What is the ROI for law firm marketing?

We cannot tell you, and nor can anyone quoting a figure without seeing your books. A return needs 3 inputs: what the work cost, how many enquiries became matters, and what a matter is worth. We publish the first at A$1,900. The other two exist only inside your firm.

Last updated: 5 August 2026

What are the inputs, and who holds each one?

Three go into the calculation, two more decide whether it means anything, and we hold only the cost side.

We hold no conversion data, no matter values and no return figures for any market, including for our own work. That is the damaging admission this page is built on, and it is why the page has no number in its headline. A supplier who has that data holds it because clients gave it to them under contract, in which case they cannot publish it, or because they estimated it, in which case it is not data.

What can actually be measured from outside a firm?

The cost side, precisely, and nothing on the return side.

What a firm's own market costs to buy is measurable, because Google publishes the price. Four Australian examples, all measured 3 August 2026.

The right-hand column is multiplication on the two columns beside it. It is what buying that entire month of searching would cost at Google's own prices, rounded to the nearest dollar — not revenue, not profit, not matters won, and not a budget any firm should adopt.

That number is useful and it is not a return. It sets a ceiling on what the same visibility is worth buying, and it is the last objective figure available before a firm opens its own books.

How do you work it out with your own numbers?

Four figures, three of which are already in the practice management system.

1. Cost. What was spent on the work over the period, including staff time spent feeding it.
2. Enquiries attributed to it. Not all enquiries — the ones whose first contact came through the channel being measured.
3. The share of those that became matters. Count them, do not estimate them.
4. Average fees billed and collected on those matters. Collected, not billed.

Return is what step four multiplied by steps two and three produced, less step one, over step one. The arithmetic is trivial. The reason almost nobody does it is step two, and step two has a specific failure: a person who read three pages in March, rang in July after a friend mentioned the firm, and is recorded as a referral. That attribution is correct and the pages get no credit. The only instrument that catches it is asking every new client where they first came across the firm and writing the answer down.

Give it four quarters. A single quarter in a practice where one matter can be worth many times the median tells you about that matter, not the channel.

Why does anyone quoting a return figure have to have invented it?

Because two of the three inputs are inside your firm and they were not looking.

A supplier telling a Canberra family practice to expect a particular multiple has assumed a conversion rate they have not seen, a matter value they have not seen, and a share of work that would have arrived regardless. Change any one of the three by a modest amount and the answer moves by more than the figure they quoted. It is not the arithmetic that is wrong; it has no inputs.

The pattern is visible in what the market publishes. Of 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, twelve published a price at all, five of those showed only a range, eight claimed a guarantee of some kind, and one offered work with no minimum term. Firms selling on a promised return are common; firms publishing what they charge are not. We do not promise a ranking, a number of enquiries or a return, and we never charge per enquiry or per matter.

What is the honest expectation, then?

Cost you can know in advance, timing you can plan around, and a return you calculate yourself afterwards.

Our own prices are A$1,900 for the sprint and A$4,200 for the build, fixed, published, no minimum term. Movement in the numbers takes three to four months, and a fair judgement takes six to nine. Nothing in that is a return figure, and a firm that wants one before committing should either buy clicks — where the cost per click is known on day one — or run the calculation above on whatever it did last year before buying anything new.

The short answer is above. If you want the cost side filled in with your own city and practice areas, plus what your site is missing and what 40 suppliers charge, the report is free and takes about two minutes: /legal/au/

Where should I read next?

On whether the slow channel is worth it here at all: does SEO work for law firms? and law firm marketing seo

On what the work involves before there is anything to calculate: content marketing law firm and lawyer content marketing

On buying it, and on the one practice area with advertising restrictions: law firm seo agency and personal injury law firm seo

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