Answer · How to choose
How should a law firm choose a digital marketing agency?
The answer
Choose a digital marketing agency for a law firm on five tests: the first page they would change, whether prices are published, who does the work, how enquiries are counted, and what they refuse. An agency that cannot name the page it would change first has not read your site. One that will not publish a price is asking for a meeting before a comparison. One where the people who pitch are not the people who deliver is selling seniority it will not supply. Sessions are not instructions, so ask how qualified enquiries will be counted and reported. Finally, an agency that refuses nothing will take money for work that cannot succeed. Case studies without client names are normal in this market. Case studies without any checkable claim are not.
What should you ask before the first meeting?
Five questions, in this order, and the answers should arrive in writing.
- Which page on our site would you change first, and what would the new first sentence say? An agency that has read the site can answer in a paragraph.
- What do you charge, and where is it published? A range is fine. A refusal to give one is a signal.
- Who will do the work each month, by name, and how much of their week is ours?
- How will you count a qualified enquiry, and what will the monthly report leave out because it cannot be seen?
- What will you refuse to do for us, and why?
A firm that gets clear answers to all five can compare agencies on the same page. A firm that gets a deck instead should notice that the deck is the answer.
Why do rankings and sessions mislead a partnership?
Because a practice can rank on page one, receive rising traffic, and still lose the instruction on the page.
Rankings measure whether a page appears for a query. Sessions measure whether someone arrived. Neither measures whether the visitor could decide anything once there: who the firm acts for, what the first meeting involves, how fees start, what the firm will not take on. A page that explains the practice area and never explains the next step will produce healthy charts and flat enquiries.
An agency that reports rankings and sessions as the headline is reporting its own activity, not the firm's outcome. Ask for qualified enquiries, counted in a way the firm agrees with, and for a plain note on what the analytics cannot see. The measurement work behind that is Analytics and Measurement.
What should a law firm refuse to buy?
Anything that promises a citation, a ranking or a result the agency does not control, and anything that never changes a page on the firm's own site.
A retainer sold as GEO or AI visibility that does not open the firm's content management system is a renamed subscription. A link package is a risk to the firm's reputation with no defensible upside. A content calendar aimed at a site whose service pages cannot convert is spending on the wrong problem. And an advice chatbot that answers legal questions on the firm's behalf is a duty of care handed to an unsupervised model.
A useful test: ask which of the firm's pages will be different in ninety days. A clear answer describes a programme. A vague one describes a fee.
How do you check an agency's claims when it publishes no client names?
By looking for claims that can be checked without a client name: trading history, published prices, named people, and work the agency runs for itself.
Confidentiality is normal in this market, and an agency that names law firm clients on its website should make you wonder what else it shares. What can still be checked is the agency's own record. How long has it traded, and does Companies House agree? Are its prices published, and do they match what the proposal says? Do the people named on the site appear in the meeting? Does it run anything of its own that can be read and tested?
Occam publishes its prices on Pricing, has filed accounts every year since 2012, and operates two media properties anyone can open. The sector page for legal sets out what we change for a firm and what we will not take on.