How to market a new law firm: a 90-day launch guide

Strategy13 min readReviewed 11 September 2026

Two decisions cost new firms the most: spending on ads before the website converts and tracking exists, and waiting for a perfect website before starting reviews and referral relationships. Both are sequencing errors, not budget errors.

Our marketing for new and startup law firms page sets out the broad shape of the first 90 days in three 30-day blocks: foundations, then SEO and ads, then referrals and reviews. That’s the right order at a glance, but a principal three weeks into a launch doesn’t need the broad shape, they need to know exactly what to do this week and what can safely wait until next month. This guide breaks those three blocks into weekly phases and answers the two questions that actually determine whether a launch works: what do you do with no reviews and no referral network, and what sequencing mistakes cost the most time and budget.

Before week 1: the decisions marketing can’t undo later

A handful of choices made before the first dollar of marketing spend will constrain everything afterwards, and they’re expensive to reverse:

• The firm’s name. A name that describes the practice or is genuinely distinctive is easier to rank, easier to remember and easier to build a brand around than another surname-and-partners. Check it isn’t confusable with an established local firm before you commit, our law firm branding guide covers the naming trade-offs.
• The domain. A .com.au signals an Australian practice and carries eligibility requirements you’ll need to meet anyway. Register it in the firm’s own name, not an agency’s or a web developer’s.
• The phone number. Pick one and keep it. Changing it later means updating every directory listing you’ve built, and inconsistent numbers actively harm local search visibility.
• Where you’ll actually be. Your verified address influences local rankings, and a virtual office you don’t genuinely occupy breaches Google’s guidelines. Decide early whether you’re a storefront listing or a service-area business.
• Which practice area you lead with. A new firm targeting five practice areas at once ranks for none. Pick the one you most want more of, build for it, and add the others later.

Weeks 1-2: the foundations nothing else can work without

Before any spend goes to Google Ads or content, three things need to exist and be measurable: a website that doesn’t embarrass a first-time visitor, a Google Business Profile that’s fully claimed and verified, and conversion tracking wired into both so every call and form submission from day one is captured. Skipping tracking is the single most common early mistake, firms that launch without it spend their first month unable to say which channel, if any, is actually working. Set up call tracking and form tracking before the site even goes live if possible; retrofitting analytics after a launch means the first month of data is simply gone.

Get the Google Business Profile category, service area, business description and opening hours exactly right in week one, not "close enough for now." An incomplete profile is one of the more common reasons a genuinely good local business fails to show in the map pack against competitors with a thinner offering but a properly filled-out listing, a point covered in depth in our Google Business Profile guide for law firms. Start verification immediately, too: postcard verification can take one to two weeks, and it’s the sort of delay that quietly pushes a launch back if it isn’t started on day one.

Weeks 3-4: launch the website and start the review process, even imperfectly

Resist the urge to wait for a "perfect" website before going live. A clean, credible, fast-loading site that clearly states what you do and how to contact you beats a beautiful site that’s still six weeks from finished, because every week without a working site is a week of zero enquiries. Our website design best practices guide covers what actually needs to be right at launch, clear contact paths, mobile performance, and credibility signals like your qualifications and practice areas front and centre, versus what can be refined later, like a full case-study library or a blog archive.

This is also when the review process needs to start, not in month three once you "have enough clients to bother." Every matter closed from week three onward is a potential review, and a new firm’s biggest structural disadvantage against an established competitor is review volume, so the gap needs to start closing from the first closed matter, not after an arbitrary threshold. Set up a simple, consistent ask: a follow-up email or text with a direct review link sent at the natural close of a matter, every time, without exception. Our guide to getting more Google reviews covers the exact wording and timing that gets the best response rate without feeling like a hard sell.

Week three is also the right time to tell everyone you already know. A short, personal message to former colleagues, past clients you’re permitted to contact, and your professional network announcing what the firm does and who it helps is free, takes an afternoon, and for many new practices produces the first month’s matters entirely on its own. Check your obligations to any former employer about client contact before you send anything.

