Legal Leads: Buy Them or Earn Them
There are two ways to get new matters: buy leads from a service that may send the same person to other firms, or earn your own inquiries and keep them. Here is what each really costs, without the sales pitch in either direction.
Get My Free Game Plan →Bought, Or Earned: Not the Same Thing
If you’re reading this you’re probably weighing a legal lead service or a directory upgrade, or already paying for one and wondering whether it’s worth it. Fair question. We don’t sell leads. We build the marketing that generates them, so we have an obvious interest in what you conclude. Everything below is checkable, and we’ve tried to be straight about where buying leads works.
What a Shared Lead Actually Is
A shared lead is one person’s contact details passed to more than one firm. Whoever calls first often gets the conversation, and the person is comparing firms before you’ve said a word. Some lead services are exclusive, which helps, but you still don’t control where the inquiry came from or what it was promised.
The Real Cost Is Intake Time
Every inquiry takes intake time: a call, a conflict check, often a consultation. When the matter is outside your practice areas, in the wrong county or not a fit, that time is gone, and it doesn’t show up on the lead invoice. The honest comparison isn’t cost per lead. It’s what it costs to retain a client whose matter you wanted.
Fit Matters More Than Volume
Twenty calls about matters you don’t handle are worth less than five about the ones you do. A system built around your practice areas brings fewer wrong calls, not just more calls.
What Are Your Bought Leads Costing?
The starting figures are round placeholders to make the arithmetic easy to follow. They aren’t industry averages or our data. Replace all four with yours, then run it once for each practice area.
- Leads it takes to retain one client5.0
- Share of the fee spent on leads12%
When Buying Leads Is the Right Call
Sometimes it is, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. If the firm is new and has no reviews or content online yet, bought leads can keep the calendar moving while everything else is built. If you’ve added a practice area, they can test demand before you invest in it.
What they aren’t is a foundation. The firms that struggle are the ones that have depended on a lead service for years and would have nothing if it changed its prices or its terms.
What Earning Your Own Actually Takes
Honest version: longer than buying. A website that explains your practice areas clearly, a Google Business Profile that shows up in your county, answers to the questions people search, and advertising you control and can point at the matters you want.
In exchange, people contact your firm because of your firm. Past clients refer, content keeps working, and the system belongs to you.
Is Your County Still Open?
We work with one firm per practice area in each county, based on where your office is located, and still market you in the neighboring counties you serve. Some Maryland counties are already spoken for. Tell us where you’re based and we’ll tell you straight.
Get My Free Game Plan →Free, no obligation · No long-term contractsIncluded as Standard
- Visibility for the practice areas you want to grow
- Practice-area pages written for the people who need them
- Every inquiry tracked back to what produced it
- Advertising pointed at the matters you want
- Cost per retained client, by practice area
- Inquiries that come only to your firm, from a system you keep
Questions We Get
About This
How much do legal leads cost?
It varies widely by practice area, market and service. That’s why we’d rather compare cost per retained client, including intake and consultation time, than price per lead.
Are legal directories worth paying for?
A complete, accurate free listing on the major directories is worth having. Paid upgrades can be worth it in some practice areas; we’d judge them on the retained clients they produce, the same as everything else.
Do you sell leads?
No. We build marketing that produces inquiries for your firm only. Nothing we generate is shared with or sold to another firm.
How long before earned inquiries replace bought leads?
It depends on your market and practice areas. Advertising can produce inquiries soon after launch; search visibility usually takes months to build. Many firms run both for a while and shift the budget as the numbers come in.
Let’s Grow
Your Practice.
Tell us where you practice and the cases you want more of. We’ll review your market, your Google presence and your website, and show you where the opportunities are.
What happens next
Based in Towson. Serving law firms throughout Maryland and beyond.