how much to spend on a lawyer

What to do if your divorce is too high?

If you’re involved in a family law matter and the cost of a traditional divorce lawyer is too high, look for a lawyer offering an unbundled or limited scope service, or search for a legal coach.

Is it expensive to hire a divorce lawyer?

The cost of hiring a full-service, traditional, divorce lawyer is high. For most, it’s just too high. We get it. Divorce lawyers are awfully expensive. But the question of how much to spend is tough to answer.

What increases the cost of a probate attorney?

Probate can be a long, expensive business.

Hourly billing in a Probate Matter

Hourly billing is the most common method of compensation for probate lawyers. This rate can vary significantly depending on factors like where a case gets filed, how much experience the lawyer has, and what kind of will it was.

Flat fee for a Probate Matter

Flat fees are another common way probate lawyers opt to receive their payments. Sometimes, lawyers will give you the option between paying them a flat fee or an hourly wage and it is up to you which route sounds best for your situation.

How to save money on a probate attorney?

Probate attorneys are a valuable resource to the executor of an estate. They can help guide you through this process and make it easier for you by providing legal counsel, which is why they charge more than other attorneys who may not have as much experience with probates or foreclosures.

How much should simple probate cost?

Proving the deceased’s property takes a lot of time and money. Since probate proceedings can take up to two years, it is not uncommon for people to lock their assets in anticipation of legal disputes or changes that may happen.

So How Much Should I Spend on Legal Marketing?

In short, there is no one figure that you should spend. According to recent American Bar Association reports, fewer than half (46%) of law firms have a marketing budget, and only 14% of solo law practices have a defined budget. It seems that relying on word of mouth and referrals is still the preferred method of attracting new clients.

Law Marketing on the Rise

In the last few years, the legal marketing landscape has changed significantly; the days of simply providing a good service and relying on the wheels of the referral network to turn are over. Now everything is more sophisticated, more strategic and more connected both within the online sphere and outside it.

Why You Need a Bespoke Law Budget

Simply put, there is no one rule for what your law budget should be and there is no one figure.

Building a Law Marketing Budget

So how do you decide what you should spend on law marketing? Below, we will outline the best practice for creating your own bespoke law budget for your business. A marketing budget that is tailored to your business and that will help you achieve your goals.

Calculating Your Law Marketing Budget

If we start at an absolute minimum of 3% of revenue as the least your law firm will be spending on marketing, we can amend and adapt this figure based on the factors previously mentioned. Start with a blank piece of paper, write down your own responses to each one, and then you can begin to make informed decisions about your budget.

Next Month: Where Should I spend My Legal Marketing Budget?

Hi, I'm Oliver, the Editor for our Online Content. Feel free to email me at editorial.dept@lawyer-monthly.com if you have any questions or interesting content to send over!

What is the Average Spent on Law Firm Marketing?

An average spending of around two percent of gross revenues is common in law firms but varies according to individual needs and factors. Many law firm management consultants recommend spending between two percent and five percent for most practices.

Setting Goals for Marketing Spending

While investing in marketing is important, determining the best way to spend your marketing budget is also important. To make this determination, you need to examine your individual goals. For example, if you want to expand your practice to a new area, you need to increase the budget to attract new clients.

Factors to Consider in Determining What to Spend on Marketing

Your individual needs are most important in determining how much your law firm should spend on marketing. To get a better idea of what is right for you, consider the following factors:

Determining Your Return on Investment

To see if your marketing dollars are being spent wisely, you need to have an idea of what is your return on your marketing investment. It is a good idea to invest in advertising and marketing where you can measure the direct result of your investment and efforts. Consider the following:

Contact Us for Help with Marketing Spending and Strategies

You have the legal expertise to build your law firm, but no one will know about it without marketing. Call Legal Marketing Associates to discuss the individual needs of your firm and let us review your existing marketing strategies and show you how to get the most out of your marketing dollar.

Law Firm Spending on Legal Marketing

Running a firm is no easy task. On top of the legal side, you also need to be familiar with the business side of things, including customer reception, attracting new clients, and convincing them to hire you.

