Choosing the Right Law Firm Marketing Vendor for Your Law Firm

Avoiding Mistakes Other Law Firms Have Made

I have been consulting with law firms on matters of  digital marketing since 2002, either as consultant for large service providers, as a freelancer, as CLE instructor or as a third party consultant.

Over the last twelve years I have worked for or competed against the vendors mentioned below.

The comments below are based on some of the bad ideas I have seen offered by them to law firms across the country.

It still amazes me that law firms sign on for some of these bad ideas and get locked in to things like long-term contracts, websites they pay for and don’t own, and hiring vendors who work for their competition.

Visit our Vendor Analysis Consulting page for more information on hiring Dan to help you choose the right vendor and strategy for your law firm.

I invite anyone from any of the vendors below to dispute the information provided.

iLawyerMarketing.com

$17,000-$25,000 for an iLawyermarketing.com (WordPress) website? Wow. These guys must have some kind of powerful “pitch hypnosis” technique to reel in attorneys and their money.
I like their designs. Their websites look great. However, they do not look 2-3 times better than websites that can be built for under $8,000 and are on the same Wordpress platform.

Scorpion

Scorpion claims to have a very high retention rate, but over the years they have had a policy that I would never recommend an attorney sign off on. If you are unhappy with their services, in order to get your website from them and take it elsewhere they will charge you thousands of dollars. I have heard in many cases if the attorney pushes back they will remove that part of their agreement. If you choose to work with them or an website designer and developer I suggest you do the same.

Findlaw

3 year contract for legal marketing services? You gotta be kidding me. On top of that, they will optimize as many lawyers who are willing to pay them to do so. They often have 10+ personal injury lawyers in each of their markets for whom they are supposedly optimizing websites. They can’t get everyone on the first page of Google, but they somehow still get attorneys to sign up.

One of the things they talk about is going after “long-tail” search phrases. This can be a good part of an overall SEO strategy, but if it is the only part of your strategy you may not be getting the results you want for your firm. The bottom line is that whatever strategy you choose you don’t want your SEO company working for your competitors.

Lawfather

Besides the cheesy name, these guys are just a smaller version of Findlaw, with no exclusivity or loyalty to their customers.

If you are a lawyer, please call me before you make any of the mistakes mentioned above.

-Dan Stratford 720-985-7945