What law-firm owners search when they look for marketing help
We pulled Google's own figures for the searches people make when they look for law-firm marketing help. Outside personal injury, almost none of them name a practice area. They name the pieces: SEO, a website, ads, an answering service.
What we found
- Searches for marketing help rarely name a practice. Personal injury is the exception, at about 2,900 a month for "personal injury lawyer advertising". Business-law firm marketing is searched too seldom for Google to count.
- The biggest law-specific demand is for SEO, then websites. "Law firm SEO" and its wordings draw about 3,600 searches a month, and law-firm website design about 1,600.
- Searches for someone to lead the whole are rare. "Law firm CMO" gets about 50 searches a month.
The question
When a law-firm owner goes looking for marketing help, what do they type into Google, and how often?
The answer says a lot about how owners think about marketing, and about how marketing gets bought: one piece at a time.
By practice area
Searches a month, US, for marketing help in a named practice:
| Practice | Search group | About a month |
|---|---|---|
| Personal injury | personal injury lawyer advertising | 2,900 |
| Personal injury | personal injury attorney SEO | 1,000 |
| Personal injury | personal injury lawyer marketing | 590 |
| Personal injury | lead generation personal injury | 140 |
| Family law | family law SEO | 260 |
| Family law | family law marketing | 140 |
| Estate planning | estate planning marketing | 70 |
| Estate planning | estate planning attorney marketing | 50 |
| Mass tort | mass tort leads | 50 |
| Mass tort | mass tort marketing | 40 |
| Elder law | elder law attorney marketing | 30 |
| Medical malpractice | medical malpractice marketing | 10 |
| Business law | business law firm marketing | too few for Google to count |
Personal injury is the only practice where owners search for marketing help by name in real numbers, and it's the most expensive practice in our research to advertise in. Everywhere else, searches for marketing help rarely name a practice area. A search for business-law firm marketing doesn't register in Google's figures at all.
By the thing being bought
What people search for when they look for a piece of law-firm marketing, a month, US:
| What they want | Search groups | About a month |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | law firm SEO and its wordings; SEO for attorneys and its wordings; SEO for lawyers | 3,600, 2,900, and 720 |
| A website | law firm website design; lawyer and attorney website design | 1,600 and 1,000 |
| Marketing in general | law firm marketing, legal marketing firms | 1,300 |
| An agency | marketing agency for law firms | 880 |
| Paid search | three groups of PPC and Google Ads wordings | about 720, 590, and 320 |
| Leads | lawyer leads | 480 |
| A CRM | law firm CRM | 390 |
The biggest law-specific demand is for SEO, then websites. The searches are for the piece someone wants, and the vendors who sell that piece answer the search.
The word for a strategist
Searches for someone to lead the whole of a firm's marketing are rare. The phrase people search, across every industry, is fractional CMO.
- fractional CMO: about 2,900 a month, across every industry
- law firm CMO: about 50 a month
That's what I do. Fractional CMO for your law firm: in-house marketing without the overhead.
Intake
Two of the larger service searches are about the phone:
- legal answering service: about 720 a month
- legal intake services: about 480 a month
That puts intake close to the paid-search groups in size. A paid call that goes nowhere still cost you the click. Between the first contact and the signed engagement, qualified leads slip away to slow call-backs and to no plan for after hours. I find where your firm loses them, and I train your intake and sales team to sign more of the qualified leads that come in.
AI searches
| Search group | About a month, US |
|---|---|
| chatgpt ads | 14,800, across every industry |
| llm seo | 720 |
| how to rank in chatgpt | 140 |
| chatgpt ads for law firms | too few for Google to count |
| law firm ai visibility | too few for Google to count |
Interest in ChatGPT ads is large, and almost none of it is law-specific in Google's figures yet. I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads, and ChatGPT ads now run as one channel among the others I manage for law firms.
What it means for a firm owner
You'll find vendors for each piece, and no one for the whole. Search for SEO and you'll find SEO companies. Search for a website and you'll find web designers. Each one sells its piece and answers for its piece. Someone still has to decide what the pieces are for, how they fit together, and whether the whole of it is producing signed clients. As your Fractional CMO, I do that, running the marketing for you or building, training, and leading a team your firm owns.
Ask what each piece produces, by the signed client. The searches are for activity: rankings, a site, clicks, leads. The number that tells you whether any of it works is what a signed client costs, channel by channel.
Mid-page assessment
If you've been buying your marketing one piece at a time, your assessment is where we put the pieces side by side. On the call, I'll go through every channel your firm pays for, what each one produces, and what to fix first.
How we ran it
Google Ads Keyword Planner, US: the yearly average of monthly searches, pulled October 27 and 28, 2026. Google gives near-identical wordings one shared figure, so each group is counted once.
Joshua David Little is a Fractional CMO for law-firm owners and the founder of Aquila Law Firm Marketing. He has run his own consulting firm since 2004, and has done hands-on work helping attorneys prepare complex litigation for trial in family law, medical malpractice, personal injury, and unjust enrichment cases. He ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads.