Is Law Firm Marketing Too Expensive? It Depends.

We hear from a lot of law firms who complain that the cost of law firm marketing has become too high, way too high, and I am sympathetic.

They're not wrong. Traditionally, the benchmark has been to spend between 10 to 20% of firm revenue on marketing, but that guidance seems to have become aspirational, like the rule about not spending more than ⅓ of your gross income on housing. In expensive cities, many people are house poor. And increasingly, in competitive practice areas, law firms are becoming "advertising poor."

At JSO Digital, we have a solution, an AI agent that handles law firm marketing called Associate. Firms can run it independently, or we can run it for them. But before I get to that product, let's discuss the state of the industry and why prices are going up to market a law firm.

Why marketing a law firm costs so much

I just wrote a blog about the incredible cost to market a plaintiff's law firm and how it effectively shuts small firms and newbies out of the market and protects incumbents. Years ago, I was able to hang a shingle and run a successful law practice after getting laid off from BigLaw. Today, that is only getting harder as the cost to market a law firm increases.

If you are factoring in upwards of $400 per click in a market like LA or Houston, my back of the envelope comes up with about $40,000 minimum as a monthly budget to play in a big personal injury market. Under the 10% of revenue rule, that would mean a plaintiff's firm would need a minimum of $5,000,000 in annual revenue to stay balanced financially.

You can almost feel the pricing stress.

In a recent survey by CallRail, 95% of firms agree that because marketing is non-billable, the spending risk is greater. This is especially true for plaintiff's firms who may not see a fee until years after retaining a new client.

So, firms are spending more, and see it as risky. They spend big on PPC, but find the results underwhelming.

It's not just legal that is getting squeezed. The ecommerce world is under the same pressures from ever increasing cost to advertise on platforms like Meta. For lawyers, many PPC search terms are now being auctioned for over $1,000 per click!

Ecommerce retailers usually have a hard cost of goods and gross margin number to work with, and they see sales in real time. For lawyers, it's harder. Bankruptcy, with fees set by the US Trustee, is the cleanest example of a practice area that usually knows what to expect from fees.

Let's break down the economics to see if lawyers are getting their money's worth from their digital marketing campaigns.

PPC marketing

While it's easy to be scared off by the $40,000 monthly bills and $400+ per click keywords, what lawyers are looking for is a return on investment. If you bring in $120,000 of retainers for every $40,000 spent, the cost is no issue. This is what's known as return on ad spend, or "ROAS," and it's more popular in the ecommerce world where Shopify owners often have a better handle on their metrics than law firms. A good ROAS in ecommerce is of course driven by profit margins, but you can ballpark 2 to 4X ROAS as "good." So, for the law firm spending $40,000 in paid ads to bring in $120,000 in retainers, they're at a 3X ROAS, which is considered good, but the ultimate business case really hinges on their outlay, overhead, etc.

Good ROAS numbers are out there for lawyers, there is no doubt.

But it's a double-edged sword. With the rise of Performance Max and AI bidding, Google makes it easier than ever to spend. Costs can add up quickly and if the funnel is leaky, firms can get hammered with PPC. An example would be a firm that sends paid traffic to the generic homepage or a slow loading landing page.

My verdict is that PPC is too expensive, but some firms are making it work.

WordPress website builds

These prices have gotten way too high. I've been in the software industry for almost 10 years now building applications and it's been wild to see WordPress developer rates almost double what you'd pay to hire a top rate full stack engineer. One WordPress developer we use has bumped his rates to $180 per hour and thinks nothing of charging $15,000 to $20,000 for a WordPress build.

That is just nuts.

I've written previously about the increasing cybersecurity risks associated with WordPress and how AI is only making these sites more vulnerable.

If you have a mature SEO campaign and have the budget, it may be worth it to stay on WordPress, but I have been transitioning clients to Astro as a faster, cleaner alternative that is lightning fast and leaves all the bulky sclerotic PHP of WordPress behind.

My verdict here is that WordPress websites are a bubble and are way overpriced in the current environment.

Organic retainer-based marketing

An average rate for a good agency marketing a mature firm is roughly a $5,000 monthly retainer, which does not include content creation or paid ad spend.

In my view, these rates used to be justified if the agency created some content on behalf of the client, but with the rise of agentic workflows it's hard to justify this type of spend at the maintenance level.

What we call "marketing" in the legal world is often technical management.

Our AI agent, Associate, is built to handle the maintenance and growth layer after the strategy required for the first 6 months is put in place.

If a firm wants to run the agent themselves, the monthly cost is as low as $499 per month.

My verdict here is that the legal marketing retainer is appropriate for some firms who want white-glove service, but has severe structural problems. The first is that firms pay for white-glove but often get neglected for months on end and see their campaigns languish.

The second is that firms who can't afford white-glove are forced into a years-long retainer they don't want or need just to feel like they're doing something to keep up with the competition.

Agentic workflows solve both

In the case of the firm who wants to have access to an agency partner, the agent works 24/7, 7 days a week, and our team is available for processing work orders, which are tasks the agent can't handle, such as building a citation on an important site appearing in LLM search where the client lacks a presence. The human layer is there as needed watching the agent who is always on.

The scrappy upstart, or lean firm, who wants to keep overhead low can run Associate by themselves. The agent will prioritize the top-of-queue marketing tasks the firm needs to prioritize to grow and can implement the changes itself 60 to 70% of the time after a lawyer approves the work.

Try Our AI Agent Built for Law Firms

How does this apply to your firm?

Are you marketing poor? If you are using an agency, does the retainer represent good value?

If you are curious about using our agency or our agent, Associate, please drop us a line, we'd love to hear from you.

Try Our AI Agent Built for Law Firms