Most law firm marketing agreements are signed once, filed, and never opened again until something has already gone wrong. That is understandable. It is also the reason so many firms discover, at the worst possible moment, that the website they have paid for every month for four years is not theirs to take.
None of this is an accusation aimed at anyone in particular. Plenty of agencies write fair contracts and hand everything over cleanly. The problem is that you cannot tell which kind you are dealing with from the pitch deck, and the paperwork is where the answer actually lives.
Read these nine before the renewal date
Set aside an hour. Have whoever handles the firm’s operations sit down with the current agreement and work through the list below. If a clause is missing entirely, that is an answer too.
- 1Auto-renewal and the notice windowMost of these agreements renew themselves. The notice window is often 60 or 90 days before the anniversary, which means the decision to leave has to be made months before the contract actually ends. Diary the date the day you sign.
- 2Who the domain is registered toIf the contract is silent on the domain, go and check the registration itself. This is the one asset that cannot be rebuilt from scratch, and it is routinely held in a vendor’s name without anyone at the firm noticing.
- 3What the website is built onA proprietary platform means the site does not leave with you in any usable form. Ask plainly whether the build is on a standard, portable system, and get the answer in writing before you sign.
- 4Content ownership and licenceYou are commissioning practice-area pages and attorney bios. Make sure the agreement assigns the copyright to the firm rather than licensing it back to you for as long as you keep paying.
- 5Ad account ownershipYears of conversion history is what makes a mature ad account cheaper to run than a new one. The firm should be the account owner, with the agency granted manager access.
- 6Data and analytics accessAnalytics, Search Console, call recordings and form submissions. Specify that the firm holds the accounts and that a full export is available on request, not just a monthly PDF.
- 7The fee structure itselfA percentage of ad spend rewards the agency for spending more of your money. A flat fee does not. Neither is automatically wrong, but you should know which incentive you have signed up to.
- 8What is actually promisedDeliverables, not adjectives. How many pages, how many hours, what reporting, on what schedule. If the scope reads like a brochure, it is not a scope.
- 9The offboarding clauseWhat transfers on termination, in how many days, and at what cost. An agency confident in its work writes this clause generously. Read it before you need it.
The fee structure deserves its own conversation
Two models dominate legal marketing. One charges a percentage of what you spend on ads. The other charges a flat monthly fee. Both are legitimate, and neither one makes an agency good or bad. What they do is create different incentives, and you should know which one is pointed at your budget.
| Percentage of ad spend | Flat monthly fee | |
|---|---|---|
| What the agency earns more from | You increasing the budget | Keeping you as a client for longer |
| What happens if results improve | Nothing changes for them unless spend rises | You stay, which is the whole business model |
| Cost predictability | Moves every month with the media budget | The same number every month, budget separately |
| Where the pressure lands | On raising spend at the quarterly review | On showing the work is still worth the retainer |
| Fair to say | Common, legal, and worth understanding before you sign | Easier to compare between vendors |
One number worth knowing before you negotiate
While scanning North Carolina law firm websites for a separate piece of research, we recorded what each site was actually built on. It bears directly on the question of what you could take with you.
Portability is not a guarantee of ownership, and a portable platform in somebody else’s hosting account is still somebody else’s to hand over. It does mean the technical part of a move is usually straightforward, which is not true of a proprietary build.
What to do with bad answers
Do not fire anybody in a temper, and do not sign anything new the same week. Ownership problems are almost always cheaper to fix while the relationship is still working than after it has ended. Move the domain into a registrar account in the firm’s name. Create firm-owned Google accounts and add the agency as a manager rather than an owner. Get the content licence in writing.
Then decide about the relationship separately, from a position where leaving is actually possible. A firm that can leave usually negotiates better terms than one that cannot, whether or not it ever uses the option.
The honest limit
We are a marketing company, not your lawyers. The contract in front of you governs, and somebody at the firm qualified to read it should. Nothing here is legal advice, and we would rather say that plainly than bury it.