Marketing for a lawyer: what search adds to referrals
Referrals and search answer different questions. A referral gives someone a name; search reaches the person who has no name to be given, and decides what the referred client finds when they look you up. In Leicester, 960 people a month search for a conveyancing solicitor, measured 3 August 2026.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
Where do instructions actually come from?
From people, mostly, through a small number of routes a firm already has rather than has to build.
A damaging admission before any of this is argued: we hold no figure for what share of UK instructions arrive by recommendation. The only firms who know are the ones that ask at intake and record the answer, and that data is not published. Any supplier quoting you a split has invented it, so this page compares what each route does rather than how much each produces.
The routes, and who maintains each:
| Route | Who maintains it | What marketing does for it | What it cannot do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Former clients | The fee earner who did the work | Very little directly | It cannot make the work have gone well |
| Other professionals — agents, accountants, brokers, advisers | A partner, over years | Gives them something to send | It cannot manufacture the relationship |
| Other solicitors and counsel | Reputation in the practice area | Supports it with published writing | It cannot substitute for competence |
| Panels, networks and schemes | The firm, by application | Nothing | The route is fixed by the scheme |
| Search | Nobody, unless somebody is paid to | This is the whole of it | It cannot reach institutional referrers |
| Repeat commercial clients | The relationship partner | Almost nothing | It cannot renew a lost relationship |
Read down the fourth column. Marketing does not create rows one, two, three or six. It does one thing for them, which is the next section, and it does the whole of row five.
Do law firms need a marketing team to keep referrals coming?
No, and a firm hiring one for that will be disappointed within a year.
Referral relationships are maintained by the people who hold them, which in a UK firm means partners and senior fee earners. That work is returned telephone calls, a good job on the last matter, and being easy to deal with. It is not a marketing function, and no supplier and no marketing hire performs it.
What a marketing function does for the network is narrower and genuinely useful: it gives the referrer something to send. An accountant asked who do I use for probate would rather send a page explaining what probate costs and how long it takes than say a name and hope. The page does not create the relationship. It makes the relationship easier to act on.
That is the entire honest claim. A firm being told a marketing hire will grow its referral network is being sold something the role does not contain.
What does search add that a referral does not?
Two things, and most firms miss the second.
It reaches the person with nobody to ask. Somebody buying a first home, applying for a visa or dealing with a sudden bereavement often has no professional to ask and no friend who has been through it recently. In Leicester, 960 people a month search for a conveyancing solicitor and 720 for an immigration solicitor. They are not choosing between your firm and a competitor. They are choosing between whoever answers the question and nobody.
It decides what the referred client finds when they check. Somebody given your name looks it up before ringing, and what they find is the site, the profile page, the fee information and how fast it loads on a telephone. The website is not a separate channel competing with the referral. It is the last gate the referral passes through, and the only part of that route a firm can improve deliberately.
A firm that dismisses search because all our work comes from recommendation has usually missed the second point. The referral still lands on the website, just without anybody having decided what it says.
What does search not add?
Three situations where the answer is nothing, all commoner than the market admits.
A firm at capacity. Better visibility produces declined instructions and a longer waiting list, plus a set of people who now associate the firm with being turned away. Fix capacity first.
A firm whose work is three commercial clients. Where the whole book sits with a handful of relationships, the risk is relationship risk and no amount of search work touches it. The correct spend is on the relationships, and we will say so rather than take the instruction.
Work whose route is fixed. Panel and scheme work is allocated rather than chosen, so the client never picks. Adding pages does not open a route somebody else assigns.
A fourth is timing rather than a category: if the firm needs matters this quarter, nothing organic arrives in time. That is paid search, and we do not manage ad spend.
How would a firm tell which channel produced a matter?
By asking at first contact and writing the answer down.
One question at intake — how did you come to us — recorded in a field rather than in somebody's memory, produces within six months the only attribution data a firm of this size will ever have. It costs nothing and settles arguments that otherwise run for years.
We do not fix intake and we do not supply the system that records it. It sits inside the firm, and a supplier claiming to solve it is describing software. It belongs in the conversation before the invoice, because without it neither of us can tell whether the work was worth buying.
What does it cost to buy the searches instead?
Published as figures, and worth comparing against what the traffic costs at Google's own prices.
| 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 |
£700 comes off the build when it is taken with six months of retainer.
| City | Practice area | Searches/mo | Cost per click | 100 clicks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leicester | Residential conveyancing | 960 | £15.26 | £1,526 |
| Newcastle | Residential conveyancing | 780 | £14.81 | £1,481 |
Measured 3 August 2026; the last column is arithmetic on the click price rather than a forecast. The comparison is useful as a ceiling: if an annual fee exceeds what buying the whole search outright would cost, ask what the difference buys.
Of 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, twelve published a price at all, five showed only a range, and one offered work with no minimum term. In a jurisdiction where firms are expected to publish price information for specified areas of work under the SRA Transparency Rules, in force since 6 December 2018, most of the suppliers selling to them will not publish their own.
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. It is worth knowing that rule exists before a supplier offers you an arrangement priced that way.
What this is worth where you are
In Leicester, 960 people a month search for a conveyancing solicitor, and Google charges around £15.26 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 you have decided search is worth doing and are choosing a supplier: law firm seo companies and law firm seo specialist.
For the working methods rather than the decision: law firm marketing techniques.
By practice area, where the payment rules bite hardest: personal injury law firm marketing.
If the referral network is the priority and you want to meet the people in it: law firm marketing summit.
Frequently asked questions
Do referrals or search produce more instructions?
We do not know and neither does anyone quoting you a percentage. Only firms that ask at intake and record the answer hold that data, and it is not published. Any supplier giving you a split for the UK has invented it.
Do law firms need a marketing team to keep referrals coming?
No. Referral relationships are held by partners and senior fee earners and maintained by doing good work and being easy to deal with. A marketing function gives a referrer something to send, which is useful and much narrower than growing the network.
What does search do that a referral cannot?
It reaches the person with nobody to ask, and it decides what a referred client finds when they check before ringing. The second matters even to a firm that never wants a stranger's instruction, because the referral still lands on the website.
When is search not worth doing?
When the firm is at capacity, when the book sits with three commercial relationships, and when the work arrives through panels or schemes that allocate rather than let a client choose. In the first case better visibility produces declined instructions and a longer waiting list.
How can a firm tell where its work comes from?
By asking one question at first contact — how did you come to us — and recording the answer in a field rather than in somebody's memory. Six months of that is the only attribution data a firm of this size will ever have.
Can a supplier be paid per enquiry?
No. 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. Our prices are fixed and set by scope rather than by outcome.