Weeks 5-8: local SEO basics and initial content

With the website and Google Business Profile live and tracking correctly, this phase is about making the firm findable for the searches its future clients are actually running. That means local SEO for law firms fundamentals: a properly structured practice-area page for each service you offer, a location page if you serve a specific area like Sydney or Melbourne, consistent business name, address and phone details across every online listing, and two or three pieces of genuinely useful content answering the specific questions your ideal client is already searching.

Content doesn’t need to be extensive at this stage, one well-written page answering "what does a [practice area] lawyer actually do for me" outperforms five thin, generic pages, an approach our content marketing for law firms guide expands on. Claim your state Law Society directory listing in this window too: it’s free, it carries genuine professional verification, and it’s one of the most credible early citations available to a new firm.

This is also a sensible point to start light activity on social media, not as a lead-generation channel yet, but to give a prospective client somewhere to check that the firm is real and active when they inevitably look you up before calling. Our social media marketing for law firms guide covers what’s actually worth posting at this stage versus what can wait.

Weeks 9-12: test a paid channel now the foundations can support it

Only once the website converts reasonably well and tracking confirms it, start testing Google Ads with a tight, deliberately small budget on your highest-intent practice area and location. The reason to wait until this point isn’t caution for its own sake, it’s that sending paid traffic to an unproven, untracked website means you can’t tell whether a disappointing result is the campaign’s fault or the website’s fault, and testing both variables at once wastes budget you don’t get back. A realistic starting budget and expected cost-per-click by practice area is covered in our law firm marketing cost guide and our Google Ads for lawyers guide; personal injury and family law generally cost more per click than areas like wills and estates, which affects how far an early-stage budget stretches.

Start narrower than feels comfortable: one practice area, one service area, exact and phrase match keywords, a dedicated landing page, and a firm daily cap. A new account has no conversion history, so automated bidding will not perform yet, begin on manual bidding or maximise clicks with a bid cap and move to automation once conversions are actually being recorded.

By week 12, most new firms have a handful of genuine reviews, a functioning website with real traffic data to look at, early local SEO traction, and enough of a track record to make outreach credible. That’s also the point at which referral outreach stops feeling premature. Sending a one-pager to a target list of accountants, financial planners, mortgage brokers or other referral sources, whichever fits your practice area, lands better once you can point to reviews and a working website than it would in week one when there’s nothing to show. Our referral marketing for law firms guide covers how to build that list and structure the outreach.

Starting from zero: no reviews and no referral network

Every new firm faces the same two structural gaps at once, and it’s worth treating them as separate problems rather than one vague "we need more visibility" problem.

No reviews. The fix isn’t complicated, it’s a consistent process, not a clever trick: ask every satisfied client, every time, at the natural end of the matter, with a direct link that removes as much friction as possible. A steady trickle of two or three genuine reviews a month from month one beats a stalled profile that suddenly gets fifteen reviews in a rush eighteen months in, both because it looks more natural and because it starts closing the trust gap immediately rather than deferring it. If a matter closes badly through no fault of the firm’s service, it’s fine to skip the ask for that client rather than risk a poor review, but don’t let the exceptions become the reason the whole process quietly stops.

While review volume builds, substitute other credibility signals. Real photographs of the actual lawyers rather than stock imagery, named solicitors with admission dates and any genuine accreditations, clear information about what a first appointment involves and what it costs, and specific claims rather than generic ones. A firm with three reviews and a page that plainly answers what the process looks like beats a firm with three reviews and a page of platitudes.

