— The system
A playbook runs once. An operating system runs weekly.
Six disciplines sit under every account we manage: measuring against cost per signed case, lead forms that qualify before your team picks up, accounts owned by you from day one, a channel mix matched to your practice area, optimization fed by your intake team, and a written brief from a person every Friday. The parameters change by vertical. The six layers don’t.
Cadence
Weekly briefs, monthly reviews, and lead-quality tagging inside 24–48 hours.
1/wk
Written brief, every Friday
1/mo
30-minute strategy call
Commitments
Day-one ownership and month-to-month terms, on every account.
Day 1
Accounts in your name
0
Lockups or surcharges
The stack we run
Google Ads
Google Local Services
Meta Business Manager
GA4
GTM
HubSpot
CallRail
Microsoft Clarity
AgencyAnalytics
— By Practice Area
Most agencies have a launch checklist, not a system.
The difference shows up around day 90. Once setup is finished and there’s nothing left to configure, the only question is whether the campaign keeps getting smarter or simply keeps running.
01
A template borrowed from other industries.
The same launch checklist applied to plumbers, chiropractors and law firms. A negative keyword list reused for five years. Lead form copied from the last client. Reports generated automatically. Nothing in the operating model is specific to legal, and your CPL pays for the learning curve.
02
No signed-case feedback loop.
Optimization runs against leads rather than signed cases. Your intake team knows which leads were worth taking, but that judgment never reaches next week’s bidding. The same low-fit lead types keep arriving, and lead volume gets reported as though it were the objective.
01
Accounts that belong to the agency
Google Ads inside their MCC, Meta Business Manager under their name, CallRail on their account, HubSpot behind their API key. When the relationship ends you leave with none of it — no conversion history, no audience lists, no dashboards. That isn’t a partnership.
— What we say on the intake call
"Your last agency had a launch checklist and called it a system. What matters is month four - when setup is long finished and the campaign is either learning from your intake team or it isn't."
— Six layers
The same six under every account.
Each layer runs identically across every vertical and channel we handle, with vertical-specific parameters slotted in. The short versions on each practice-area page summarize what’s below.
01
Measurement
Signed cases are the scoreboard.
Cost per lead is the input we manage. Cost per signed case is what we’re judged on, and it frames every campaign decision, weekly brief and monthly review. In legal funding, where the endpoint is funded deals rather than retainers, the equivalent is fundable-lead rate.
It only works with a feedback signal. Every lead gets a HubSpot lifecycle stage within 24–48 hours — signable, not signable, or lost with a reason. Without that, neither of us can see the metric that actually matters.
Cost per signed case
HubSpot lifecycle stages
24–48hr tagging
02
Qualification
The lead form does the screening.
Every form is built like an intake form: conditional question logic, case-type screening, jurisdiction checks, qualification thresholds and SMS verification. Leads below threshold are declined or referred out. Leads above it reach your team with the full taxonomy attached.
The qualifiers change by vertical. Personal injury screens at-fault and case type. Investment fraud sets loss thresholds, usually $100K–$250K, and captures broker names. Family law checks jurisdiction and positioning. Probate routes on relationship to the decedent. Legal funding filters case type — no workers’ comp, no class actions — and checks state compliance.
Replacing a three-field form with a conditional one typically cuts intake call volume 40–60% and doubles the signed-case rate, because the filtering happens before anyone picks up the phone.
Conditional logic
SMS verification
Case-type taxonomy
Below-threshold routing
03
Ownership
The accounts are yours from day one.
Google Ads, Local Services, Meta Business Manager, GA4, the GTM container, HubSpot, CallRail and the reporting dashboard are all created in your firm’s name at onboarding. We hold manager access, never ownership.
If we part ways, you keep the campaigns, audience lists, conversion history and dashboards. Nothing needs rebuilding. Most clients never test this — but the option is what keeps the relationship honest.
We’ve declined an onboarding over it, when a prospective client wanted accounts held under our MCC to simplify billing. The administrative convenience isn’t worth the conflict it creates later.
Day-1 ownership
Manager access only
Full data portability
04
Channel mix
The mix is chosen per vertical.
What produces signed cases in personal injury doesn’t work in investment fraud, and neither suits probate or legal funding.
