Legal Marketing Statistics
Legal Statistics
According to the American Bar Association (ABA), many legal firms in the United States are only “moderately confident” in the effectiveness of their marketing. However, 72 percent of respondents polled in the same ABA report said they would continue to promote in the same way or perhaps grow their marketing spend in the coming year.
According to the same report, attorneys and law firms have lagged in implementing successful digital marketing tactics, particularly solo practitioners and small firms with only 2-30 associates. But it doesn’t mean you or your company have to follow suit.
These five legal marketing statistics will help you better align your legal marketing approach so that you can reliably produce and keep more customers.
An annual marketing budget is not budgeted for by 54% of law firms.
- In the United States, 54 percent of law firms do not have an annual marketing budget; just 14 percent of solo practitioners and 32 percent of small firms (2-9 associates) have an annual marketing budget.
- Medium-sized law firms with 10-49 associates aren’t far behind: just 63% have a marketing budget.
When looking for a lawyer, 57% of customers looked on their own, 59% sought a reference, and 16% did both.
- According to Clio’s 2019 Legal Trends Report, consumers who performed their own research (57 percent) and consumers who asked for a recommendation (59 percent) when looking to hire a lawyer have a tight relationship. Only 16% of those polled said they did both.
- However, according to a similar survey performed by Martindale-Avvo, 46 percent of consumers who received a recommendation still went online to explore the suggested lawyer’s or firm’s website as well as check online review sites before making contact.
The following are the main channels that customers use to investigate attorneys and legal firms:
- Yelp, Avvo, Google, and Lawyers.com are examples of online review sites (46.5 percent )
- Recommendations (43 percent )
- Google is a search engine (43 percent )
- A website for an attorney or legal company (36 percent )
- Advertisement in print (9 percent )
- Radio and television (5 percent )
68 percent of customers make their first contact with a lawyer or legal firm via phone.
The way your company handles phone calls might be the difference between keeping a client and losing them to a competitor. When contacting a legal firm for the first time, 68 percent of customers utilized the phone, while 25 percent used email or an online form.
According to the same survey, while the average customer consults with three or four attorneys before selecting which one to hire, 42 percent will choose the first lawyer they speak with if the lawyer makes a “positive first impression.”
42% will choose the first lawyer they speak with if the lawyer leaves a “good first impression.”
What makes a good first impression? Consumers ranked the following elements as critical to their judgment of a lawyer or law firm, in order of importance:
- Communication timeliness (82 percent )
- Next steps must be communicated clearly (80 percent )
- They had a good idea of how much their lawsuit would cost (76 percent )
- Clear expectations of the entire procedure in their specific circumstance (74 percent )
- The tone of the lawyer is positive (64 percent )
Sixty-five percent of law firms spend the majority of their marketing expenditure online.
It was shown that the majority of law firms spend at least half of their total marketing expenditure online. In fact, 40% of those polled said that internet marketing accounted for 76-100 percent of their marketing spend.
Buying online leads is the greatest marketing method for 49% of legal firms.
Depending on the nature of the issue, average leads range from $25 to $250. However, given that most legal services cost at least $500, it is typically well worth the expense.
Sixty percent of legal firms did not respond to an email request, and another twenty-seven percent did not answer the phone or call back.
Clio contacted 1,000 legal firms and phoned 500 from the same group to determine the average email and phone response rate. Sixty percent of those businesses did not react to their inquiry email, and another twenty-seven percent did not answer the phone or contact them back.
According to the Lead Response Management Study, responding to a lead within five minutes of their initial contact increases your chances of being retained significantly. Other significant evidence supporting the necessity of prioritizing prompt responses:
- A company is 100 times more likely to connect with a lead in five minutes than it is in 30 minutes.
- A company is four times more likely to qualify a lead in the first five minutes than in the first ten minutes, and 21 times more likely to qualify them in the first five minutes than in the first 30 minutes.
Sixty-two percent of attorneys either do not have access to their online analytics or are unclear whether they have, and forty percent of those who do have access never look at them.
- According to the ABA’s 2019 Website and Marketing Report, 41 percent of attorneys do not have access to marketing analytics, and another 21 percent are unsure if they have.
- 41 percent of the remaining 38 percent of lawyers who have access to these key metrics never use them. Only 17% of attorneys and law firms that utilise an outside marketing agency receive frequent reports on their website and marketing performance.
Summary: We hope you found these legal marketing statistics interesting and instructive. Looking into legal marketing data may help you have a better understanding of what your rivals are doing and where they may be making mistakes that you can exploit.
If some of these figures astonished you as much as they did us, that’s a good sign. It signifies your company is ahead of the competition when it comes to marketing and handling prospective clients. That is always a prescription for long-term success.
