How long does law firm marketing take to work? It depends on the channel. SEO takes 3-6 months before you see any movement in rankings, 6-12 months before that movement turns into consistent phone calls, and 12-24 months before the cost per case drops low enough that the investment starts compounding. Google Ads produces traffic within hours but takes 30-90 days of optimization before the cost per lead stabilizes. Local Services Ads are the fastest route to a ringing phone, usually active within 2-5 weeks after a background check, but Google caps your lead volume based on budget and competition. Most firms quit SEO between months 4 and 9, which turns everything they spent into a total loss because the compounding effect they paid to build never gets a chance to kick in.
Seven months into an SEO campaign I inherited from another agency, the managing partner called me and said he was ready to pull the plug because he’d spent $35,000 and signed zero cases from organic search, and when I pulled his Search Console data his impressions had gone from 400 to 11,000 and his main keyword had moved from page nine to page three, the campaign was doing exactly what a seven-month-old campaign is supposed to do but nobody had ever told him that page three at month seven is the step before page one at month twelve.
That firm stuck with it and by month fifteen their organic leads cost less than half of what their Google Ads leads cost, and by month eighteen they cut ad spend by 40% and still signed more cases than the year before. But I’ve also watched firms quit at month six and turn $30,000 in foundation work into a total loss because the compounding phase was three months away and they never got to see it, and they hired a new agency that started the whole clock over from zero.
So that’s the tension with this question, which is that the honest answer depends on whether you’re talking about paid ads that produce traffic in days but stop the second you stop paying, or LSAs that activate in weeks but Google caps your volume, or SEO that takes twelve months to mature but then gets cheaper per case every quarter for as long as you maintain it, and which of those clocks you’re on determines whether “working” means tomorrow or next year.
You’re Five Months In and $25,000 Deep and Your Phone Hasn’t Rung Once From Organic
What happens in the first six months of law firm SEO? The agency is building the foundation: fixing technical issues, restructuring the site architecture, writing practice area pages and supporting content, cleaning up local citations, and starting to earn links from directories and local organizations. During this period the firm will see almost zero leads from organic search. Rankings may move from page ten to page five, impressions in Google Search Console will increase, and long-tail keywords will start appearing, but none of that translates to phone calls yet. This is the most dangerous phase because the firm is paying monthly invoices with no visible return.
You’re five months in and $25,000 deep and the phone hasn’t rung once from organic search and you’re starting to wonder if the whole thing is a scam, and I get it because that’s a rational response to spending money and getting nothing back, but what’s actually happening is that your site is being vetted by an algorithm that intentionally suppresses new or recently-changed legal websites until it’s confident you’re legitimate.
Google treats law firm websites the way a bank treats a new business applying for a commercial loan. Your site is classified as “Your Money or Your Life” content, which means the algorithm applies stricter filters because someone following bad legal advice could suffer real financial or legal harm, and that classification means your site has to earn trust before it earns traffic.
Links from bar associations and local organizations accumulate slowly, content has to prove it keeps visitors on the page instead of bouncing back to Google, and the site has to demonstrate technical competence through speed and security and mobile responsiveness, and all of that takes months to register.
Your Search Console impressions might go from 200 to 4,000 during this period and nobody celebrates because impressions don’t sign retainers, but impressions mean Google is showing your pages in search results even if users aren’t clicking yet, and that visibility is the precursor to everything that comes next. If your agency can show you expanding impressions and keyword positions moving from page eight to page four, the strategy is progressing exactly on schedule even though it feels like nothing is happening.
Somewhere Around Month Seven the Type of Call Changes
When does law firm SEO start producing leads? Between months 6 and 12, the site transitions from ranking for informational queries like “what is a tort” to ranking for commercial intent queries like “car accident lawyer near me.” This shift is when the phone starts ringing with potential clients rather than people looking for free information. Local map rankings typically lag behind organic website rankings by two to four months because they depend more heavily on review velocity and proximity signals. Content written in the first few months reaches its peak ranking potential around months 8-9, contributing to what’s often called the “inflection point.”
Somewhere around month seven the calls change, not the volume necessarily, not at first, but the type. Before month six you might get a handful of calls from people who found a blog post and wanted to ask a quick question, and those calls don’t convert, the person wasn’t looking for a lawyer, they were looking for an answer.
After month six the search queries driving traffic shift from informational terms to commercial intent terms, which means the person typing the search is ready to hire someone, and that shift is when the investment starts converting to revenue even though the volume is still modest.
Local map rankings almost always trail behind your organic website rankings by two to four months, which means the map pack visibility that drives the highest call volume for local firms is one of the last things to show up even when everything else is working. Review velocity matters here more than almost anything, so a firm that started generating reviews in month one sees map results around month nine while a firm that waited until month four is looking at month twelve or beyond.
A blog post published in month one of the campaign doesn’t hit its peak ranking potential until month eight or nine, which is one of those facts that sounds like an excuse when you hear it at the beginning but makes complete sense when you watch it happen. Content ages into authority the same way a new associate ages into competence, the work was done months ago but the recognition catches up later, and this maturation lag is why SEO results compound instead of arriving on a predictable schedule.
