Choosing a DUI lawyer marketing agency comes down to nine questions, and the most important one is whether they already work with a competitor in your county. We are an agency in this space, so read this with that in mind. The questions below are the ones we would want asked of us, including the two we find uncomfortable.
Ask whether they represent another traffic or DUI firm in your county, and get the answer in the contract.Three Map Pack slots means two clients in one market cannot both win.
Require a case study from a defense practice specifically, with a tool and a date attached to every number.Personal injury marketing is a different discipline; a PI case study does not transfer.
Confirm you own the site, domain, content, and Google profile if the relationship ends.Proprietary-platform builds mean you are renting your own web presence.
Most guidance on hiring a marketing agency is written for businesses where a customer researches for weeks and the product is broadly interchangeable. A DUI practice is neither. Your client decides in days, often at night, under real stress, and the thing they are buying is not interchangeable at all.
That changes what competence looks like. An agency that is excellent at ecommerce may have no idea that a license deadline drives the entire search pattern in your vertical, or that arrest-hour ad scheduling is the cheapest inventory in the account. Those are not exotic insights, but they are specific, and specificity is what you are actually hiring.
The Map Pack holds three businesses, so two clients in one county are competing for the same ground. Worth asking directly, and worth having the answer written into the contract rather than just said on a call.
Not a law firm generally. A defense practice specifically. PI marketing is a different discipline with different economics. If every case study is from another vertical, you are their experiment.
Every performance claim should have a tool and a date attached. "We tripled their traffic" is not a claim, it is a mood. "1,689 ranking keywords per Semrush as of 2026" is a claim you can check.
Ask for the complete list. Schema projects, content per page, reputation management, dashboard licenses, and setup fees are where a $1,200 quote becomes $3,500 by month three without anyone lying.
A percentage means the agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not it produces cases. Not disqualifying, but you should know the incentive you are agreeing to.
The answer should be you, on all four, with no exceptions. Agencies that build on proprietary platforms are renting you your own web presence, and you find out at the worst possible moment.
Push for specifics. If the answer is impressions, keyword positions, and 'domain authority', the engagement will be judged on numbers that do not pay your rent. It should show tracked calls and form fills by source.
Many agencies sell with a senior strategist and deliver with an offshore content mill and a junior account manager. Neither is inherently wrong, but you should know before you sign, not in month four.
The most revealing question on the list. An agency that has never turned down a prospect either has no standards or has never seen a market it could not win, and only one of those is possible.
Guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls Google's index. An agency guaranteeing a top spot is either guaranteeing it for a phrase nobody searches, or they are going to explain later why the guarantee did not apply. Most state bars also take a dim view of guarantee-shaped marketing claims generally.
Results in thirty days. Profile work can move in four to eight weeks. Organic rankings on competitive charge terms take three to six months minimum. A thirty-day organic promise means either paid traffic relabelled, or someone who has not done this in a competitive market.
Proprietary technology. Occasionally real, usually a dashboard with a logo on it. Ask what it does that Search Console and a spreadsheet do not, and whether you keep access to the underlying data if you leave.
A good agency spends most of a first call asking questions rather than presenting. They want to know your county, your case mix, your average case value, what you have tried, and who you think is beating you. They pull real numbers for your market before proposing anything, and they show you those numbers even if the numbers are discouraging.
The tell is whether they will say no. An agency that has looked at your market, concluded it is not worth entering at your budget, and told you so, has just given you more value than one that sold you a program. If every conversation ends in a proposal, that is information about the agency, not about your market.
Since this post is published by an agency, here are our own answers to the nine. We take one firm per county, contractually. Our defense case study is a Virginia traffic and criminal practice we have run since 2013, with every figure sourced on the results page. Nothing is billed on top of the monthly program except the website build and Google Ads management, both explained on the pricing page. Ad management is a flat fee. You own the site, domain, content, and profile. Month-six reporting is calls and form fills by source. You speak to Michael, who does the work. And we will tell you not to hire us when your county is taken or your market cannot support the spend.
Book a call and put them to us directly. If the answers do not satisfy you, you have lost fifteen minutes and gained a checklist for the next agency.
Family-owned since 1999 · 27 years marketing law firms · Washougal, WA