Your future clients still type a few words into Google. More and more of them also tell ChatGPT the whole story and ask who to call. As your Fractional CMO, I give your firm in-house marketing without the overhead: built for both, and for the people your clients trust, and measured all the way to the signed client.
New clients at about $200 each
I'm Joshua David Little. I've run my own consulting firm since 2004, I've helped attorneys prepare complex cases for trial, and I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads.
Ask family-law owners about their marketing and the same things come up. The leads went bad. Referrals carry the firm. Intake loses people. Nobody can say which marketing produced which client. An agency or a lead seller cost more than it returned. And AI has started showing up, in their clients' heads and in their own numbers.
Paid leads that once worked start bringing in people who don't qualify, don't answer when you call back, or only wanted free advice. One owner I've talked with wondered whether AI was why the phone stopped ringing, and had no plan for it.
Someone asks Google's AI about a move-away, hidden money, or a custody fight in your city. When it names a firm, it usually cites that firm's own page about that exact situation.
In one legal software company's secret-shopper study, only 40% of the law firms it phoned picked up.¹ Add tracking that stops at the click, and you can't tell which marketing produced a signed client.
The searches that cost money are short and local. Divorce lawyer is searched about 246,000 times a month in the US, and family law attorney near me about 110,000. Top-of-page bids on searches like these run from about $3 to $5 at the low end to $30 to $39 at the high end.² The situation itself barely shows up as a search. Husband emptied bank account gets about 10 a month. Spanish searches are real, and their clicks cost less: abogado de familia is searched about 8,100 times a month.
The story goes somewhere else. People open ChatGPT and tell it the details: they have three kids, they own a home, they run a business. The answer comes back with firms that fit those details, which may not be the best-reviewed firms in town. When ChatGPT gave a reason for a name, it was usually the kind of case the firm lists.
The clients many firms want most search in their own way. They type best or aggressive lawyer, emergency custody, and the names of court roles their case has pulled them into, and there are fewer of them than most owners hope.
We asked Google's AI and ChatGPT the questions divorcing people ask, one situation in each of twelve markets, with the city named.
Of 19 family-firm homepages that rank on page one, none mentioned AI. One put high-conflict and narcissist situations on its homepage, and it was among the firms Google's AI named in Atlanta.
The head searches still carry most of the volume. Judge them by what a signed client costs.
Most people aren't ready to hire on the day they search. A resource built for the person preparing for divorce gives them a reason to leave their details, and gives you a way to keep helping them while they decide.
I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads, and over 20% of the people who clicked it signed up for the free resource it offered. ChatGPT ads have their place in a family firm's marketing beside Google search, referral partners, and everything else that brings you clients, and they're judged the same way: by what a signed client costs.
Therapists, financial advisors, mediators, and other lawyers meet people in the middle of a divorce. Give them something useful to hand over, and sending that person to you becomes easy. One person who signed up for a client firm's guide through its ChatGPT ad was a family life counselor at a church.
Where word of mouth rules, the work is relationships: material for referral partners, talks at civic and church groups that end with a resource the room can sign up for, and a Google Business Profile for each town you serve.
Long directory and lead-seller contracts, and ads that send paid clicks to a homepage with no way to follow up. Ask the hard questions before you sign anything, and if you're already signed, have someone on your side check the work.
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 family-law firm: A guide or workbook for the person preparing months ahead; a way to sign up on every page and every ad; email that keeps helping through the long stretch before they call; testing that keeps what works; and tracking that follows each person to the retained client.
Before blaming a channel, find where the people went. A pile of bad leads doesn't always mean a bad source. Sometimes one setting or one page is sending the wrong people, and the fix sits inside the channel you already pay for.
1 · What's happening inside your ads. If you're running ads and the calls dropped while your spend stayed the same, something changed inside the account, and that gets diagnosed first. Look at which searches your ads showed for, what each click cost, which pages the clicks landed on, and how often your ads appeared when someone searched the words you bid on. If that share fell, another firm is getting those searches.
2 · Who AI names in your city. Ask ChatGPT and Google the situations you want most, the way a client would, and see which firms come back and what pages they cite.
3 · What happens when someone reaches you. Call your own firm at lunch, fill in your own form after hours, and time the reply. In one survey of legal consumers, 80% said they'd contact another attorney if they didn't hear back within 48 hours.³
4 · What your tracking can't see. If you can't trace each signed client back to where they came from, start there. Everything else is guesswork until you can.
We measure the marketing all the way to the signed client, so if qualified people are being lost between the first contact and the signed engagement, it shows up in the numbers. Then I find where they're slipping away and train your intake and sales team to sign more of them.
A new will after divorce is one kind of estate planning a family lawyer can offer without taking on complex plans. Your past clients already trust you, and the need comes up at a predictable moment. The marketing is simple: an email to past clients when their case closes, and a page on your site about updating a will after divorce. Estate planning after divorce is searched about 170 times a month in the US.² When a client needs a complex plan, an estate-planning partner takes it, and that partner becomes someone who sends you work too.
You want better cases without adding to the load. The work is positioning, and scoring leads so the right ones reach a lawyer first.
Each new market needs its own Business Profile, its own pages, and its own ads before the phone rings there.
I work with solos who want to grow into a firm. The first job is a steady flow of the right cases, enough to carry your first hire.
If a paralegal or an assistant already handles some of your marketing tasks, that's the start of a marketing team. I'll train them on the parts of the system they touch and lead the work, so it keeps running without landing back on your desk.
If you serve mothers, fathers, or veterans, the people you want are already searching in their own words and gathering in their own places. Your pages, your ads, and your referral partners should speak to that group by name.
New clients at about $200 each, leads at about $21, and about $135,000 in estimated case value.⁴
"In 40 years of practicing law, this is the best way to get more clients that I've ever had." Brenda Clark, Family Law Attorney
Leads at about $44, booked consultations at $234 each, and about $75,000 in estimated case value from $6,547 in ads, from a campaign built on the Client Magnet System, tracked to the booked consultation.⁴
Over 20% of the people who clicked it signed up, before the platform allowed legal-services ads.
Running a family practice in England or Wales?
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, when they want to grow. Some solos want to bring on associates and build a firm, and the marketing has to be ready to carry each new hire.
If they fit your plan, yes. We run ChatGPT ads as one channel among the others, alongside Google and the rest of your marketing, and judge them the way we judge every channel: by what a signed client costs.
Yes. Because we measure the marketing all the way to the signed client, I can see where qualified leads drop out: the calls that go unanswered, the slow call-backs, the consultations that never get booked. Then I train your intake and sales team to close more of them.
Either, and many firms want some of both. I can run your marketing for you, or build, train, and lead an in-house team your firm owns.
It depends on what your firm needs and how much of the work we take on, and we set the scope together after your assessment. There's no long-term lock-in, because I don't want your money if the work isn't helping your firm.
¹ Clio, a legal software company, 2024 secret-shopper study of US law firms: "only 40% picked up when called."
² Google Ads Keyword Planner, US, average monthly searches.
³ Martindale-Avvo, Understanding the Legal Consumer, 2023: "80% of consumers will contact another attorney if they don't hear back in 48 hours."
⁴ 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, from what your clients search to what AI tells them in your city, and you keep the map whether or not we work together.
Currently accepting a limited number of Fractional CMO relationships.