How to Determine your Marketing Budget

Before you learn about search engine optimization, conversion rates, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), you should figure out how much you can spend on your marketing campaign.

Final Thoughts

Marketing teams and firms bring a wealth of experience to the table. A trusted marketing partner can assist a law firm in weighing these elements and determining where it should fall within the 2-12 percent range of gross income.

How Much Should a Law Firm Spend on Marketing?

If you want to move the needle, plan to spend $5,000 – $10,000 per month on marketing at your firm. To get numerous cases from PPC advertising, plan to scale to $15,000, $30,000, and beyond.

How Much Should a Law Firm Spend on SEO?

Plan to spend $3,000 – $6,000 per month, depending on the level of service you need, the competitive overview of your region and niche, and other factors. You will no doubt receive countless emails pitching attorney SEO services for $1,000 per month or less, but you will literally get what you pay for.

How Much Should Law Firms Spend on PPC Advertising?

High volume, low fee law firms, like divorce or immigration attorneys, can get a decent number of clients with only $1,000 – $5,000 per month on Google Ads, depending on your location. Personal injury firms, if they want multiple high value cases from PPC ads each month, may need to spend $6,000 – $10,000+.

Majux Can Help You Make Informed Budgeting Decisions

We’ve helped hundreds of lawyers at Majux, both with SEO for personal injury lawyers and more, and we can give you insights that will shape your marketing budget. Furthermore, we aren’t motivated to try and inflate your PPC budget.

How much do law firms spend on marketing?

Smaller law firms tend to spend between 5-10% on their marketing, again depending upon their marketing strategy, areas of practice as well as how well their intake and sales processes are dialled in.

Which areas of law tend to spend less on marketing?

Family, Property, Wills & Estates. Some areas of law, like estate planning, real estate and family law tend can tend to spend less on marketing due to the nature of these areas of law and their sources for client acquisition.

What is first contact law?

According to Law Technology Today, law firms take 3 or more days to respond to initial messages from new leads and potential clients 42% of the time and 35% of instances, phone calls from leads aren’t answered.

How does marketing work in law?

Marketing, generally works and can be explained by physics principles such as momentum and inertia. Marketing can take time to pay off and therefore, when your firm’s budget permits, there are several stages of your law firm marketing funnel that require adequate investment.

What is the consideration segment of a legal funnel?

Above that, in the consideration segment of the funnel are people that will need services in the near future, but may be doing research about their case or shopping around for the right attorney to handle their legal matter. The overall goal is to create a closer touchpoint, where the audience gets to engage with your brand – usually accomplished by having them visit your law firm’s website. This can be driven by a number of different forms of marketing, but generally can be accomplished with targeted PPC ads or content marketing such as blogging to attract your ideal legal clients.

Do bar societies solicit sales?

As bar societies are very strict with soliciting, it’s pretty common within the legal industry for lawyers to not associate any part of their practice with sales. However, almost every business in every industry deals with sales or has a sales process.

Does a firm have sales personnel?

While your firm doesn’t have sales personnel, it does have a sales process and should take it seriously. If your firm’s marketing partners and agencies are generating a significant number of new leads for you every month, then you may need to investigate why your firm isn’t turning more of those into clients.

The Rise of the Dynamic Law Firms

Many readers might be familiar with our annual Dynamic Law Firms Study. If you’re not, take a few minutes to look it over as it discusses what those firms that lead the market in terms of growth are doing from a strategic standpoint.

Download a copy of the Marketing Spend Infographic to share around your firm and build the case for what your marketing budget should look like

Now, this can be a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg question as to whether paring back marketing and business development spend among Static firms contributed to their lack of a competitive edge, or was it instead a symptom of a lack of growth in other areas that resulted in less money to spend on marketing. The true answer is probably a little of both.

Spending for Growth

Looking at the numbers for the end of 2018, Dynamic firms outspent their Static counterparts by about $2,300 per lawyer. In fact, Dynamic firms outspent even the average law firm in the market by almost $1,000.