For solo lawyers who want to build a firm. As your Fractional CMO, I give you in-house marketing without the overhead, planned hire by hire: a steady flow of the right cases first, then the referral relationships and the numbers your new people inherit.
About one lawyer in six is the only lawyer in their organization, and in the ABA's 2023 survey, 80% of solo practitioners had no marketing budget.¹
About 1 in 6
Line: About one lawyer in six is the only lawyer in their organization, and in the ABA's 2023 survey, 80% of solo practitioners had no marketing budget.¹
For a solo, the first hire is the step where the marketing has to change. Before, it fed one person's calendar. After, it has to keep a second lawyer busy, every month, with cases the firm wants.
A few good months of inquiries can make you think you could hire two more people tomorrow, and it's easy to grow faster than you're ready for. What pays a salary is the cases that sign, month after month.
Some solos buy leads and do fine with them while it's just them. A firm with payroll needs sources it owns: its own pages, its own ad accounts, its own referral partners, and its own list of people who asked to hear from it.
Many lawyers open a practice without ever having run a small business. A solo can keep the marketing going by hand for a while, between hearings. A growing firm needs someone who owns the plan.
Each new person needs a reason to exist on the calendar, so I build the marketing in an order.
Before you post the job, the firm needs a steady flow of the cases the new lawyer will handle, and a clear count of how many of them sign each month. We find where your signed clients come from today, what each one costs, and which situations you want more of, then build pages, ads, and resources around those situations.
When a second lawyer joins, the work can't live in your head. The resources and the follow-up emails get written down and built, so a new associate or paralegal steps into marketing that already runs. Everything is measured to the signed client, so if people are lost between the first call and the consultation, the numbers show where. Then I train whoever answers your phone to sign more of the qualified leads that come in.
The financial advisors, CPAs, therapists, and other lawyers who send you clients today know you. A referral system keeps a record of who sends what, gives each partner something useful to pass along, and lets a new lawyer pick up those relationships with something in hand.
Every channel is counted by the clients who sign and what each one costs. That count tells you when the firm can carry the next hire, and which channels to grow before you make it.
A family solo or two-lawyer firm needs a steady flow of the right cases to carry a first associate, and family clients often research for months before they hire. The work centers on guides matched to each situation, follow-up that keeps helping people while they decide, and a cost per signed client you can plan a salary around.
A solo business lawyer starting out often has a small budget and no system yet. Business owners buy legal services all the time, so direct relationships and outreach carry more weight here than in other practices, alongside pages for the situations owners bring to an AI assistant.
Many estate-planning lawyers find marketing hard, especially the ones who aren't natural extroverts. For a solo who wants to hand it to someone they trust, the first step is a plan they don't have to run themselves.
Elder-law families usually arrive through an adult child, a care professional, or a talk someone heard, so a growing elder-law firm builds those routes before its next hire.
A new PI firm can't outspend the billboard firms, so it spends a little at first, keeps the channels that sign cases, and cuts the rest. Then it builds on what keeps working, with every channel counted by the signed case.
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.
I lead the marketing for a firm of one lawyer the same way I'd lead it for a firm of 20: a plan for your goals, every channel run as one system, and the numbers counted by signed client. What changes as you grow is how much of the work my team takes on and how much your own people run.
If the paralegal or assistant you already have is posting, answering inquiries, and updating the website between other jobs, I'll train them on the parts of the system they touch. As you hire, I'll help you decide which marketing roles come first, then train and lead the team you build.
There's no long-term lock-in. I don't want to take your money if the work isn't helping your firm.
Who this isn't for: If you plan to stay solo, this page isn't for you. The assessment will still tell you plainly whether a Fractional CMO makes sense for your firm.
About 75 times its ad spend back in estimated case value.² Knowing what your marketing brings back is what lets you plan a salary around it.
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.
What the five steps build for a growing solo: One resource for the situation you want more of, captured with permission to follow up, a few useful emails while the person decides, testing which situations bring the cases a new hire can take, and a cost per signed client that tells you when the firm can carry the next one.
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.
Not if you want to grow. I work with established firms that want to grow and with solo attorneys who want to build a firm. If you're serious about growth and ready to invest in a system, the assessment is where we find out together whether the timing is right.
The marketing. A new lawyer needs cases from the first week, and those cases come from sources that take time to build. We get the case flow running and counted first, so the decision to hire rests on numbers instead of a busy month.
Yes. Keep what's working while the firm's own sources grow. We count bought leads the same way as every other channel, by the clients who sign and what each one costs, so you decide with real numbers in front of you.
Most clients spend about 2 to 3 hours a month on strategy calls, recording video, and reviewing content. We'll also need access to your website, ad accounts, analytics, and numbers on who signed. Everything we build stays with your firm.
The scope sets the price: how much of the work my team takes on, and how much your own people run as the firm grows. We set it together after your assessment, with no long-term lock-in.
¹ National Conference of Bar Examiners, practice analysis survey (Phase 2 report, Appendix A, Table A.3): 16.8% of respondents work in an organization with one lawyer. ABA TechReport 2023, Websites and Marketing: "Eighty percent of the solo practitioners surveyed did not have a marketing budget."
² 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, including what has to be in place before you hire, and you keep the map whether or not we work together.
Currently accepting a limited number of Fractional CMO relationships.