What drives the price for a law firm
Two firms on the same high street can need different monthly effort. The main variables:
- Practice-area competition: conveyancing in a busy city fights harder than a niche employment offering in a smaller town.
- Number of practice areas and offices: each area you want to rank for needs substantial pages; multi-office firms need consistent listings per location.
- Starting condition: thin "our services" pages, weak solicitor profiles, or inconsistent directory listings add clean-up before growth work.
- Compliance overhead: accurate, non-misleading copy reviewed by the firm takes more care than generic trade content, and that time belongs in the scope.
Monthly retainers vs project work
A monthly retainer matches how legal SEO compounds: practice-area content, reviews (handled carefully), citations and profile activity build month by month. The retainer should list deliverables plainly: pages written or improved, directory alignment, ranking reports by practice area, and enquiry tracking where possible.
Project work (a website rebuild, a set of practice-area pages, a profile tidy) can unblock a stuck firm. Alone, it rarely holds positions against competitors who keep publishing and earning reviews. Treat projects as foundations, not as a permanent substitute for ongoing work.
Pricing models to treat carefully
Pay-on-results offers in legal marketing often define "results" as rankings for soft or branded terms, or positions measured from a convenient postcode. That structure rewards speed over durability and is a poor fit for regulated publicity standards that demand accuracy.
Very cheap retainers usually mean templated pages that could describe any firm in any town. Those pages rarely rank for competitive conveyancing or family searches, and they can create more compliance risk than value if claims are vague or overstated.
What to ask before you instruct anyone
Ownership and compliance answers should be clear on the first call. A free ranking audit from Azizi Technologies benchmarks your firm against local rivals and returns a fixed monthly quote with no lock-in, so partners can weigh fee against evidenced gap rather than a sales slide.
- What will you deliver each month, named and in writing?
- Will rankings be reported by practice area across our catchment, not one keyword?
- How do you handle SRA-compliant publicity and review requests?
- Who owns the content, profiles and listings if we end the agreement?
- Is there a lock-in, and how does termination work?