The directory rep has phoned three times this month, and the renewal is due in March. A year of those listings cost real money, and the firm can name two clients they brought in. Ask the lawyers on r/LawFirm whether to pay for callers, and the reply is usually one word: don’t.
There is a cheaper order, and it starts with the people who already reached you. A small firm signs more of the people who call by answering fast, following up until each one decides and booking the consultation before the call ends. Then it adds what brings new people in: a Google Business Profile with reviews, a page per practice area and city, Local Services Ads, Google and Facebook ads judged by what they sign, referrals and seminars. Here is that order, one step at a time.
Answer every call and form within minutes
Answering is where firms lose the most callers. In Clio’s 2024 secret-shopper study, the share of firms that picked up a potential client’s call fell from 56% in 2019 to 40%, and only 20% of the firms that missed a call ever returned it (Oklahoma Bar Association).
Someone who needs a lawyer this week dials the next firm when nobody picks up. So decide who answers each line at each hour:
- During the day, the receptionist or the intake specialist takes the main line.
- A second person covers lunch, court mornings and the times every line is busy.
- After hours, an answering service takes the call in your firm’s name, or an AI receptionist books the consultation on the spot.
- Missed calls get a reply by text from the firm’s number inside sixty seconds.
Web forms count the same as calls. When a form arrives near midnight, the person hears back by text that night if they left a number, and by phone once the office opens. Keep the lawyer’s own cell off the list.
Book the consultation before the call ends
“Someone will call you back” starts a round of phone tag that many callers never finish. Whoever answers should offer two times before the call ends: “I have Tuesday at 10:00 or Wednesday at 3:30 with attorney Delphine Vardaman.”
To book on the spot, the intake team needs the attorneys’ calendars, the screening questions every practice area needs and the consultation fee, if you charge one. A text confirms the time, and two reminders follow: one the evening before, one that morning. A script for the first five minutes of an intake call lists what to ask first.
A caller who can’t talk at work should be able to choose a time from a link on your site or in the text you send.
Follow up until the answer is yes or no
Many callers who don’t sign never said no. They got busy, talked to a second firm or waited for a spouse to agree. Put the follow-up schedule in writing; then it happens whether or not anyone has a spare hour:
- Same day: a call, then a text with a booking link.
- Day two: call again, this time in the evening.
- Day four: a short email listing what to bring, plus the link to book.
- Day seven and day fourteen: a text asking whether they still want help.
Stop when they book, sign or say no, and note the reason. The same rule covers the retainer agreement after a consultation: follow up until it is signed or declined. A no-show gets a rebooking link by text that same day.
Who you follow up with matters as much as how. Reach out only to people who reached your firm first and agreed to hear back. ABA Model Rule 7.3 bars soliciting work by live call or visit from people you have no tie to, and each state adopts its own version. Names from accident reports or arrest lists are not part of this plan.
The map listing and its reviews
Search “divorce lawyer Sacramento” on a phone, and the map listings come before most websites. Your profile there needs the firm’s exact name, each office, its hours, the practice areas listed as services and real photos of the office and the attorneys. Publish an update twice a month.
Reviews are what a caller compares between two listings. Ask every client for one when the matter closes, by text, with the link. Ask all of them, the hard matters too, and offer nothing in exchange. A few reviews every month read better than twenty in one week.
When you reply, never confirm the reviewer was your client and never mention a case. The ABA’s Formal Opinion 496 says the best response to a negative review is often none at all (ABA Journal). More on review requests and safe replies.
A page per practice area and city
One “Practice areas” page with six bullet points gives Google little to show for “estate planning attorney in Grand Rapids.” Give each practice area its own page, and give each city where you take cases its own version. Each page says who the work is for, how the fee works (contingency, flat fee or hourly), what the first consultation covers and how to book it, with a phone button high on the page.
Write it the way callers ask. “What happens after a DUI arrest in Atlanta” answers a real search better than a list of services. Say the firm “focuses on” a practice area: “specialist” and “certified” need a named certifying body under ABA Model Rule 7.2(c) and your state’s rule. A separate tracking number on each page then shows which pages make the phone ring.
Google Local Services Ads
Local Services Ads sit above the regular ads for searches like “immigration attorney El Paso,” and Google Verified appears beside your name. Google runs a background check and a bar license check on the firm and its attorneys before the ads go live, so start that paperwork early.
Google bills you for each valid call or message, not for clicks, and you can ask Google to credit ones that don’t fit, such as a caller for a practice area you don’t take. Google also weighs how quickly you respond when it decides who to show, so route these calls to whoever answers fastest, day or night. Once a month, go through the calls and dispute the ones that qualify.
Paid ads, judged by the cases they sign
Paid search pays off once the phones are answered well; before that, you are buying calls that reach voicemail. Run the ads in an account in your firm’s own name, so the history stays with you if the agency changes. Point each ad group at a page written for that one problem, such as a car accident page for car accident searches.
Judge every ad by what it signed. Clicks and calls are easy to count and say little. The number that decides is cost per signed case: last month’s spend on an ad divided by the cases it signed. An ad with cheap clicks and no signed cases is the first to go.
Facebook and Instagram ads suit practice areas where people plan ahead, such as estate planning or a divorce that is months away, and reminding people who visited your site. If your firm takes Spanish-speaking callers, run Spanish ads that land on Spanish pages.
Referrals: thanked, never paid
A referral arrives with trust already in place: someone the caller believes has vouched for you. Keep a list of who sends you work, from other attorneys and past clients to accountants and financial advisors. When a referral comes in, write the source on the record. Within the week, thank the person who sent them with a call or a handwritten note, and with the client’s okay, tell a referring lawyer the person was looked after.
Thank them, and never pay them. ABA Model Rule 7.2(b) bars giving anything of value for recommending your services, apart from narrow exceptions such as the cost of your own ads. Rule 5.4 bars sharing a fee with anyone who isn’t a lawyer, so a marketer offering callers for a cut of the fee gets a polite no.
Past clients, old inquiries and seminars
Your intake records hold people who called last spring and never booked, and clients whose matters closed two years ago. Both reached out to your firm themselves, and with their consent you can write to them again.
Send old inquiries a plain text every few months: “Hi Jordan, this is Vardaman Law. If you still need help with what you called about, you can book a time here.” The text never names the matter. Past clients hear from you once a year, when their matter suggests it: an estate plan worth a look after a new grandchild or a move to another state, a business owner’s contracts at renewal. A reminder that you exist is often what makes a past client send a friend.
Seminars work where people choose a lawyer slowly, such as estate planning, elder law and small-business formation. Hold one at the library or online, take sign-ups with a seat count, and send reminders the week before and that morning. Each person who registers has chosen to hear from your firm.
Count what each source signs
Ask each new caller where they heard your firm’s name, and write one source on each record: the ad, the page, the profile or the referring lawyer. Better still, put a separate phone number on every ad, listing and page, and the source is recorded before anyone asks. Each month, line up what each source booked and signed beside what it cost.
At the partners’ meeting, that list makes the calls. The directory that signed nothing all year goes at renewal, and its budget moves to whatever signed the most.
RetainerBooked does the first half of this list for US firms with 1 to 10 lawyers: calls and forms answered in your firm’s name, follow-up until each caller decides, review requests to every closing client and each signed case matched to its source, for a flat monthly fee with no price per case. Whatever you use, start with the phones this week and add the rest one step at a time.
RetainerBooked
RetainerBooked sets up intake, builds websites and runs ads for US law firms with 1 to 10 lawyers. These posts come from what owners and intake teams tell us on calls.
