Employment Lawyer Marketing: Screen Leads First

Employment lawyer marketing works when the leads it brings clear two filters before anyone counts them as a case: a claim still inside its deadline, and a claim your contingency firm can take. The number worth tracking each month is cost per signed, viable case, not cost per call or click.

Quick answer

• Check every lead against the deadlines below before it counts as a qualified case; a call that fails stays in your source report as screened out, not lost.
• The deadline for a charge with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that takes discrimination charges) is 180 days, 300 where a state or local agency enforces a similar law, so a slow callback can cost a caller the claim, not just cost you the lead.
• For one finished month, count leads, screen-out reasons, consults and signed cases by source; cost per signed case is the number that says which channel to fund again.
• Local Services Ads have no dedicated employment lawyer category; the closest fit is Labor lawyer services, so check that it runs in your area before planning around it.
• None of this is legal advice and I don't practice law; each state bar sets its own advertising rules, and states can set their own deadlines on top of the federal ones.

Who is this marketing for, and who should skip it?

This covers a plaintiff-side firm: wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, unpaid wages, usually on contingency. An employer-side (defense) firm sells to HR departments and executives, a business buyer reached through other channels than consumer search. If that's your practice, the deadlines further down still shape your clients' exposure, but the screening table and channel costs here won't match your buyer.

What deadlines does a lead's claim have to clear?

A caller's story only becomes marketing math once it clears the clock it runs on. Discrimination charges generally carry an EEOC deadline of 180 calendar days from the act, extended to 300 days where a state or local agency enforces a law against the same kind of discrimination (EEOC, checked 2026-10-05). In harassment cases the count runs from the last incident, and the Equal Pay Act needs no charge at all: a suit can go straight to court within 2 years of the last discriminatory paycheck, 3 if willful (EEOC, checked 2026-10-05). A caller past the charge window, with no exception in play, has lost the EEOC route no matter how strong the underlying story reads.

Employer size matters too. Title VII, the ADA and GINA cover employers with 15 or more employees; the ADEA needs 20 or more; the Equal Pay Act reaches virtually every employer that federal wage and hour law covers (EEOC, checked 2026-10-05). A six-person shop falls below the Title VII threshold even inside the deadline, though an unpaid-wages claim there may still be worth screening.

Unpaid wages run on a separate clock. Under the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act), a 2-year statute of limitations, the deadline for bringing the claim, generally applies to recovering back wages, 3 years for a willful violation, whether the Department of Labor or the employee brings the claim (DOL, checked 2026-10-05). A last unpaid overtime shift from four years back may already be out of federal reach.

States set their own deadlines and coverage rules, which can differ from the federal ones, and I'm not an attorney: treat the federal numbers above as a checklist to compare with your state's rules, not a final answer.

What should intake ask before a lead counts as a case?

Each "screened out" reason is a diagnostic, not a dead end. For a source producing mostly "past deadline" callers, check whether they were already past the window at first contact, which points at the ads and keywords, or crossed it while waiting for a callback, which points at intake. "Employer too small" callers deserve a second look for a wage claim before they leave the report.

Which channels bring these calls, and what do they cost?

Search is the obvious channel for an employee with a fresh problem. Google Ads Keyword Planner estimates for the US, October 2026, put "employment lawyer near me" at an average $25.62 a click and "wrongful termination lawyer" at $32.87 (pulled 2026-10-04 through DataForSEO). Average CPC means average cost per click, and the bid range is roughly what advertisers bid to appear above the unpaid results:

These are nationwide averages, not what a firm in any one city pays, and they say nothing about which clicks turn into signed cases; PPC for lawyers covers the general break-even math behind a click price, which this post doesn't repeat.

Local Services Ads are Google ads you pay for per lead, not per click. Google's published list of US legal categories for them has no employment lawyer category; the closest is Labor lawyer services (Google, checked 2026-10-05). Google's eligibility check on that page shows whether they run in your area, so use it before counting on these; Google Local Services Ads for lawyers covers verification and billing.

A referral from a lawyer who doesn't take employment matters costs no media spend and arrives partly screened, since the referring lawyer has already filtered on subject matter. Paying that lawyer a share is a fee division: ABA Model Rule 1.5(e) allows one between lawyers in different firms only if it tracks the work each does or both take joint responsibility, the client agrees to each share in writing, and the total fee is reasonable (ABA, checked 2026-10-05). Your state's version is what binds you; lead generation for lawyers covers how Rule 7.2 limits payment for referrals, and this post won't repeat it.

Why can't the callback wait a day?

Elsewhere in consumer legal marketing, a slow callback risks a lead that cools off. Here it also takes days off an already short clock. A week's wait uses close to 4 percent of the full 180-day EEOC window (7 ÷ 180), with no way to get it back; a caller near the 180- or 300-day edge can lose the claim to the wait alone, not to the facts. Route any call mentioning being fired, discriminated against or unpaid to a same-day callback ahead of the rest of the intake queue, and track hours from first contact to first callback by source, not only the signed-case count at the end of the month.

How do you count a month so screen-outs mean something?

Illustrative: the figures below are invented for a two-lawyer employment firm that doesn't exist, and none of them comes from a client.

Search ads cost $8,000 ÷ 4 = $2,000 per signed case. Referrals signed half again as many cases, 6 against 4, from 30 percent of the lead volume (12 against 40), at no media cost, because the referring lawyers had already filtered out most of the callers who'd fail intake anyway. The screen-out reasons point at where to look in search: 18 of its 24 screen-outs were past deadline, so the next question is how many were already past it at first contact and how many crossed it waiting for a callback. The 6 employer-too-small callers get a second check for a wage claim before they count as lost.

Run this for at least two finished months before moving budget. Four signed cases is thin: one case moving from "signed" to "referred elsewhere" would raise search's cost per signed case from $2,000 to about $2,667 ($8,000 ÷ 3). If a spreadsheet gets unwieldy across more than two or three sources, a law firm CRM can hold the same columns as fixed fields.

What should you ask whoever runs your intake or your ads?

• Which screen-out reason is most common by source, this month compared with last?
• How many hours pass between first contact and first callback, broken out by source?
• Does every lead get both deadline checks logged, EEOC and FLSA, before it's marked qualified or screened out?
• If Local Services Ads are running, which category is the firm approved under, and does it match what the firm actually practices?
• Is any payment to a referring lawyer or lead vendor tied to the case's fee or outcome, and has it been checked against the state's fee-division rules?