Month Fourteen Is Where the Math Starts to Feel Unfair in Your Favor
What happens after 12 months of law firm SEO? The cost per case drops significantly because organic traffic increases while the monthly retainer stays roughly the same. Content published during the foundation phase is now fully mature and driving consistent traffic. New content ranks much faster because the site’s authority is established. Competitors trying to reach the same position now have to spend two to three times what the firm spent to catch up. This is the compounding phase where the initial investment starts generating returns that accelerate over time rather than arriving in a straight line.
SEO at month fourteen starts acting like a rental property where the mortgage payment stays fixed but the rental income keeps going up. Your monthly retainer to the agency is still $5,000 or $7,000 or whatever you’re paying, but the organic leads that cost you $800 each during the inflection period now cost $300 each since the volume tripled while the spend didn’t change, and that compression in cost per case is the compounding effect that every firm pays the first twelve months to unlock but most firms walk away from during the valley before it ever kicks in.
By this point a competitor trying to displace you from page one has to spend two to three times what you spent over the last fourteen months to get where you already are, and they still have to survive their own twelve-month foundation period before they can compete. Your established domain means new content you publish starts ranking within weeks instead of months because Google already trusts the site, which shortens the feedback loop and lets you expand into adjacent practice areas or geographic markets without restarting the clock from zero.
Week One of Google Ads Costs $103 Per Lead and Week Twelve Costs $52
How long does it take for law firm PPC to become profitable? Google Ads produces traffic within hours of launching a campaign, but the cost per lead in week one is typically double what it will be after 90 days of optimization. During the first 30 days, Google’s algorithm is in a “learning phase” where it tests different ad variations, bidding strategies, and audience segments. Cost per click and cost per acquisition are at their highest volatility. By months two and three, negative keyword lists are refined, conversion rates improve as the campaign zeros in on high-intent search times and geographies, and the cost per lead stabilizes. Data from actual campaigns shows conversion rates improving from roughly 14% to 36% and cost per conversion dropping by nearly half over a 90-day period.
Week one of a Google Ads campaign might show a 13.9% conversion rate at $103 per lead, and week twelve of that same campaign running the same budget in the same market shows 36% at $52, and the difference is that the algorithm spent those twelve weeks learning which combinations of keywords, ad copy, time of day, and device type produce people who actually call instead of people who click and bounce. That learning period is real and it costs real money that doesn’t come back.
That first month of PPC spend is tuition, not marketing. You’re paying Google to figure out that “free lawyer” and “lawyer salary” and “how to become a lawyer” are searches that drain your budget without producing a single potential client, and each of those negative keywords you add based on actual data from actual wasted clicks makes the campaign more efficient for the next month, which is why PPC campaigns that have been running for six months almost always outperform campaigns that just launched even if the new campaign has a bigger budget.
A Background Check and a Star Rating Are the Only Things Between You and Leads Tomorrow
How fast do Local Services Ads work for law firms? LSAs are the fastest paid channel in legal marketing, typically producing leads within days of activation. The delay is the 2-5 week background check and verification process required for the “Google Screened” badge. Once active, LSAs appear at the absolute top of search results, above traditional PPC ads and the map pack. However, lead volume is capped by Google based on budget and local competition density, and visibility is highly sensitive to star ratings: a firm with a 4.9 rating gets significantly more impression share than a firm with a 4.3, even if the 4.3 firm has a higher budget.
A background check that takes two to five weeks and a star rating above 4.5, that’s the entire barrier between your firm and leads arriving tomorrow, and one of those you control and one you sit and wait for. Once LSAs are active they appear above everything else on the search results page, above the regular ads, above the map pack, above the organic results, which is why they’re the fastest route to a ringing phone for any firm that qualifies.
Google caps your LSA volume though, and this is the part most agencies leave out when they pitch it as a standalone strategy. Your budget determines a ceiling and so does the number of verified lawyers competing in your area code, so LSAs are almost never the whole answer for aggressive growth, they’re the fast channel that funds the slow channel while the slow channel builds.
And your star rating isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s the throttle that controls your visibility, so a firm that drops from 4.9 to 4.3 after a few bad reviews can see their lead flow cut by more than half even though they didn’t change their budget or their ad settings.
The Month Six Partner Meeting Where Someone Asks Where the Cases Are
Why do most law firms quit SEO too early? Because the period between months 4 and 9, known as the “Valley of Death,” creates maximum financial and psychological pressure with minimum visible results. The firm has typically invested $20,000-$40,000 by this point with no proportional increase in caseload. The agency reports on leading indicators like impression growth and keyword movement, but partners want to see signed retainers. Firing the agency at month 8 turns the entire investment into a loss because the compounding effect that would have materialized in months 12-18 never gets a chance to develop. Many firms cycle through three agencies in two years, each time resetting the sandbox clock and re-entering the foundation phase.
