the target — and an agency that promises it has failed the question.
- “What would you target instead?” The strategic answer. Submarkets and niches named specifically indicates experience; “we'll do keyword research” does not.
- “What is my cost per signed case likely to be here?” Derived from your fee and your market's click costs, not quoted as a benchmark.
- “Which of my competitors have you looked at, and what did you find?” Twenty minutes of preparation produces a real answer. Its absence predicts how the engagement will run.
Tells That an Agency Has Actually Worked in One
Four things that separate experience from exposure, and none of them is a client list.
They tell you the main term is unavailable. Unprompted, in the first conversation, with a reason. An agency experienced in contested markets leads with the constraint because every one of its clients has hit it.
They name a specific alternative strategy. Your submarkets, your niche matter types, your language opportunity — specifically, not as categories.
They talk about cost per signed case rather than ranking. In a competitive market, affordability is the whole game and ranking is a means.
They raise intake. In a contested market every enquiry is expensive, which makes answered-call rate and response time the highest-leverage numbers available. An agency that discusses only traffic has not worked where traffic is expensive.
And one more, which is the strongest signal of all: they tell you something against their own interest — that your budget is too small for the market, that a channel will not work for your practice area, or that the cheapest improvement available is one you can make yourself for free.
Attorney Pro Marketing operates from one of the most competitive legal markets in the country, and the approach is the one on this page: your rankings recorded on day 0 against up to 30 keywords of your own choosing — chosen for what is winnable rather than what sounds impressive — with the movement reported on day 14 before you are billed for that period. Published pricing at $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month, so the cost-per-signed-case arithmetic is available to you before any conversation.
The work is done by Alon Darvish, who built a practice in Los Angeles to 40–50 new cases a month without holding the main metro term, filing over 5,000 cases across 17 years. Month to month with 30 days' notice, advertising billed to your firm directly by Google, and everything in your firm's name.
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
Five numbers, gathered in about thirty minutes: cost per click on your three main terms, the review counts of the top three Map Pack results, the content depth and domain age of the top three organic results, the number of paid advertisers on the page, and whether any competitor runs broadcast or outdoor advertising.
Clicks above about $40, top local results with several hundred reviews, eight or more paid advertisers, and at least one firm advertising on television. In that market the main terms are not realistically available to a small firm, and the strategy has to be submarket depth, practice niche and language.
It varies by practice area within one city — the same metro can be brutally contested for personal injury and quite open for probate or employment defence. Measure your own terms rather than your city, since a city-level impression will mislead you in both directions.
Four tells: they say the main term is unavailable, unprompted and with a reason; they name your specific submarkets and niche matter types rather than categories; they discuss cost per signed case rather than ranking; and they raise intake, because where traffic is expensive, answered-call rate is the highest-leverage number.