Demand generation vs. lead purchasing for law firms

If you’re a law firm, you likely get a LOT of spam or nefarious calls about “30 leads in 30 days” or “qualified leads, straight to your firm!”

No doubt, as a firm operator, the offers for “qualified leads” sound enticing. Also, who wants to mess with marketing when you are trying to grow your practice?

Here’s the big problem with that. You’re handing the keys to future growth to someone else without even knowing it!

Example: in the world where you pay for leads “straight to your firm,” it still goes like this. A prospective client sees an ad or a listing from the lead gen company, they fill out a form or call, and the lead gen company sends you the client through a direct call connection or a lead in your inbox. Your intake team still has to qualify them, right? Meaning, you ask questions to determine whether the lead is truly qualified, a process that, you’d agree, should have been handled by the lead gen firm, correct?

If you indeed sign this person, you’d add a case to the pipeline. If they don’t, you request a credit or absorb the expense.

To a marketing person, this is a big red flag. Even if you sign 90% of the cases received by a lead gen company (no one is signing 90% of the cases received by a lead gen company, by the way), you are missing a critical swath of information crucial to the long-term health of your firm. All the information that led people to you, like:

What did the person see? What caught their attention? Did they recognize your firm’s name? What did they have to do to get someone on the phone?

Those details matter. They help you understand how to attract the next client.

How lead generation companies get your leads

Lead purchasing covers several different services: shared inquiries, exclusive leads, live transfers, subscription matching, and signed-retainer programs. Comparing their prices without comparing what they deliver tells you very little.

Start with the vendor’s definition of qualified. Does it match your firm’s case criteria? What does the vendor verify, and what does the prospective client simply report?

An exclusive lead also needs a definition. A vendor might promise to send the inquiry only to your firm. That does not establish whether the person has contacted other attorneys.

Your team still needs to assess the case and decide whether to accept it. But if you pay for screening, you should know what due diligence happens before your team takes over.

For example, 4LegalLeads describes screening auto accident inquiries for injury, fault, timing, and existing representation. A firm can compare those stated criteria with results and attributable data systems.

The case matters. So does knowing why someone called.

Suppose a message about your firm catches someone’s attention because it addresses something they worry about after an accident. They visit your website and call.

You would want to know that the message worked. You could use it again, test it with another audience, and see whether it consistently attracts cases your firm wants.

Or suppose you make your firm more visible through advertising, useful content, and local partnerships. Someone discovers you, remembers your name, and calls months later.

If that work brings new clients into the firm, you should know enough about it to decide whether to continue.

A lead report that gives you a name, a number, and a price cannot answer those questions. When the vendor controls the campaign and keeps the underlying information, your firm has limited access to what happened before intake.

You paid for the inquiry. You should understand how much of that information comes with it.

Hire someone to run your marketing under your name

Law firms hire lead vendors because they need help finding clients. They can also hire a marketer to do that work directly for the firm.

The difference depends on how you structure the relationship.

Run the campaigns through accounts your firm controls. Advertise your firm’s name. Keep access to the creative, campaign history, website analytics, and call data. Connect inquiries to qualification and signed-case outcomes.

Then you can examine which messages attract suitable prospects, which placements contribute, and where people struggle to reach you.

You will still pay for expertise and execution. You will also have information you can use next month, next year, or with a different agency.

Advertising can produce effects beyond an immediate inquiry. Broader research, including Thinkbox’s Profit Ability 2 study of large UK advertisers, supports measuring sustained effects. It does not establish that a local law firm’s acquisition costs will automatically fall as its brand becomes better known.

Building recognition takes work. Keeping your accounts and data lets you examine whether that work produces results.

Your peers’ purchases are not your marketing plan

The same scrutiny applies to directories and paid visibility packages.

Do you think Super Lawyers is building your brand? Or did you see your peers buy advertising there and think, “That seems like a good idea. Let me do it too”?

Separate the recognition from the advertising purchase. Decide what you expect the paid placement to accomplish, then ask for evidence of that outcome.

Perhaps you want relevant website visitors. Perhaps you want inquiries. Perhaps you expect the placement to help someone who already knows your firm choose you.

Whatever the purpose, write it down before you buy. Another attorney’s participation tells you nothing about whether the expense makes sense for your firm.

When purchased leads make sense

A firm may use purchased leads to test a market, fill available capacity, or support a time-sensitive acquisition effort. We would evaluate each against the same requirements: acceptable cases, manageable intake demands, clear sourcing, and an acquisition cost the firm can support.

Track rejected inquiries as carefully as signed cases. A person who never answers, a case outside your geography, and someone who already has an attorney represent different problems. Record the reason so you can address it with the vendor.

Review the consumer experience, too. Ask to see the ads, landing pages, and disclosures that generated the inquiry. Your team needs to know what the person expects when it calls.

The ABA’s commentary on Model Rule 7.2 permits paying for lead generation under specified conditions concerning recommendations, communications, and fee sharing. Firms must assess the arrangement under their governing state rules.

What we want firms to do differently

Before renewing a lead agreement, ask the vendor to show you how it generated the inquiries and what it verified. Compare the resulting signed cases with your total acquisition expense.

Then ask the same questions of the people running your own marketing. They should explain what attracted clients, what they learned, and what they plan to change.

Our preference is to invest in marketing under the firm’s name, with the firm controlling its accounts and retaining access to its data. Purchased leads can supplement that work when the results justify the expense.

We want firms to stop accepting “we sent you leads” as a complete explanation of where their money went.