Month six partner meeting, $30,000 spent across invoices, and the managing partner opens with “so where are the cases from this SEO thing” and the honest answer is that there aren’t any yet and there won’t be for another three to six months, and that answer goes over about as well as you’d expect. Everything in the agency’s report, the impression growth, the keyword positions moving from page six to page three, the new pages indexed, all of it looks like activity without output to someone who measures success in signed retainers.
Firing the agency at month eight doesn’t save you $5,000 a month, it turns the $40,000 you already spent into a complete write-off. Links that were building authority stop accumulating, content that was aging into relevance stops maturing, and the algorithmic momentum that was three months away from producing your first organic cases flatlines. You didn’t save money, you paid full price for a foundation and then demolished it before the building went up, and that $40,000 becomes the most expensive marketing decision the firm ever made.
And then what usually happens is the firm hires a different agency three months later, and that agency starts from scratch with a new technical audit and new content and new link building, and the sandbox clock resets since the new domain structure or the new site design triggers another probationary period with Google, and the firm is right back at month zero having now spent $55,000 total with nothing to show for any of it. I’ve seen firms cycle through three agencies in two years doing exactly this.
When Someone Asks How Long They’re Really Asking How Long for Their Practice Area
Do different practice areas have different marketing timelines? Yes, and the differences are dramatic. Criminal defense operates on a 3-9 month SEO timeline with extremely high-urgency clients who search from mobile and call the first number they see. Family law takes 6-12 months and relies heavily on educational content that captures clients early in the research phase. Personal injury is the longest timeline at 12-24 months because it’s the most competitive legal vertical with cost per click often exceeding $300. Estate planning takes 6-18 months but with lower competition and smaller budgets. Business litigation takes 12-18 months and depends on thought leadership rather than local search volume.
When someone asks me how long marketing takes what they’re really asking is how long for their practice area in their market, because a criminal defense firm in a mid-size city and a personal injury firm in Los Angeles are operating on timelines that have almost nothing in common even though both of them are paying an agency to “do SEO.”
A DUI client at 2 AM is searching from a holding cell or a family member’s phone and they’re not reading blog posts or comparing five firms, they’re calling whoever shows up first, which means criminal defense SEO is a sprint where local map rankings and LSAs matter more than long-form content, and the timeline to meaningful leads can be as short as three to four months in a market without heavy competition since the algorithm rewards mobile-optimized, click-to-call experiences and the sales cycle is measured in minutes.
Personal injury is the marathon that nobody signed up for. You’re competing against firms that spend $50,000 a month on marketing when your budget is $5,000, and in markets like New York or Los Angeles the cost per click for “car accident lawyer” can exceed $1,500.
A firm at the lower budget tier in a major metro should honestly expect zero organic results for twelve months because the competition density is that high. Estate planning sits at the opposite end, lower competition, lower urgency, answer-seeking clients who research for months before hiring, and a $2,000-$3,000 monthly budget can achieve meaningful visibility in six to eight months in most markets because nobody else is investing seriously.
Most Firms Set a Marketing Budget in January and Don’t Touch It for Twelve Months Which Is Exactly Wrong
What is a blended marketing strategy for a law firm? A blended strategy uses paid channels (PPC and LSAs) to generate immediate cash flow that subsidizes the long-term SEO investment. In months 1-6, the budget is weighted roughly 70% paid and 30% SEO. As organic traffic begins producing leads around months 6-12, the split shifts to 50/50. By months 12+, the budget reverses to 30% paid and 70% SEO because organic leads now arrive at a fraction of the paid cost. Data from PPC campaigns (which keywords convert to cases) feeds directly into the SEO content strategy, and appearing in all three positions on page one (LSA, PPC ad, and organic result) creates an authority signal that increases click-through rates on every listing.
Most firms set a marketing budget in January and don’t touch the channel allocation for twelve months, which is exactly the wrong approach because the ratio between paid and organic should shift as the SEO matures. Months one through six should weight roughly 70% toward paid channels that produce immediate cases and 30% toward SEO that’s building the foundation, and then by month twelve the ratio should reverse because organic is now producing leads at a fraction of the paid cost and the paid budget becomes a precision tool for competitive terms instead of the firm’s primary lead source.
When a firm shows up in the LSA section at the top of the page and the PPC ad section in the middle and the organic results below, the user sees the same name three times before they’ve scrolled past the first screen, and at that point you’re not one option among many, you’re the only firm the searcher remembers.
Data suggests that this triple presence increases click-through rates on all three listings, the brand becomes ubiquitous and the user perceives the firm as the market leader, which is why the blended approach isn’t just a bridge strategy for surviving the SEO foundation period, it’s the permanent architecture for total search dominance that the firms at the top of every competitive market are already running.
Want to know where your firm is on this timeline?
Send me your current marketing setup and I’ll tell you which phase you’re in, whether the leading indicators match where you should be, and how the timeline maps to your specific practice area and market. If you’re in the Valley of Death and the numbers are actually progressing, I’ll show you the data that proves it. If the numbers aren’t progressing, I’ll tell you that instead.
