Law Firm Marketing Agency: 10 Questions Before You Sign

A law firm should hire a marketing agency only when the firm holds every account the agency works in, the agency's pay is something your state's ethics rules allow, and its monthly report counts signed cases from your case management system (the software that tracks clients and matters) instead of leads. Questions about the fee, ad review, call recordings and review replies exist only because the client is a law firm, so they come first.

Quick answer

• A price per signed case or a share of fees goes to your state bar before you agree to it.
• A lawyer at the firm approves every ad, landing page, testimonial and review reply.
• The agency names each system that will hold intake calls, recordings and form entries, and who can open them.
• The monthly report gives signed cases by source, counted in your own records.
• In writing before you sign: a firm login is admin of the Google Ads account and primary owner of the Google Business Profile, the domain is in the firm's name, and the tracking numbers can leave with you.

I am not a lawyer; nothing below is legal advice. The ABA's Model Rules, cited throughout, "serve as models for the ethics rules of most jurisdictions" (ABA, checked 2026-10-04), but your state's own rules are what bind your firm.

Can the agency be paid per signed case, or out of the firm's fees?

Not without checking first. Rule 5.4(a) says that a lawyer or law firm "shall not share legal fees with a nonlawyer" (ABA, checked 2026-10-04), and none of the four exceptions that follow covers a marketing vendor. Rule 7.2(b) adds that a lawyer may not give "anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer's services," and paying the reasonable costs of advertisements is among its exceptions (ABA, checked 2026-10-04).

The comments to Rule 7.2 let a lawyer pay vendors hired for marketing work, website designers among them. They also let a lawyer pay for client leads, provided the lead generator itself does not recommend the lawyer, its communications stay consistent with Rule 7.1, and any payment to it is consistent with Rule 5.4 and Rule 1.5(e) (ABA, checked 2026-10-04).

Those limits matter most when the agency's pay climbs with who becomes your client, or with what the firm earns. Put any offer built that way to your state bar before you sign; paying a vendor for leads raises the same questions. The table sorts five fee shapes by what makes each one grow; it says nothing about which ones your state permits.

Either way, have Google charge ad spend to a firm card, so the agency invoices only its fee.

Who hears an intake call, and who can replay it?

An agency that handles intake calls, recordings or web forms touches what a possible client says before hiring anyone. Rule 1.18 calls that person a prospective client, meaning someone who consults a lawyer about the possibility of becoming a client. A lawyer who learned information from them "shall not use or reveal that information," even if they never hire the firm, except as Rule 1.9 allows for information of a former client (ABA, checked 2026-10-04). Rule 1.6(c) asks a lawyer to make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of information relating to a client's representation, and unauthorized access to it (ABA, checked 2026-10-04).

Google Ads now records eligible calls by default on US and Canadian numbers: calls to call ads and call assets, and calls that website visitors place through a Google forwarding number. Recording stays off if the account switched it off earlier, or if Google has identified the business as operating in healthcare or financial services. Each caller hears a brief notice that the call is recorded (Google, checked 2026-10-04). For 30 days after a call, the recording can be played by users with Admin access, including Admin access through a manager account, and by direct users with Standard access (Google, checked 2026-10-04).

So ask the agency for a written list: every system that will keep recordings, form entries and chat transcripts, who at the agency and at its vendors can open each one, and how long each keeps them. Then decide with whoever handles ethics at the firm whether recording stays on (Admin, then Account settings, then Call ads).

The same duty follows the firm onto review sites. ABA Formal Opinion 496 suggests a lawyer consider not answering a negative online review at all. A lawyer who does answer must not disclose anything that relates to a client matter or could reasonably lead to the discovery of confidential information, and may invite the reviewer to contact the lawyer privately (ABA, checked 2026-10-04). The agency may draft; a lawyer at the firm approves each reply.

Which lawyer reads the ads, and who at the agency writes them?

Rule 7.1 forbids a "false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer's services" (ABA, checked 2026-10-04). The comments to the rule warn that even a truthful report of past results can mislead when it would lead a reasonable person to expect the same results for other clients in similar matters, whatever the facts and law of each client's case (ABA, checked 2026-10-04).

Rule 5.3 reaches the agency as well. Partners, and lawyers with comparable managerial authority, must make reasonable efforts to ensure the firm has measures in place that give reasonable assurance that a nonlawyer it retains acts in a way compatible with the lawyers' professional obligations (ABA, checked 2026-10-04). In practice, a lawyer at the firm signs off on each new ad, landing page and testimonial, and the firm saves a copy of every version that ran. What attorney ads may claim gets a post of its own.

Ask, too, which people at the agency will log in and change campaigns, whether any of the work goes to a subcontractor, and who sends new ad text to the firm for approval. Then hold the answer up against Change history in the Campaigns menu. Google says it shows up to 2 years of changes to the account, its campaigns and its ad groups, and gives the email address of the person behind each change made in the Google Ads interface (Google, checked 2026-10-04).

