Estate Planning Attorney Marketing: Where Clients Come From

Estate planning attorney marketing works through four doors: someone who searches for a will or a trust on their own, someone who comes to a seminar and calls weeks afterward, a professional in estate work who sends a client your way, and a past client whose life has changed. Each door costs something different and closes on its own schedule, and the seminar and referral doors each carry a bar rule to read before anyone picks up the phone.

Quick answer

• Log every new estate planning contact by source and date, so a seminar's plans that sign weeks later do not vanish into an "other" bucket.
• Give probate inquiries their own landing page or phone number; an heir or executor dealing with a death needs different information from someone planning ahead.
• Read ABA Model Rule 7.3 and your state's version of it before anyone calls a name off a seminar sign-in sheet.
• Read ABA Model Rule 7.2(b) before offering a CPA or financial advisor anything for sending a client your way.
• Count consults, signed plans and the average flat fee by source, long enough for a seminar's later signings to land, before calling a channel a win or a loss.

How much less does an estate planning click cost than a probate one?

Google Ads Keyword Planner estimates these three searches for the whole US in October 2026. Google describes average CPC as the average amount you might pay for a click, and the top-of-page bid range as approximations of the 20th and 80th percentiles of what advertisers have historically paid for a top-of-page bid (Google, checked 2026-10-05). These are national figures; your city and your own account will price differently.

By these estimates a probate click costs about 2.7 times a wills-and-trusts click ($18.88 against $6.99) and about 3.1 times an estate planning click ($6.02). The planner does not say why. My own reading is that the person behind a probate search is further along: a death has already happened, a court process may already be open, and the search comes from someone who has to act rather than someone comparing options.

The volume behind it swings through the year too. Keyword Planner's last 12 monthly US figures for "probate lawyer near me," newest first, run 9,900, 6,600, 6,600, 5,400, 8,100, 12,100, 18,100, 18,100, 6,600, 3,600, 9,900, 9,900 (planner estimates). A firm running one flat monthly budget for probate ads is spending the same amount into very different months of demand. PPC for lawyers works out what a signed case needs to be worth for a click price like this to pay back.

Is a seminar invitation advertising, or does the follow-up call cross a line?

Under the ABA Model Rules, a seminar invitation sent to the general public reads as advertising: the comment to Rule 7.3 says a communication directed to the general public, such as a billboard, a website or a television commercial, is not a solicitation (ABA, checked 2026-10-05). Solicitation, under Rule 7.3(a), is a communication initiated by or for a lawyer, directed to a specific person the lawyer knows or reasonably should know needs legal services in a particular matter, that offers, or reasonably can be understood as offering, to provide those services (ABA, checked 2026-10-05).

A live phone call to one specific person who signed the attendance sheet is a different communication; the same comment counts live telephone calls as person-to-person contact. Rule 7.3(b) bars a lawyer from soliciting employment by live person-to-person contact when a significant motive is the lawyer's or firm's pecuniary gain, with three exceptions: the person is a lawyer, the person has a family, close personal, or prior business or professional relationship with the lawyer or firm, or the person routinely uses that kind of legal service for business. None of those describes a stranger reached through a mailing list, though the comment also says a reply to someone's own request for information is not a solicitation.

Each state writes its own version of Rule 7.3, this is not legal advice, and I'm not a lawyer, so read your state's wording, not just the ABA's, before any follow-up call goes out. Attorney advertising rules covers the advertising side of this same set of rules.

For the marketing side, count four numbers from every seminar: registrations, people who actually showed up, consults booked afterward, and plans signed. A full room that books almost no consults says something different from a smaller one that books many.

Can a financial advisor or a CPA send you clients?

ABA Model Rule 7.2(b) bars a lawyer from compensating, giving or promising anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer's services. One exception, in 7.2(b)(4), lets a lawyer refer clients to another lawyer or a nonlawyer professional, and take referrals back, under an agreement that is not exclusive and whose existence and nature the client is informed of (ABA, checked 2026-10-05). Under the Model Rule, a financial advisor who sends an estate planning client your way and takes referrals back from you can fit inside that exception; a flat payment for each name handed over does not.

