Lawyer marketing plan for one fee earner, in hours
One fee earner's marketing plan is 2 hours a week, taken out of a named part of the week rather than found in it. That is roughly 92 hours a year. It carries no budget line, so every item is either something you can start on Monday or something the firm's plan has to buy.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
Is this your plan or the firm's?
Yours, and the two documents are not versions of each other.
The firm's plan owns the website, the published price and service information, the spend and the measurement, and it is written by people who can authorise a purchase. It is set out as the firm's marketing plan, section by section. Handing that document to a fee earner produces nothing, because every row in it needs a signature.
This one is denominated in hours. It assumes no budget, no purchase order and no supplier, and it assumes you cannot commit anybody else's time except by asking politely for half an hour.
A damaging admission first: there is nothing here for us to sell you. The smallest thing we sell is £890 and a firm buys it. The plan below runs without a supplier, which is why it is written out rather than gestured at.
Where do the two hours actually come from?
Out of one of five places, and the plan is worth nothing until you have named which.
| Source of the hours | What it costs you | Whether it survives a year |
|---|---|---|
| Time already lost to email first thing | Nothing billable | Usually, because nobody notices |
| An evening a week | Your own time | About two months |
| A blocked slot in the diary, visible to others | Whatever would have filled it | Best odds, because a booked slot gets defended |
| Gaps between matters, when time appears | Nothing, in theory | No. Unbooked time is claimed by the caseload |
| Chargeable time, written off | The write-off | Only where a partner agreed to it in advance |
Two hours a week across about 46 working weeks is roughly 92 hours a year — arithmetic, not a benchmark, and worth doing once because it turns a vague intention into a quantity somebody could object to.
The fourth row is where most of these plans die. Time that is not booked is not free; it is time the caseload has not yet reached. A plan that relies on it has no hours in it at all.
The third row works for an unglamorous reason: a slot other people can see is a slot other people stop booking over.
What fits into a single quarter?
Three outcomes, each with a date and each with its dependency written down.
| Outcome | By | What it needs from somebody else |
|---|---|---|
| The questions you were actually asked this year, written down in one list | Week 2 | Nothing |
| One page you already have, corrected and given a date | Week 6 | Whoever can publish to the site |
| Two of those questions answered, checked and live | Week 12 | Thirty minutes of a supervising solicitor, twice |
That is the whole quarter. It looks small next to any published marketing plan and it is roughly 24 of the 92 hours, which is the honest size of what two hours a week produces once checking and publishing are included.
The third column is the part that gets left out and then stops everything. An answered question that nobody will check does not publish. Ask for the two half hours at the start of the quarter, in writing, rather than presenting a finished draft in week eleven to somebody who did not know it was coming.
How do you measure it with no access to the analytics?
Ask for read access first, and count three things by hand if the answer is no.
Search Console access is free, takes two minutes to grant, and is usually refused only because nobody was asked. It gives impressions and clicks by query, which is the only early evidence that exists.
Without it, three counts you can keep yourself on a single sheet:
- Enquiries that arrived naming you rather than the firm, month by month.
- People who mention having read something before the first appointment.
- Questions you are asked that one of your pages already answers. When this number rises, the page is being found by people who then ring anyway, which is the outcome you wanted.
None of the three is attribution and no tool recovers what they miss. Somebody who read a page in March, said nothing, and instructed in June is invisible to every method including the paid ones. We do not sell anything that claims otherwise.
What happens in the month you do not follow it?
Nothing, provided the restart date was written down before the month happened.
Every plan of this kind is abandoned in the month a trial lands. The difference between paused and abandoned is not willpower, it is whether a date exists. Write one at the start of each quarter: the date you next open this, whatever has happened in between.
Two rules make the restart survivable. First, never restart by rereading everything — open the list of questions and take the next one. Second, the pages already published keep being found in a month where you do nothing at all, which is why the writing is the item that goes first and the rest can lapse without loss.
What must the firm buy before your hours are worth anything?
Two things you cannot do alone, and they have published prices.
| What | Price |
|---|---|
| Price Transparency Pack | £890, ten working days |
| Firm Site | £2,400 |
| Firm Site+ | £4,200 |
| Authority Build | £6,900 |
| Retainer, monthly | £600 · £1,200 · £2,400, no minimum term |
£700 comes off a build taken with six months of retainer. Of 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, twelve published a price at all, five showed only a range, eight claimed a guarantee of some kind, and one offered work with no minimum term.
The first thing an individual cannot fix is a site that renders badly on a telephone; good writing on a slow site is read by very few people. The second is the firm's published price and service information. The SRA Transparency Rules came into force on 6 December 2018 and expect it for specified work types, checked 3 August 2026, and which of the firm's services fall within scope is a matter for the firm and its own advisers, never for a single fee earner and never for a marketing supplier.
We never charge per enquiry, per lead or per matter. LASPO 2012 section 56 prohibits referral fees in prescribed legal business including personal injury, and it binds the firm paying as well as the party being paid.
What this is worth where you are
In Newcastle, 460 people a month search for a family solicitor, and Google charges around £26.10 for one of those clicks, measured 3 August 2026. We hold the same figures for 52 cities.
The free report gives you yours, plus which of the pages the rules ask for are missing from your site, and what 40 suppliers charge.
Where should I read next?
The institutional counterpart to this page: marketing plan for a law firm, which is the same job with a budget, named owners and a completion test per section.
On the writing itself, and who signs it off: content marketing for law firm.
Shorter items you can finish in an afternoon: lawyer marketing tips.
Wider, if the firm is choosing channels rather than hours: lawyer internet marketing and digital marketing lawyer.
If the question turns out to be identity rather than hours: branding a law firm.
Frequently asked questions
How many hours a week is a realistic lawyer marketing plan?
Two, which is roughly 92 hours a year across about 46 working weeks. The number matters less than naming which part of the week they come out of, because hours that are merely intended are hours the caseload takes.
Where should the hours come from?
A blocked slot in the diary that other people can see, which is the only source that survives a year. Time between matters is the worst source, because unbooked time is time the caseload has not yet reached.
What can one fee earner finish in a quarter?
Three things: a written list of the questions clients actually asked, one existing page corrected and dated, and two of those questions answered and published. That is about 24 hours once checking and publishing are counted.
How do you measure this without the firm's analytics?
Ask for read access to Search Console, which is free and takes two minutes to grant. If refused, count enquiries that named you, people who mention having read something, and questions you are asked that a page already answers.
Is any of that actually attribution?
No. Somebody who read a page in March, mentioned nothing, and instructed in June is invisible to every method including the paid ones, and no supplier report can honestly close that gap.
What happens when a busy month wipes out the plan?
Nothing, provided a restart date was written down in advance. Restart by taking the next question off the list rather than rereading everything, and note that pages already published keep being found in a month when you do nothing.
How is this different from the firm's marketing plan?
This one is denominated in hours and assumes no budget, no purchase order and no supplier. The firm's plan owns the site, the published price information, the spend and the measurement, and every row in it needs a signature.
What can a fee earner not fix alone?
Two things: a site that renders badly on a telephone, and the firm's published price and service information. Both are firm decisions, and which services fall within the transparency rules is for the firm and its own advisers.