Fractional CMO · Law Firms
Your firm has been successful for fifteen, twenty years without spending a dollar on marketing. Referrals built it. The problem is the quiet one you've already noticed: referrals feel less reliable than they used to, a competitor is suddenly everywhere online, and "we should probably figure this out" has been on the partner meeting agenda three times without a decision. That's exactly the firm I work with.
01The situation
Most legal marketing consultants write for firms already spending five figures a month. I want to talk to the firm that has never spent a dime.
Because here's what I know about you from seventeen years in this space: you're not a marketing skeptic, you're a waste skeptic. You've heard the stories, the colleague who lit fifty thousand dollars on fire with an agency, the vendor who promised page one and delivered a binder of jargon. You will not be that partner. So the safe move has been no move.
The trouble is that "no move" now has a cost. Search authority compounds. The firms investing today will be dramatically harder to catch in eighteen months. You don't need to outspend anyone. You need a plan, a sequence, and someone who has done this from your side of the table.
02Experience
Before I advised law firms, I ran marketing inside them, as an in-house head of marketing. I've defended a marketing budget to skeptical partners. I've watched vendors present vanity metrics to a conference room of attorneys who bill more per hour than the report was worth. I've built intake processes and watched good leads die from slow follow-up.
That in-house experience is the difference between a marketing consultant for law firms and someone who has actually carried the responsibility. When I tell you a vendor proposal is padded, it's because I've seen a hundred of them. When I tell you your intake process will leak cases before your website ever ranks, it's because I've fixed that exact leak from the inside.
Seventeen years total: agency-side, in-house at law firms, teaching digital marketing at USF, and hosting The Search Bar podcast on legal marketing growth.
03The work
We start with a ninety-day Marketing Sprint: weekly working sessions, and at the end your firm owns a complete marketing plan. Not a proposal for more services. A finished deliverable:
A marketing strategy matched to your practice areas, your market, and the cases you actually want more of.
A budget and sequencing roadmap. What to invest, in what order, and what to refuse to pay for.
A vendor plan. Whether you need an agency, a freelancer, an internal hire, or none of the above, and how to evaluate whoever you choose so you're never dependent on their word.
An intake readiness assessment. Because in law, the first firm to respond usually signs the case, and no amount of marketing spend fixes a slow callback.
Everything is yours whether or not we ever work together again. If we never speak after day ninety, you still have the roadmap. Firms that want me in their corner while they execute continue with ongoing advisory or the fractional CMO seat. That's a choice, never an obligation.
04The investment
The full sprint is fifteen thousand dollars over three months. Here's what that number sits next to:
One bad associate hire costs your firm six figures once you count salary, ramp, and the cases they didn't sign. One wasted agency quarter at a typical legal marketing retainer runs fifteen to thirty thousand dollars, with nothing to show but a traffic report. One contested case in most practice areas is worth ten to twenty thousand dollars in fees, and the plan we build is designed to produce those repeatedly.
The sprint is the contained, defined-scope version of a decision your firm has been circling for years. It has a start, an end, a deliverable, and a number. You can present it at a partner meeting in one sentence.
05Results
Trevor Colvin, P.A., family law.
A practice with no cost-effective way to generate retainers. Within six months: five new retainers per month, at fifty dollars and ninety-three cents per potential client, with relevant search traffic up sixty percent.
Della Costa & Neville, personal injury.
Ninety-one percent more cases signed, average case value up one hundred sixty-two percent, search traffic up three hundred twenty-five percent.
Mike G Law, criminal defense.
Fifteen new retainers per month, search traffic up ninety-five percent, and an entirely new Spanish-speaking client segment opened.
One thirty-minute call, no pitch and no prep. Tell me about your firm, your practice areas, and what "growth" means to your partners. I'll tell you honestly whether the sprint fits, what it would focus on for your firm specifically, and what you'd walk away owning. If you're the person who was asked to find someone: this page is the summary. Fifteen thousand dollars, three months, a complete marketing plan the firm owns, led by an advisor who has run marketing inside law firms. The call below is the next step, and it's thirty minutes.