By: Cassidy Lewis
A law firm owner recently asked me a question that I imagine many other law firm owners have asked themselves:
“How can I tell if a marketing agency is actually good before I hire them?”
My answer?
You can’t.
I know. It’s not exactly the reassurance you were looking for.
The truth is that even after years of managing marketing vendors, reviewing proposals, sitting through sales presentations, and analyzing reports, I cannot guarantee that an agency will perform well before we hire it.
I have seen impressive presentations from agencies that ultimately underperformed. I have also worked with vendors who were not particularly impressive during the sales process but turned out to be excellent partners.
What I have learned, however, is that there are questions you can ask that make it much harder for a bad agency to hide.
More importantly, there are things you can do before signing a contract that make managing the relationship much easier once the work begins.
Let me start by saying that I am a big believer in marketing agencies. The right agency can accelerate a law firm’s growth in ways that would be difficult, expensive, or incredibly time-consuming to accomplish internally.
But just like employees, agencies need expectations, accountability, and leadership.
Here are 10 questions I would ask before hiring one.
1. Who owns the ad accounts, creative, website, domain, analytics, and data?
The answer should be you. It should not be the agency, and it should not be the agency’s “proprietary platform.”
I would ask this question first because it determines how painful it will be to leave if the relationship goes south. If the agency owns your Google Ads account, you lose your account history when you leave. If your vendor owns your creative you will never be able to use those commercials again.
A good agency will not flinch at this question. They are working to build your brand and know that that can happen with or without their team.
2. What work will actually be completed every month?
“SEO” is not an answer. Neither is “ongoing optimization.”
What, specifically, will the agency do? How many pages will be written? How many links will be built? How many hours will be spent on your account? What will be reported, and how often? Are monthly meetings included, or are they “extra”?
Here is the part I wish someone had told me before I hired my first vendor: whatever the answer is, put it in the contract. If you were promised market exclusivity, it belongs in the contract. If you were promised monthly reporting, it belongs in the contract. The salesperson who says “yes” to every request is rarely the person who will be doing the work. Putting your expectations in writing is the only way to avoid an uncomfortable “but the salesperson said…” conversation six months from now.
3. Who is doing the work?
Ask which departments are in-house, which are outsourced, and which complete their work overseas.
There is nothing automatically wrong with outsourced work. There is something wrong with finding out because an issue popped up.
This question matters even more when an agency is selling you something outside of what it is known for. If a company has specialized in PPC for twelve years and now wants to be your radio buyer, too, I want to know a few things. How many people are on the new team? Did the company hire people with real experience, or did it move current employees into the new department? Does the team have the right certifications? Is the “new department” actually a third-party company the agency contracted last quarter?
I understand the appeal of working with fewer vendors; it can make your life a lot easier. Just make sure you are getting a specialist and not a side project.
4. What happens if leads increase but profitable cases do not?
More leads do not automatically mean better marketing. Sometimes they just mean that intake has more people to call and complain about.
As someone who also manages an intake team, I say this with love.
Ask the agency how it defines success. If the answer is clicks, impressions, or lead volume, push further. You want an agency that is willing to look at signed cases and case value with you, even when those numbers are less flattering. You also want to know what it will do when lead quality drops. Will it change its buy, targeting or adjust keywords? Or will it send you a report showing that your cost per lead went down and call it a win?
5. What will I pay outside of the monthly fee?
Ask about content, links, landing pages, call tracking, software, creative, and the mysterious “special projects.”
The monthly retainer is rarely the whole picture. Ask for a list of everything that could be billed on top of it, and ask what a typical client of your size actually spends in a year. Then, as you may have guessed, put it in the contract.
6. How many firms do you work with in my market and practice area?
Yes, you should ask.
If you were promised exclusivity, define what that means. Does it cover your city, your county, or your entire media market? Does it cover personal injury broadly, or only car accidents? An agency running SEO for you and for the firm across the street is competing against itself, and you should get to decide whether you are comfortable with that.
7. What does a bad month look like?
I am less interested in how an agency explains success than in how it communicates when something is not working.
Every agency will have a bad month. Algorithms change, competitors increase their TV spend, and campaigns fall flat. That is marketing. What I want to know is who will tell me, how quickly they will tell me, and what the plan will be.
Do not ask for guarantees. Ask for transparency. Remember that a pretty dashboard is not transparency.
8. Can I speak with both a large and a small client?
This is not my idea- it belongs to my boss Jim Hurley.
References should be a regular part of your vendor selection process, but I would be intentional about which references you request.
Ask for one large client and one small client. Ideally, both will have been with the agency long enough to discuss what the relationship looks like beyond the honeymoon phase. Agencies will treat their higher paying clients the best. I want to know how well they work with smaller accounts also.
I want to know what the agency does well, where it struggles, and how it has handled challenges.
Ask how often they communicate with their account manager, whether deadlines are met, if the agency is proactive with new ideas or whether the client has to drive every conversation.
Most importantly, ask whether they would hire the agency again.
You would be surprised how much you can learn when you stop asking people whether they like their vendor and start asking what it is actually like to work with them. (And when the call is over, send them a bottle of wine as a thank-you.)
9. Will you collaborate with my other marketing partners?
Marketing is fragmented. Your digital agency may not manage your television advertising. Your public relations team may have nothing to do with your PPC campaigns. Your community marketing efforts may be handled internally.
But your brand is not fragmented. Your brand has one voice, one identity, and one set of organizational goals.
I have worked with a digital vendor that refused to meet with our other marketing vendors. That made collaboration unnecessarily difficult.
Sometimes collaboration is as simple as ensuring that the messaging in a television commercial is consistent with the messaging on a landing page. Other times, it means identifying opportunities to support SEO through public relations, sponsorships, or community initiatives.
The point is that your marketing channels should not operate as though they are competing businesses.
Before hiring an agency, ask whether it is willing to participate in collaboration meetings when appropriate. And yes, if you expect that participation, include it in your agreement.
One final thought
There is no perfect agency.
There is no questionnaire that can guarantee results, no reference call that will uncover every potential issue, and no contract that can replace good management.
The best agency relationships I have experienced have been partnerships in which both sides understood their responsibilities. The agency brings expertise, execution, and recommendations. The law firm brings business objectives, access to meaningful data, timely communication, and accountability.
You need both.
I also believe law firm owners should remember that hiring an agency does not eliminate the need for someone inside the firm to manage marketing. Someone still needs to understand the firm’s goals, review performance, challenge recommendations, and connect the agency’s work to actual business results.
That person does not necessarily need to be a chief marketing officer, but someone needs to own that responsibility.
So, can you really know whether an agency is good before you hire it?
No.
But you can ask better questions, establish better expectations, and create a relationship in which performance is easier to evaluate and problems are harder to hide.
I will take that over a pretty dashboard any day.
About the Author
Cassidy Lewis
Cassidy Lewis leads PILMMA Marketing Roundtables throughout the year, bringing practical, real-world marketing insights to members. She is the Chief Marketing Officer at Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers and, in early 2025, launched The CMO Academy, an on-demand course and mentoring program for in-house marketers. She shares her expertise with PILMMA members through roundtables and PILMMA events.
