Fractional CMO for your law firm: in-house marketing without the overhead. I build pages for each step of a separation in your province, judge every click by the clients who retain you, and give ChatGPT and Google's AI good reason to name your firm.
back in estimated case value³
About 75 times its ad spend
Line: back in estimated case value³
I'm Joshua David Little. I've run my own consulting firm since 2004, I've helped lawyers prepare complex cases for trial, and I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads.
Many Canadian family clients look for free help before they look for a lawyer. Legal aid ontario alone is searched about 33,100 times a month.¹ Family rules also change from province to province, and clicks cost less than they do in the US, which brings a problem of its own.
We asked ChatGPT what a Toronto parent separating with two kids and a house should do first. Its answer led with the Law Society Referral Service's free half-hour consultation, legal aid, and the court's family law information centres, and named no firm. When Google's AI answered a Vancouver parent whose ex wanted to move to Alberta, it named four firms, each for its own relocation page.²
Separation agreement is searched about 2,900 times a month, how to file for divorce in ontario about 2,400, and matrimonial home about 720.¹ A single national page can't answer the question a parent in Halifax and a parent in Kelowna are each asking.
Low click prices make it easy to buy plenty of inquiries and hard to buy the right ones. If you've looked through a month of them and found only a handful that suit your practice, a search term, a setting, or a landing page is usually sending the wrong people, and each one can be tuned.
Family lawyer is searched about 18,100 times a month in Canada and divorce lawyer about 9,900. The process is searched by name too: separation agreement 2,900, how to file for divorce in ontario 2,400, divorce mediation 1,300, matrimonial home 720, common law separation 170. The words the Divorce Act has used since 2021, parenting time and decision-making responsibility, are barely typed, at 70 and 90 a month.¹ Parents search the words they use at the kitchen table, so the pages should too.
We put six family situations to Google's AI and to ChatGPT, one in each of six Canadian markets, and asked Google one more: the best family lawyer in Toronto.²
A separation agreement step by step, a parent moving to another province with the children, a common-law split, a parenting order the other parent ignores, income hidden in a spouse's business. Each page is written for the person in that situation, in your province, in the words they use.
If a lawyer at your firm is a certified specialist, or the firm holds a peer ranking, the page about that work should say so. Google's AI pointed Toronto readers to exactly that designation.
If your lawyers answer the same questions every week, in consultations, in videos, or on a call-in show, each answered question can become its own page the AI can cite.
A cheap click can still be an expensive client. I judge every campaign by what a retained client costs, and tune the searches, settings, and pages until the inquiries fit.
Every directory and lead site gets the same test as your ads: what it cost, divided by the clients who retained you from it.
We track every source through to the consultation and the retained client, so you know which ads earn their keep.
An inquiry you've paid for can still be lost on the phone. I find where qualified inquiries slip away between the first contact and the retainer, and train your intake team to sign more of them.
Accountants and business valuators come into a case when a spouse's business is involved. Mediators, collaborative lawyers, and counsellors meet couples who want to settle. Give each of them something useful to hand to a client, and sending that client to you becomes the easy choice.
I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads, by offering a free workbook. Legal-services ads on ChatGPT are allowed only in the US, so an ad for a Canadian firm offers legal education, the kind that worked there. Where it fits your plan, it sits beside your Google and referral work, judged by the same numbers.
Instead of trying to convert visitors directly into clients, we strategically capture their information first so we can follow up and nurture the relationship.
Create guides, toolkits, and webinars that help prospects understand their legal situation – positioning you as the expert before they ever call.
Get contact information and permission to follow up by offering something genuinely helpful, not just a consultation request.
Automated emails that continue providing value while keeping your firm top-of-mind during their decision process.
Continuously refine what's working through data – not guesswork – so your results keep getting better.
Know exactly which marketing activities generate clients and how much each client costs to acquire so we know which platforms to amplify and which need more optimization.
How each step looks for a Canadian family firm: A guide built for your firm on a process in your province, such as a separation agreement step by step; a way to sign up on every page and every ad; email that keeps helping while the person decides; testing that keeps what works; and tracking that follows each inquiry to the retained client.
I work with solos who want to build a firm. The first job is a steady flow of the right clients, enough to carry your first hire.
If finding good people is what holds the firm back, I can run your marketing myself, or build, train, and lead the in-house team that runs it.
About 75 times its ad spend back in estimated case value.³
About 11 times its ad spend back in estimated case value.³
The system is based on best practices that work across industries, so it adapts to any practice area with customized resources and messaging for your specific clients.
Yes. I work with firms in Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia.
Because the cost that counts is what each retained client costs. If most inquiries don't fit your practice, we find which searches, settings, and pages bring the right people, and build the pages and the guide that give everyone else a reason to stay in touch until they're ready.
Count it first. Divide what it cost over a few months by the clients who retained you from it, and compare that with your other channels. Then you decide with real numbers in front of you.
Through specifics. A page for each court process and situation you handle, the credential where your firm holds one, and real reviews tell a parent in a hard case what your firm actually does, and they give the AI something to match.
For a Canadian firm, the ad offers legal education, such as a workbook for one situation. That's how I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads.
Yes, as consulting and training. I find where your qualified inquiries are lost and train your intake and sales team to sign more of them.
By video. The assessment is a video call, and so are our strategy calls, so it works the same from Vancouver to Halifax.
There's no long-term lock-in. I'd rather keep your business by helping your firm than by a contract.
It depends on your firm's needs and on how much of the work my team takes on. We set the scope together after your assessment.
¹ Google Ads Keyword Planner, Canada, average monthly searches.
² Aquila's research: Google's AI and ChatGPT, logged out, one family situation in each of six Canadian markets, and one head search asked of Google only.
³ Case value estimated from average case value.
A 45-minute to one-hour video call with me. We map your firm's marketing together on a whiteboard, and you keep the map whether or not we work together.
Currently accepting a limited number of Fractional CMO relationships.