Is Your Law Firm's Marketing Agency Overcharging You? How to Tell.

Most firms don't suspect their agency because the work looks bad — they suspect it because they can't tell whether it's working. The reports are full of activity, the invoices arrive on time, and yet no one can answer a simple question: what did our last ten signed cases actually cost? That's not proof of wrongdoing. It's a reporting gap — and it's worth closing.

Start with one question

Ask your agency: "Can you tell me our cost per signed case, by channel, for last month?" A partner focused on outcomes should be able to answer with real numbers. If the answer is impressions, rankings or "brand awareness," you're being shown activity metrics, not results — and the true performance is difficult to verify from the reports alone.

Read your last three reports for three phrases

Open your last three monthly reports and search for "signed case," "retained client," or "cost per case." If those phrases never appear, your reporting is measuring the top of the funnel and stopping there — long before the only outcome that pays your firm's bills.

Look for these unexplained gaps

• →Lead reports that don't reconcile with your intake records, with no explanation for the difference.
• →Charges for deliverables you can't confirm were produced on the agreed schedule or scope.
• →"Qualified" leads billed as qualified that were hang-ups, wrong numbers or spam.
• →Growing spend with flat signed-case volume — and no one able to explain the gap.
• →A vendor that won't share account access or the path from lead to signed case.

How to verify it independently

You don't have to fire anyone to get answers. An independent review reconciles your own spend, invoices, lead data and retained matters — from a neutral vantage point — to calculate cost per signed case and surface anything that can't be explained. It doesn't replace your agency; it gives leadership a second, unbiased read on the work.