Review requests are the other place the agency speaks for the firm. Google's policy forbids offering incentives in exchange for reviews, and forbids asking for positive reviews selectively (Google, checked 2026-10-04). A 2024 FTC rule also bans incentives that depend on the review expressing a positive or negative sentiment (FTC, checked 2026-10-04). Ask how the agency will request reviews, and make sure every client gets the same request.

Which number should the agency's report lead with?

Signed cases. A signed case is a client who signed your engagement agreement; a click or a lead only shows that the agency was busy. Google Ads records a lead as a conversion, an action the account is set up to count, "like a purchase, sign-up, or phone call" (Google, checked 2026-10-04), and Google's conversion count can run ahead of the leads in your own records.

Only the firm knows who signed, so the count has to start at intake. Whoever answers new calls asks how the caller found the firm and records one answer from a set list in the case management system. Each month the agency receives totals by source, consultations held and cases signed, with no names or matter details. That count is the piece I set up; I work on tracking and do not run an agency.

Illustrative: the firm here, a two-lawyer estate planning practice, is imaginary, every figure is invented, and no client supplied any of them.

The agency's report divides ad spend by leads: $6,000 ÷ 90 = $66.67 per lead in month 1, then $6,000 ÷ 140 = $42.86. The firm divides ad spend plus the fee by signed cases: $7,500 ÷ 9 = $833.33 per new client, then $7,500 ÷ 7 = $1,071.43. In the agency's report, leads became 36 percent cheaper. In the firm's records, each client cost 29 percent more.

The sign rate, signed cases ÷ consultations held, barely moved: 9 ÷ 24 = 38 percent, then 7 ÷ 20 = 35 percent. What fell was the number of consultations, even though 50 more leads came in, so ask the agency what it changed in month 2. And "source Google" also takes in Maps and unpaid search, so the cost per signed case from the ads alone is likely higher.

Whose name is on the ad account, the listing, the domain and the numbers?

An agency can run the firm's ads from its manager account, a single login that reaches many Google Ads accounts (Google, checked 2026-10-04). A firm login should be admin on the firm's account, because only Admin users can grant access and unlink a manager account (Google, checked 2026-10-04). An unlinked account keeps its campaign history. If the agency's manager account pays Google on monthly invoicing for the firm's ads, though, the ads stop at unlinking unless billing has moved first (Google, checked 2026-10-04). Admin, then Access and security, lists the firm's role (Google, checked 2026-10-04).

The Business Profile is the firm's free listing in Google Search and Maps. Only its primary owner can pass that role to someone else (Google, checked 2026-10-04), and a manager can do what an owner does apart from adding or removing users and removing the profile (Google, checked 2026-10-04). Manager access is what the agency gets, granted from More, then Business Profile settings, then People and access.

Look up who is listed as the domain's registrant, its holder on record. ICANN says changing the registrant needs confirmation from the current holder, which typically comes by email (ICANN, checked 2026-10-04), so a domain registered to the agency moves only if the agency agrees. Tracking numbers, the extra phone numbers that show which ad or listing a call came from, can be stuck too. CallRail, as one vendor's example, says an administrator of the CallRail account has to approve a port (moving a number to another provider), that a US number ports away free, and that 4 to 6 weeks is typical (CallRail, checked 2026-10-04).

How does the firm get out, and who else is the agency working for?

Before signing, find the term, any automatic renewal and the notice period, and ask for a handover list with dates: logins, domain, site files, numbers and past reports.

Then ask about the roster. Attorney at Law Magazine's vendor list argues that an agency working for your "fiercest competitor" can amount to a conflict of interest, and adds that exclusivity matters less when the other firm has a different focus (Attorney at Law Magazine, checked 2026-10-04). Two firms in the same practice area and city may also bid against each other on the same searches, so ask whether the agency serves one, and put the areas and cities where it will not take on another firm into the contract.

Where does each of the ten answers belong?

Ask all ten on the sales call; the groups show where each answer should end up.

Into the contract

1. How is the agency paid, and does any part rise with signed cases or the firm's fees?
2. Is a firm login admin in Google Ads and primary owner of the Business Profile?
3. Are the domain, site files and tracking numbers in the firm's name, or portable on request?
4. What do the term, renewal, notice period and dated handover list say, and which firms in this practice area and city does the agency serve?

In writing before the first ad runs

5. Which systems will hold intake calls, recordings, form entries and chats, who can open them, and for how long?
6. Is call recording on in Google Ads, and who decided that?
7. Who sends each new ad, landing page and testimonial to a lawyer for approval?
8. How will the agency ask clients for reviews, and who approves each reply?

After the first monthly report

9. Do the names in Change history match the people the agency named?
10. Does the report show consultations and signed cases by source from the firm's records?