How to market a law firm in the first three weeks
Start with 3 weeks and nothing else. Week one settles the firm's name, one telephone number a person answers, and one page saying what the firm does and where. Week two builds one page for each practice area you want more of. Week three answers what it costs, and records where you started.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
This page assumes nothing exists: no site worth keeping, no analytics, nobody responsible. If that describes the firm, the first three weeks are cheap and nothing after them works without them.
What do you do in week one?
Four decisions and no publishing. This is the week that feels like nothing is happening.
- Fix the name, once. One spelling, one suffix, one address format, one telephone number, written on a single sheet. Everything for the next two years copies from that sheet, and correcting it later means editing every place it was ever put.
- Decide which number a person answers. Not which number exists — which one is answered, by whom, and what happens after six o'clock and on Saturday. If the answer is voicemail, the firm at least knows it before spending anything on being found.
- Name the two or three practice areas you want more of. Not the ones the firm does. These are different lists, and the second is usually shorter than partners expect.
- Write one paragraph saying what the firm does and where. Plain, third person, no adjectives. It becomes the opening of the website and the description on the business profile, in the same words.
Nothing is published in week one, and that is the point: a firm that publishes before these four are settled spends the next year correcting things.
What do you do in week two?
Build the smallest real site: one page per chosen area, plus the two pages every visitor wants.
A page per practice area, and only for the areas from week one. Each says what the work is, what happens first, and who does it. Then two more:
- A page about the people, with real names, real photographs and the year each attorney was admitted. A biography that can be checked is worth more than one that cannot.
- A contact page with a telephone number on it, an address, and hours. This is too obvious to write down and it is still missing or buried on a large number of small firm sites.
Then claim the Google Business Profile, using the exact name, address and number from the week-one sheet.
Two things matter more than they look. Put the answer in the first forty words of every page — AI Overviews appear on 39 of the 54 money searches we measured on 3 August 2026, and roughly the first forty words are what gets lifted. And put a visible date on every page, because a page with no date cannot be told apart from one written four years ago.
What do you do in week three?
Answer the cost question, and write down where you are starting from.
The cost question is the opportunity. Of the 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, 12 published a price at all and 5 of those showed a range rather than a figure. Law firms behave the same way with their own fees, and 15 of the 62 buyer questions recorded on these searches are price questions. A page that says how the work is billed — hourly, fixed, contingent, what the first meeting costs, what happens if the matter settles early — answers the thing most people want to know and most sites avoid. It does not have to publish a number to be useful; it has to explain the mechanism.
The baseline is the boring half and the one people skip. On one page, record: how many inquiries arrived last month and how, what the site currently ranks for if anything, what is published, and the date. Without that record, nothing in month six can be compared to anything, and every later argument about whether the work paid becomes an argument about memory.
What should you deliberately not do yet?
Five things, all of which appear on every competing list, and none of which belongs in the first three weeks.
| Not yet | Why |
|---|---|
| Social accounts | an account with no site behind it sends people nowhere |
| A blog | writing before the practice-area pages exist is decoration |
| Paid advertising | buying visits to a site that cannot answer the question wastes the whole budget |
| A rebrand | a name and a logo are a later problem than a phone number |
| Hiring a supplier | week one's four decisions cannot be outsourced, and a supplier without them will guess |
The last row is the one worth arguing with, since this is a supplier's website. A firm that hires anybody before settling its own name, number, areas and one paragraph is buying somebody else's guess at those four things, and will spend the engagement correcting it.
What if there is no money at all?
Then two of the three weeks are unchanged and the third gets slower.
Week one costs nothing but a meeting, the business profile costs nothing, and the cost page and the baseline cost nothing but writing. What money buys is the site itself and the time of somebody who has done this before, and both can wait.
The honest order for a firm with nothing to spend: week one, the business profile, the contact page with a number on it, the cost explanation, then the practice-area pages one at a time. That takes months instead of weeks and arrives in the same place.
What does it cost to have the three weeks done for you?
Practice Sprint $1,450, build tier $2,900. Fixed, published, no minimum term, and never per inquiry, per case or per matter.
Week one is still yours. We can facilitate the meeting and we cannot make the four decisions, because they belong to the practice rather than to marketing. Weeks two and three are what the Practice Sprint is: the pages, the profile, the cost explanation, the baseline record. US lawyer advertising runs through ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted differently in each state, which is one reason the fee is for the work by scope and time.
How long before any of this shows up?
Three to four months for movement, six to nine before it can be judged fairly, and month one produces nothing measurable.
The first quarter usually looks like failure and is not: the site is seen more often and clicked no more, which is what moving from position 30 toward 11 looks like from the outside.
What none of this does: it produces no matters this quarter, it does not manage advertising — we do not manage ad spend — and it does nothing about what happens after somebody calls. If inquiries already arrive and are not returned, the three weeks above make that problem more expensive rather than less. We do not fix intake; it sits inside the firm.
What this is worth where you are
In Nashville, 1,860 people a month search for a divorce or family attorney — the dataset treats family and divorce as one category — and Google charges around $40.45 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 pages are missing from your site, and what 40 suppliers charge.
Where should I read next?
On the part this page keeps refusing to solve: client intake process for a law firm and law firm client intake form template.
For a named market: lawyer marketing in San Diego.
If the firm is in a high-volume category: mass tort lawyer marketing.
On suppliers trading under similar names: i lawyer marketing.
Frequently asked questions
How do you start marketing a law firm from nothing?
Spend week one settling the firm's name, the number a person answers, the practice areas you want more of, and one plain paragraph about what the firm does and where.
What should be built in the first month?
One page per chosen practice area, a page about the people with admission years, a contact page with a telephone number on it, and a claimed Google Business Profile using the same details.
Why does the cost question matter so much?
Because 15 of the 62 buyer questions recorded on these searches are price questions, and only 12 of the 40 suppliers we read on 3 August 2026 published a price at all.
What should a new firm not do in the first three weeks?
Social accounts, a blog, paid advertising, a rebrand and hiring a supplier, because each depends on decisions that have not been made yet.
Can any of this be done with no budget?
Yes. Week one, the business profile, the contact page and the cost explanation cost nothing but time; only the site itself and experienced hands cost money.
What is a baseline record and why bother?
A single page written before anything changes, listing how many inquiries arrived last month, what is published and the date, so month six can be compared with something rather than with memory.
How long before a new law firm sees results?
Three to four months for movement, six to nine for a fair judgment, and month one produces nothing measurable while the first quarter often looks like failure.