Smart lawyers know that great business relationships are built through trust, communication, and performance, not through the handcuffs of contracts and one-sided control. This applies to lawyers and their own clients and the same holds true for a law firm’s relationship with a legal marketing agency.

And yet, lawyers continue to place themselves into predatory, one-sided relationships with their marketing agencies. Agencies that tie them down with one-sided long term contracts, and proprietary website platforms. Agencies that force them to cede control of their own marketing data to vendors who work directly with competitors. Agencies that take control of their Google Ads accounts and won’t relinquish

The nature of SEO has long been the excuse of agency salesmen, “it takes a long time for SEO to work, so we require a 2-year agreement.” And yet the reality is, as soon as a law firm signs a long term contract, the agency maximizes its profitability by doing as little as possible.

Beware these common agency traps:

1. Long Term Contracts – as soon as you sign a long term contract with an agency, they maximize their profit by doing as little as they can for you.
2. Refusing Access to your Advertising accounts – they might say the Google Ads account is theirs, but all of our clients control their own account, why wouldn’t you? And if its “their” account – your Quality Score is going to suffer should you try to make a change.
3. Hiding Data – especially your Google Analytics Account, but this might also include dynamic call tracking, or other conversion points such as chat.
4. Proprietary Website Platforms – if you have to go through your agency to make basic changes to your website or rely on their small development team to keep your site up to modern standards, then you are trapped.
5. Registering your domain to themselves, in which case it is not…. your domain.

Smart lawyers control their marketing and their agency. Not the other way around. Don’t get trapped.

Smart Lawyers Don’t Get Trapped by Their Agency