Personal injury runs LSA-led, with Meta for conversion rate and PPC on long-tail intent. Investment fraud is PPC-led with Meta for awareness, since LSA has no securities category. Probate is LSA-dominant, PPC covering estate planning sub-niches. Family law splits PPC by positioning — affordable alternative versus premium consultation — and adds Meta for case-type targeting. Business law runs PPC and LSA with carve-outs across M&A, commercial litigation and employment. Legal funding is PPC-only, with multi-brand orchestration where operators run parallel brands.
So an intake call ends with a specific recommendation, not all three channels. We’ve declined to launch channels clients asked for. Covering everything isn’t the same as covering the right thing.
Vertical-appropriate
No over-recommendation
Stage-of-growth aware
05
Optimization
Your intake team trains the campaign.
Every form is built like an intake form: conditional question logic, case-type screening, jurisdiction checks, qualification thresholds and SMS verification. Leads below threshold are declined or referred out. Leads above it reach your team with the full taxonomy attached.
The qualifiers change by vertical. Personal injury screens at-fault and case type. Investment fraud sets loss thresholds, usually $100K–$250K, and captures broker names. Family law checks jurisdiction and positioning. Probate routes on relationship to the decedent. Legal funding filters case type — no workers’ comp, no class actions — and checks state compliance.
Replacing a three-field form with a conditional one typically cuts intake call volume 40–60% and doubles the signed-case rate, because the filtering happens before anyone picks up the phone.
Weekly bid refinement
Category & geo trimming
Qualified-only signal to Meta
06
Reporting
A person writes it. Every Friday.
A few hundred words on what moved and why — channel by channel, signed-case attribution where the data supports it, and operational notes on anything that happened: LSA rank changes, Meta rejections, intake routing issues, account problems we caught and fixed. No auto-generated PDFs and no dashboard exports with placeholder commentary.
Monthly, a 30-minute review of the metric that matters for your vertical, what’s driving it, and what we’d change next. Between the two, the dashboard is live in your name around the clock.
Weekly written briefs
Monthly reviews
Live dashboard
— In context
Same layers, different parameters.
What changes between accounts is how each layer is configured – how a form is built for investment fraud versus probate, how the mix is balanced for PI versus business law.
By practice area
Seven vertical playbooks.
The same launch checklist applied to plumbers, chiropractors and law firms. A negative keyword list reused for five years. Lead form copied from the last client. Reports generated automatically. Nothing in the operating model is specific to legal, and your CPL pays for the learning curve.
Personal Injury
Investment Fraud
Criminal Defense
Probate
Family Law
Business Law
Legal Funding
By channel
Three channel specializations.
Bid strategy, form architecture, optimization signal, audience controls and the anchor case study for each.
Google PPC
Google LSA
Meta Ads
— In context
True on every account, from the first week.
These are operational defaults rather than selling points. We’d decline an engagement before carving an exception into any of them.
Ownership
Day 1
Accounts in your name
Google Ads, LSA, Meta Business Manager, GA4, GTM, HubSpot, CallRail, AgencyAnalytics. We’re a manager, never an owner.
Contract
M-to-M
Month to month
No lockup, no cancellation fee, no per-channel surcharge. One plan or the other, never both.
Reporting
1/wk
Written brief every Friday
From a person. Channel breakdown, signed-case attribution and notes on what happened that week.
Review
30min
Monthly strategy call
Cost-per-signed-case trend, what’s driving it, what we’d change. Dashboard live in your name in between.
— The difference
A different posture on your account.
| What matters | Typical agency | PPC for Law Firms |
|---|---|---|
| The “system” | A launch checklist, run once. | Six layers that run weekly. Setup is the smallest part. |
| Primary metric | CPL, CPC, impressions. | Cost per signed case — or cost per fundable lead in funding. |
| Lead quality | A lead counts as a win. No signal reaches the algorithm. | 24–48hr tagging feeding weekly bid, geo and category decisions. |
| Account ownership | Held in their MCC. You leave with nothing. | Yours from day one. Full data portability. |
| Reporting | An auto-generated PDF of screenshots. | Weekly written brief, monthly call, live dashboard. |
| Channel advice | All three channels, for everyone. | The mix your vertical needs, and nothing beyond it. |
| Contracts | 12-month lockup with cancellation fees. | Month to month. We earn it or you leave. |
| Who runs it | An outsourced specialist you never meet. | The person on your call is the person in your account. |