Lead generation for law firms, and why we refuse it
We do not sell enquiries at any price. LASPO 2012 section 56 prohibits referral fees in prescribed legal business, personal injury included, and it binds the firm paying as much as the party paid. Of 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, 12 published a price.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
Why does the practice area decide whether a firm can buy this at all?
Because the restriction attaches to a category of legal work rather than to marketing in general, and most firms do more than one category of work.
The category name hides that. "Lead generation" describes a commercial promise and says nothing about which body of work the contacts concern; section 56 is indifferent to what a product is called and interested in what the work is.
The facts we hold name personal injury as inside prescribed legal business. Whether any other line a firm runs falls inside it is a question for the firm and its own advisers, and for a source that states the law rather than summarises it. We are not lawyers and nothing here is legal advice.
What follows commercially is awkward for the seller and easy to miss on the buying side. A firm doing conveyancing, family work and injury work has one marketing budget and three different questions to ask about the same contract. A single agreement covering "all practice areas" is a single answer to a question that has more than one, and it is the firm rather than the supplier that has to live with the mismatch.
The prohibition also reaches the party paying, not only the party paid, so the firm is treated as a participant in the arrangement rather than as its customer. Comfort expressed by a supplier is evidence about that supplier's own position and nothing else. Whether the firm is content is a judgement for the firm and its COLP, and no supplier — including this one — is in a position to make it for them.
What is not a referral-fee arrangement?
Anything where the amount owed does not move when more people get in touch.
Four ordinary purchases sit in that description: a website built to a fixed scope for a fixed price, a monthly fee for named work that is the same in a quiet month and a busy one, advertising bought inside the firm's own account, and an annual listing anybody can contact. Each buys an artefact or a period of somebody's time.
The distinction is arithmetical rather than editorial. If the invoice contains a multiplication whose second term is a count of people, that count is the product. If it does not, something else is. How any given agreement should be characterised remains a matter for the firm and its own advisers.
A damaging admission, and it costs us this page: we sell nothing into this category. There is no version of our service that produces an enquiry we can bill for, and the work we do sell produces nothing measurable in the first month. A reader who needs instructions this quarter should be running paid campaigns instead, and we do not manage ad spend either.
Which questions would you put to a supplier offering enquiries?
Five, and the first two are the ones that end most conversations.
- Which practice areas does this product cover, and will you scope it by practice area in the agreement? A supplier who has never been asked will say so in the pause.
- Is the fee the same in a month with two enquiries and a month with two hundred? If it is not, the count is the product, whatever the agreement calls it.
- Where do the contacts come from, and what were those people told about who would receive their details? That answer belongs on file, not in a meeting.
- Can we have the agreement in a form we can put in front of our own risk function? Anything arriving only as a portal terms page is a bad start.
- What does the firm own on the day it stops paying? Usually the matters already signed, and nothing that keeps working.
For scale on why question two is rarely answered plainly: 15 of the 62 questions buyers ask on these searches are price questions, the largest single group, and 12 of the 40 suppliers we read on 3 August 2026 published a price at all. A supplier who answers the fee-structure question in one sentence is already unusual in this market.
Why will we not sell enquiries at any price, and what do we charge instead?
Because the unit is the problem, not the amount. We charge for work, by scope and time.
| Product | 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 |
Take £700 off a build taken with six months of retainer. Nothing above moves with the number of people who get in touch, in any practice area, which is the whole reason the list is written this way.
That decision has a cost and it lands on the firm. If the work produces little, an outcome-priced supplier has been paid little and we have been paid in full — the honest reason the other model keeps being sold. We also decline the guarantee that 8 of the 40 suppliers we read claimed on 3 August 2026, because nobody controls a search ranking.
Where do the enquiries actually come from instead?
From searches the firm can be present for without buying anybody by the contact.
| City | Practice area | Searches/mo | Cost per click | One month bought outright |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | Immigration | 2,900 | £18.75 | £54,375.00 |
| Liverpool | Family and divorce | 1,200 | £38.60 | £46,320.00 |
| Nottingham | Residential conveyancing | 960 | £16.54 | £15,878.40 |
| Leicester | Family and divorce | 760 | £19.17 | £14,569.20 |
Measured 3 August 2026 across 20 UK cities. The right-hand column is arithmetic — searches multiplied by cost per click — and is what a month of that traffic would cost to buy at Google's own prices. It is not revenue and not a forecast.
Those numbers are why enquiry products are easy to sell: a supplier offering contacts is offering to take a large, visible, per-click cost off the table. The alternative is slower. Pages that answer the questions asked before instruction appear above the bidders without paying by the click, and keep doing it after the invoices stop. That is what the fixed prices above buy, and it is all they buy.
What this is worth where you are
In London, 2,900 people a month search for immigration, and Google charges around £18.75 for one of those clicks. 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?
If the conclusion is to build rather than to buy contacts: solicitor website design covers the pages, and SEO for law firm websites the machinery underneath them.
On who does the search work: law firm SEO experts and law firm SEO consultant. For the whole supplier picture rather than this one category: law firm marketing company.
Frequently asked questions
Can a law firm buy legal enquiries at a price each?
Not in prescribed legal business, which includes personal injury, where LASPO 2012 section 56 prohibits referral fees. Whether any other work a firm does falls inside that category is a question for the firm and its own advisers rather than for a marketing supplier.
Does the restriction apply to the firm paying, or only to the party being paid?
Both. The firm is treated as a participant in the arrangement rather than as its customer, which is why a supplier's assurance about its own position is not something the firm can rely on.
What is not a referral-fee arrangement?
Anything where the amount owed does not move when more people get in touch: a fixed-scope website, a monthly fee for named work, advertising bought in the firm's own account, or an annual listing. The test is whether the invoice multiplies by a count of people.
Can one enquiry contract cover every practice area a firm runs?
It can be written that way, and that is the difficulty. The restriction attaches to a category of legal work, so a firm running several categories has several questions to ask about the same agreement and should ask a supplier to scope it by practice area in writing.
What should we ask a supplier offering to generate enquiries?
Whether the product is scoped by practice area, whether the fee is the same in a quiet month and a busy one, where the contacts come from and what those people were told, whether the agreement can go to the firm's own risk function, and what the firm owns when it stops paying.
Do you sell leads or enquiries?
No, at any price. We charge for work by scope and time: the Price Transparency Pack is £890 over ten working days, the Firm Site £2,400, Firm Site+ £4,200 and Authority Build £6,900, with retainers at £600, £1,200 or £2,400 a month and no minimum term.