Before setting one up, ask your state bar how its version of the rule treats reciprocal referral arrangements; the state's version is the one that governs. This is not legal advice and I'm not a lawyer. Law firm marketing walks through referrals as one of several channels, worth comparing by signed cases rather than by introductions.

Should a seminar slide say who drafts the trust?

A 1997 enforcement case shows why the question can come up: in January 1997 the FTC announced proposed settlements with two companies that sold more than 3,000 living trusts to elderly consumers in 43 states alongside memberships in a senior citizens' group (FTC, checked 2026-10-05). The FTC charged that the sales literature said local attorneys prepared all the trusts, when about 3,000 of the 3,064 were prepared by one attorney licensed only in Arizona and New York. That is a press release close to 30 years old about one case, not current FTC guidance, and the FTC notes that a consent agreement is not an admission of a violation.

My own takeaway, not a finding from the FTC: a page or seminar slide that names the attorney, states the bar they belong to, and says plainly that the attorney, not a salesperson, drafts and reviews the plan answers a cautious prospect's question before anyone has to ask it.

Does probate need its own landing page and its own source tag?

An estate planning search comes from someone acting ahead of anything happening: a new parent, a new homeowner, someone past a milestone birthday. A probate search comes after a death, typed by an heir, an executor or a surviving spouse who may have a court deadline already running.

Give probate its own page, and if ads run on both, its own tracking, so the two never share one "estate planning" line in a report. At the planner's national averages, the same number of probate clicks costs about 2.7 times as much as wills-and-trusts clicks, so a combined campaign set to win as many clicks as possible can drift toward the cheaper search, not the one the practice wants more of.

When does a past client's plan need a second look?

A life event is a clearer reason to look again than a calendar date. A marriage, a birth, a move to another state, a death in the family, or a change to the estate tax exemption are all reasons a plan signed years ago might not match a client's situation today. A past client is also the easiest person to reach: the firm already has a signed engagement, a mailing address and, if the client agreed, permission to send a newsletter. Law firm newsletter covers keeping former clients on a regular email list and what to count from it, so the firm stays in touch between those events.

Which number shows whether a seminar or a search ad paid for itself?

Illustrative: every number below is made up for an invented solo estate planning practice, and not one of them comes from a client.

One month, the practice ran a seminar costing $1,100 in venue, mailing and the attorney's own time. It drew 45 registrations, 30 attendees, 12 consults booked and 9 held, and over the following weeks 5 of those signed a plan at an average flat fee of $2,400, for $12,000 in fees.

The same month, search ads cost $1,350 in spend. They produced 26 calls and forms, 14 consults booked, 10 held, and 4 plans signed at an average flat fee of $1,800, for $7,200 in fees, since the ad searchers in this example skewed toward simpler wills.

• Cost per consult held = cost ÷ consults held. Seminar: $1,100 ÷ 9 = $122.22. Ads: $1,350 ÷ 10 = $135.00.
• Cost per signed plan = cost ÷ plans signed. Seminar: $1,100 ÷ 5 = $220.00. Ads: $1,350 ÷ 4 = $337.50.
• Fees collected per dollar spent = fees ÷ cost. Seminar: $12,000 ÷ $1,100 = $10.91. Ads: $7,200 ÷ $1,350 = $5.33.

In this invented month, the seminar wins on all three measures: it cost less, signed one more plan, and its plans happened to carry a higher average fee.

What to ask whoever runs your seminars or your search ads

• Who on the seminar's follow-up call list asked to be called, and who already has a relationship with the firm?
• Is any arrangement with a financial advisor, CPA or insurance agent reciprocal and disclosed to the client, or does money change hands for each name?
• Which landing page or phone number catches probate inquiries, kept separate from estate planning ones?
• How many registrations, consults and signed plans came out of the last seminar, and how many weeks did the slowest of them take to sign?
• Who checks seminar invitations, follow-up scripts and referral agreements against the state bar's rules before they go out?