Online marketing for a lawyer with one day a week
One day a week is about 30 hours a month, or 300 six-minute units. Spend the first month on 4 pages and nothing else. After that, 2 hours a week holds it. Below is the allocation, block by block, and the two activities worth stopping.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
What does one day a week actually buy?
Four finished pages in the first month, then one page a fortnight. That is the honest ceiling.
The arithmetic is worth writing down. A working day is about seven hours; four of them a month is roughly thirty hours; thirty hours is 300 six-minute units. That is the same unit the day is already measured in, which makes the trade explicit rather than vague.
A damaging admission before the plan: one day a week does not out-publish a firm on a retainer, and it is not meant to. A firm paying £1,200 a month has somebody on this every week without interruption. What one day a week covers is a narrow practice area in one town, which is usually all a sole practitioner can service anyway.
The day also gets interrupted. A completion moves, a hearing overruns, and the marketing day becomes a fee-earning day. The plan below is written so an interrupted month loses one page rather than the sequence.
Where should the first 30 hours go?
Into four pages and the technical minimum, in that order.
| Block | Hours | What gets made |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | List the questions clients actually asked you in the last year. Choose four. |
| 2 | 8 | Write the first two answers as full pages, in your own words |
| 3 | 8 | Write the other two |
| 4 | 4 | Publish them properly: titles, internal links, a contact route that works on a mobile |
| 5 | 4 | Fix the name, address, opening hours and categories on every listing you have |
| 6 | 3 | Rewrite your own profile page: what you do, your qualifications and experience, what happens at a first appointment |
| Total | 30 | Four pages, a corrected set of listings, one rewritten profile |
Block 1 is the one people skip and the one that decides everything after it. The questions you have already answered aloud are the questions being typed into Google, and you hold that list in memory of the last twelve months. An agency can only guess at it from a keyword tool.
Blocks 2 and 3 allow four hours a page. That is deliberately not a fast pace, because a page written in forty minutes reads like it, and this one is being read by people who cross-examine for a living.
Block 5 is clerical and it is the only item on the list that can be finished in an afternoon and stay finished.
What is the best way to advertise a law firm?
For a sole practitioner with no budget, publishing the answers rather than buying attention. For a firm that needs matters this quarter, paid search.
Which of the two is right depends entirely on the time horizon.
Paid search buys the top of the page today. In Cardiff, 890 people a month search for a family solicitor and Google charges around £17.21 for one of those clicks, measured 3 August 2026. A hundred of those clicks is roughly £1,721. That is arithmetic on a measured click price, not a forecast, and how many enquiries it produces depends on the page it lands on.
We do not manage ad spend, so saying this sends the work elsewhere. It is still the right answer on that horizon.
Publishing costs time instead of money and does not stop when the card does. The four pages from the first month are still being found in year three. That is the whole case for a sole practitioner doing this personally, and it is a poor case for anybody who needs work in March.
Never pay for enquiries by the each. 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. A supplier proposing that arrangement to a sole practitioner is proposing an exposure the sole practitioner carries alone.
What does the weekly rhythm look like after month one?
Two hours a week, split in half, indefinitely.
| Cadence | Hours | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | 1 | Write. One page a fortnight, in two sittings |
| Weekly | 0.5 | Answer anything that arrived, properly, the same week |
| Monthly | 1 | Look at what was found and what was not, and pick the next four questions |
| Quarterly | 2 | Reread the oldest pages and correct anything that has changed |
That is roughly eight hours a month against thirty in month one, which is the point: the expensive month is the first one. Treated as a permanent one-day-a-week commitment, this stops by March. Treated as one heavy month and then two hours a week, it survives a year.
The quarterly block matters more here than in most fields. Fees and procedures change, and a page giving last year's position is worse than no page: a reader who finds one stale sentence discounts every other sentence on the site.
What should a sole practitioner stop doing?
Two things, both of which feel productive and produce nothing at this scale.
Stop posting to social accounts nobody follows. The hour it takes is the hour that would have finished a page. Social rewards an audience that already exists and punishes the building of one. If there is an audience, keep it; if there is not, spend the hour elsewhere.
Stop rebuilding the website. A redesign consumes a quarter of the available time and changes nothing about whether the four questions are answered. If the site loads on a phone and the contact route works, it is good enough to publish on.
When is paying for it cheaper than doing it?
When the thirty hours are worth more to you than £890.
| Route | What it costs | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | 30 hours in month one, then about 8 a month | Your day, four times |
| Price Transparency Pack | £890 | Ten working days, mostly ours |
| Firm Site | £2,400 | A build, not a month of your time |
Firm Site+ is £4,200 and the Authority Build £6,900. Retainers are £600, £1,200 or £2,400 a month with no minimum term, and £700 comes off a build taken with six months of retainer.
We do not publish an assumed charge-out rate for you, because we do not have one and a number invented on your behalf is how this comparison usually gets rigged. You know what your hour is worth. Multiply it by thirty and compare it with £890.
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.
What will this not do?
Three things, said now rather than in month four.
- Nothing measurable happens in month one. The pages are being written and nothing has been indexed. Positions move in months three and four; clicks follow in months six to nine.
- It does not create capacity. A sole practitioner already turning work away gains a waiting list from this and nothing more useful.
- It does not answer the telephone. What happens after an enquiry arrives is the part that decides whether any of the thirty hours was worth spending, and it sits with you.
What this is worth where you are
In Cardiff, 890 people a month search for a family solicitor, and Google charges around £17.21 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 constraint is enquiries rather than time: lead generation for law firm covers what that phrase should and should not mean in this jurisdiction.
If you would rather buy the work than do it: law firm marketing company and law firm seo consultant.
By practice area: personal injury lawyer marketing covers the one where the fee model is restricted rather than merely unwise.
If you sell to firms rather than to the public: marketing to solicitors.
Frequently asked questions
How many hours a month is one day a week?
About thirty, which is 300 six-minute units. That arithmetic is worth doing once, because it turns a vague commitment into the same unit the working day is already measured in and makes the trade explicit.
What should the first thirty hours produce?
Four pages answering questions clients actually asked, a corrected set of listings, and a rewritten profile page. Three hours choosing the questions, sixteen writing, four publishing properly, four on listings and three on the profile.
What is the best way to advertise a law firm?
For a sole practitioner with no budget, publishing the answers. For a firm needing matters this quarter, paid search, at around £17.21 a click for Cardiff family work. We do not manage ad spend and it is still the right answer on that horizon.
What should I stop doing?
Posting to social accounts with no audience, and rebuilding the website. Both feel productive and neither answers a client's question. If the site loads on a phone and the contact route works, it is good enough to publish on.
Is it cheaper to pay someone?
That depends on what your hour is worth, which only you know. The Price Transparency Pack is £890 over ten working days against roughly thirty hours of your own time. We do not publish an assumed charge-out rate for you, because inventing one rigs the comparison.
Can I pay a supplier per enquiry instead?
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. A sole practitioner accepting that arrangement carries the exposure alone.