Lawyer marketing plan for three hours a week
A working plan for one lawyer with a caseload is 3 hours a week: 30 six-minute units. One hour writing an answer nobody else has written, 30 minutes on the profile page, 30 minutes on reviews and referrals, and an hour chasing inquiries that went quiet.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
How many hours a week does this actually take?
Three, and the number matters more than the list.
Most marketing plans written for lawyers are written for firms. They assume somebody whose job this is, a budget line, and a meeting where decisions get made. A lawyer with a full caseload has none of those, so a plan that opens with a channel matrix is discarded by Tuesday.
Three hours is 30 six-minute units — arithmetic on your own billing increment, not a benchmark. That is the honest size of the commitment. Under two hours a week the work does not compound, because nothing gets finished. Over five, it starts competing with billable work and loses, permanently, in the first busy month.
The damaging admission, early: at three hours a week and zero budget, there is nothing here for us to sell you. This page describes work you do yourself. We are a supplier, and the whole plan below is the version that runs without one.
What do the three hours consist of?
Four blocks, and the last one is the one everybody skips.
| Block | Minutes | What comes out of it | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write one answer | 60 | One page answering a question you were actually asked this month | Weekly |
| Fix your own page | 30 | Your profile page: what you handle, who you handle it for, how to reach you today | Weekly until done, then monthly |
| Ask, and reply | 30 | Review requests to clients whose matters just closed; replies to the ones that arrive | Weekly |
| Chase the quiet ones | 60 | Contact with people who inquired 10, 30 and 90 days ago and were never followed up | Weekly |
The first block is the only one that produces something a stranger can find. Write the answer to a question a client asked you out loud — not a topic, a question. If three clients asked it, several hundred people typed it. In Nashville, 3,600 people a month search for a personal injury lawyer and Google charges around $66.67 for one of those clicks; in Boston, 1,590 a month search for a family or divorce lawyer at $19.82. Measured 3 August 2026 across 20 US cities. Nobody bids on the questions those people ask before they get that far, which is why writing the answer is available to a lawyer with no budget at all.
The fourth block is the one that returns the most and gets dropped first. An inquiry that arrived three weeks ago and was never answered is a person who already decided they needed a lawyer. Reaching them costs an hour of your week and no money.
What should the first four weeks look like?
One thing finished each week, in this order.
- Week 1 — the profile page. Your own page on the firm's site, rewritten so it says what you handle, who you handle it for, and how somebody reaches you today. Most are three sentences of biography and a bar admission year. This is the page people land on after a referral, and it decides whether the referral converts.
- Week 2 — the first answer. One question, one page, written plainly. Not a blog post about a legal development. The question a client asked you in a meeting.
- Week 3 — the list. Every inquiry from the last 90 days in one place, with a date and a status. Most lawyers doing this for the first time find between a handful and a few dozen people nobody ever called back. The number is yours to discover; we hold no figure for it and will not invent one.
- Week 4 — the asking. Contact the clients whose matters closed in the last quarter and ask for a review. This is uncomfortable, takes 30 minutes, and is the highest-return half hour in the plan.
After week four, the same four blocks repeat. The plan does not get more complicated at any point. That is a feature.
What should a lawyer with no budget not do?
Buy clicks, buy directories, or start a newsletter.
Three things are genuinely out of reach at zero budget, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise:
- Paid search. A Nashville personal injury click costs around $66.67 to buy at Google's own prices. A meaningful test is a few hundred clicks. That is a budget decision, not an hours decision, and it belongs on a firm's annual plan rather than an individual's week.
- Directory subscriptions. They are a spending decision with an annual invoice attached, and they compete for the same money as everything else. If you have no budget, this is not a choice you are making.
- A newsletter. It is a commitment to produce something every month forever, and it reaches people who already know you. Worth doing at some point. Not week one, and not at three hours.
We also do not manage ad spend, so recommending against it here costs us nothing and should be read with that in mind.
What survives a trial month?
Forty minutes, and it is the fourth block.
Every plan of this kind dies in the month a trial lands or a matter goes sideways. Deciding in advance what the reduced version is prevents the plan from being abandoned rather than paused.
| Version | Minutes per week | What runs |
|---|---|---|
| Full | 180 | All four blocks |
| Busy month | 90 | Chase the quiet ones, plus review requests |
| Trial month | 40 | Chase the quiet ones only |
| Stopped | 0 | Nothing, and the pages already written keep working |
The bottom row is the reason to do the writing block first. A page that answers a real question keeps being found in a month when you do nothing at all. That is the only part of this plan that compounds, and it is why the hour goes there rather than into anything that resets weekly.
What does it cost to hand it over?
Practice Sprint $1,450, build tier $2,900. Fixed, published, no minimum term.
Those figures are here because a page about doing it yourself should say plainly what the alternative costs. Of the 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, twelve published a price at all, five showed only a "from" figure, and one offered work with no minimum term.
We never charge per inquiry, per case or per matter. US lawyer advertising runs through ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted differently in each state, and pricing tied to volume introduces an incentive we do not want.
What this is worth where you are
In Nashville, 3,600 people a month search for a personal injury lawyer, and Google charges around $66.67 for one of those clicks. 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?
If the plan is working and the follow-up is not: new client intake form law firm and client intake specialist law firm both cover what happens after somebody gets in touch.
For the firm-wide version rather than the individual one: how to marketing a law firm.
By practice area and by supplier: mass tort lawyer marketing and i lawyer marketing.
Frequently asked questions
How many hours a week does a lawyer marketing plan take?
Three, which is 30 six-minute units on your own billing increment. Under two hours nothing gets finished and the work stops compounding; over five it competes with billable time and loses in the first busy month.
What are the four weekly blocks?
Sixty minutes writing one answer to a question a client actually asked, 30 minutes on your own profile page, 30 minutes requesting and replying to reviews, and 60 minutes chasing inquiries that were never followed up.
Which block matters most?
Chasing the quiet inquiries returns the most immediately, because those people had already decided they needed a lawyer. Writing one answer matters most over time, because it is the only block that keeps working in a month when you do nothing.
What should the first four weeks be?
Week one the profile page, week two the first written answer, week three a single list of every inquiry from the last 90 days with dates and statuses, week four asking recently closed clients for reviews.
What should a lawyer with no budget avoid?
Paid clicks, directory subscriptions and a newsletter. A Nashville personal injury click costs around $66.67, measured 3 August 2026, so a meaningful paid test is a budget decision rather than an hours decision.
What happens in a trial month?
Drop to 40 minutes and run only the chasing block. Deciding the reduced version in advance is what stops the plan being abandoned instead of paused, and pages already written keep being found regardless.
What does it cost to have this done instead?
Practice Sprint $1,450 and build tier $2,900, fixed and published, with no minimum term. Of 40 suppliers read on 3 August 2026, twelve published any price and one offered work without a minimum term.