Written by Jorge Argota · Legal Marketing · United States
Morgan and Morgan plans to spend somewhere between $500 million and $600 million on advertising in 2026. One law firm. More than the entire US pizza industry spends in a year on ads. I bring this up not because you should try to compete with that number but because understanding where that money goes and where it doesn’t reveals the exact gaps a mid-size firm can exploit without spending a fraction of it.
John Morgan said on the PBD Podcast that he puts $400 million in and gets $5 billion out. That’s a 12.5x return and at that ratio doubling the budget is the most rational business decision the firm can make. He doesn’t think of advertising as a cost; he thinks of it as an asset class with a predictable yield. The question for the rest of us is what happens to your local market when that kind of budget shows up in your city.
TL;DR
Morgan and Morgan went from $130 million in 2018 to a projected $600 million in 2026. They own 8% of all US legal ad spend by themselves. The top 5 firms in any metro control 50 to 70% of regional advertising and everyone else fights over the scraps. But here’s what I keep telling my clients: 60 to 78% of that mega-firm budget still goes to broadcast TV, which only reaches 22% of viewers now. The streaming audience is wide open and almost nobody in legal is buying it yet.
THE SPEND TRAJECTORY: $130M TO $600M IN 8 YEARS
Sources: PBD Podcast interview, ATRA reports, Taqtics market intelligence. Spot TV alone was $110.7M in 2024; LegalZoom was second at ~$60M.
I want to be clear about the numbers because they get conflated. The $218 million figure from 2024 is tracked ad spend across TV spots and measurable placements. The $350 million figure for 2025 includes digital, billboards, and secondary channels. The $500 to $600 million projection for 2026 is the total marketing operation including sports sponsorships and the firm recently signed deals with the New York Jets (the first NFL law firm partnership in history), the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Philadelphia 76ers, the Miami Heat, WWE, and multiple NASCAR teams. That’s not traditional advertising; that’s brand infrastructure designed to reach people who actively avoid commercials.
THE CTV BLIND SPOT: WHERE THE MONEY ISN’T GOING
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to when I look at the data. Between 60 and 78% of legal advertising budgets still go to broadcast TV and broadcast only reaches about 22% of total viewership in 2026. Streaming platforms command 41% and growing. Legal services account for 6.11% of all local broadcast impressions but only 2.86% of Connected TV impressions. The streaming audience is sitting there almost completely uncontested by the firms that have the money to buy it.
Green = high CTV adoption (opportunity shrinking). Red = low CTV adoption (wide open for mid-market firms).
New York spends $14.5 million a month on legal advertising and only 11% goes to CTV. That means 89% of the budget chases a medium that less than a quarter of the audience watches anymore. If you’re a mid-size PI firm in New York you can reach the streaming audience for a fraction of what broadcast costs because the mega-firms haven’t moved there yet and I don’t think they will until the broadcast contracts expire. Atlanta at 48% is the opposite; early adopters already filled the gap and that window is closing fast.
THE “MORGAN EFFECT”: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY ENTER YOUR CITY
When Morgan and Morgan enters a new market the effect on local firms is immediate. I’ve watched it happen in Richmond, Philadelphia, and multiple Florida metros. Case acquisition costs for competing PI firms rise 30 to 40% within the first 6 months because their broadcast saturation drives up CPM pricing across the entire local TV market and their Google Ads presence inflates auction competition on every high-value keyword in the DMA. If they just entered your city or they’re about to, you need to know this is coming.
The Wrong Response
Match their spend. You cannot outspend a $600M budget. Increasing your broadcast buy when they enter your market is financial suicide because they’ve already locked the premium inventory and you’re bidding on the remnant at inflated rates.
The Right Response
Go where they aren’t. CTV in low-adoption markets. Hyper-local long-tail PPC that targets specific injury types they don’t segment for. Community sponsorships and OOH in the neighborhoods their broadcast can’t reach. They win on volume; you win on precision.
The way I explain it to my clients is simple. The mega-firm playbook is carpet-bombing a market with broadcast awareness. Your playbook is hyper-intent digital capture. When their billboard plants the seed and their TV spot creates the urgency, your exact-match Google Ads campaign and your hyper-local CTV placements need to be there waiting to capture the search that follows. Let them pay for the awareness. You pay for the conversion. The CPC benchmarks page covers the exact keyword architecture for capturing that intent at the practice-area level.
Is Morgan and Morgan in your market?
I track legal ad spend across 210 DMAs. If they’ve entered your city or they’re about to, the channel strategy changes completely. Send me your market and I’ll tell you what the competitive landscape looks like and where the gaps are before you spend anything.
Related: Legal PPC Market Size · Industry CPC Benchmarks · Legal CPC by Practice Area · Most Expensive Keywords