No referral network. This one takes longer to build because it depends on relationships, not a form submission, but it can start earlier than most new principals assume. Identify the five to ten professionals whose clients most naturally need your services, other solicitors in adjacent practice areas, accountants, financial planners, mortgage brokers or medical providers depending on your specialty, and reach out with something specific and low-pressure: an offer to be a reliable, responsive point of contact for their clients, not a pitch for reciprocal business on day one. Reciprocity comes later, once trust is established; leading with it too early is one of the more common reasons referral outreach from a brand-new firm falls flat.

The most under-used referral source for a new firm is other law firms. Solicitors regularly turn away work outside their practice area or in conflict, and a nearby firm that doesn’t do what you do is a natural, low-risk first contact, they lose nothing by referring and they’d rather send the client somewhere than nowhere.

What should the first 90 days cost?

Budget in two parts, because they behave differently. The front-loaded, largely one-off spend covers the website, basic branding, photography and tracking setup, and lands mostly in the first month or two. The ongoing spend, ad budget, SEO, content, starts once those foundations exist and continues indefinitely.

Most Australian firms working with an agency invest $1,500 to $5,000 per month ongoing, and a launching firm often sits at the higher end proportionally simply because it’s building from nothing rather than maintaining a position. Rather than picking a number, work backwards: what is an average matter in your lead practice area worth, what proportion of that can you afford to spend acquiring one, and how many can you actually service this month? That last constraint matters more at launch than later, a solo principal generating thirty enquiries a month will handle them badly, and badly handled enquiries become the reviews that shape the firm’s first year. Our marketing cost guide works through the full calculation.

Sequencing decisions that matter most

Two decisions cause more wasted budget and time than any others in a new firm launch. First, don’t spend on ads before the website converts and tracking is in place, covered above, it’s the single most common way early budget gets wasted on a problem the ads themselves can’t fix. Second, don’t wait for a perfect website before starting reviews and referral relationships. These build slowly and compound over time, so the earlier they start, even against an imperfect website, the sooner they catch up to where an established competitor already sits. Everything else, refining page copy, adding a blog archive, redesigning the logo, can happen in parallel or later without costing the firm real enquiries in the meantime.

One more worth naming: a new firm is still bound by the legal advertising rules from its first piece of marketing. Launch copy is where firms most often reach for superlatives and outcome language, precisely because there’s no track record to point to instead. Specific and honest is both safer and, for a firm nobody has heard of, more persuasive.

New law firm launch checklist

The sequence above compressed into a working checklist. Tick items off as you complete them, your progress saves automatically.

• Claim and fully complete your Google Business Profile: category, service area, hours and description.
• Set up call tracking and form tracking before your website goes live.
• Launch a clean, credible website with clear contact paths, even if it isn’t the finished version.
• Build a simple, repeatable process for asking every closed matter for a review, starting immediately.
• Ensure your business name, address and phone number are consistent across every online listing.
• Publish a properly structured page for each practice area and location you serve.
• Write two or three genuinely useful content pieces answering real client questions.
• Set up a basic, active presence on the social platform your clients actually use.
• Test a small, tightly targeted Google Ads budget once tracking confirms the website converts.
• List five to ten referral professionals relevant to your practice area and start outreach.
• Review what’s actually generating enquiries at day 90 and rebalance budget accordingly.

What comes after day 90

By the end of the first 90 days, a new firm should have a working website with real traffic data, a small but growing base of genuine reviews, early local search traction, at least one tested paid channel, and the first handful of referral relationships underway. None of these are finished at day 90, they’re started, and the next phase is less about launching new channels and more about compounding the ones already working: more content, more reviews, deeper referral relationships, and a paid budget that scales once the numbers justify it.

Months 4 to 6 are usually where SEO starts contributing and where a second practice area can reasonably be added. Months 7 to 12 are where the ad budget can be selectively pulled back from terms the firm now ranks for organically, and where the referral relationships started in week 12 begin producing consistently. If you’d rather have a specialist map this sequence to your specific practice area and starting budget, a free growth plan does exactly that, or start with our marketing plan template to map your own starting point first. See pricing for what ongoing support typically costs once the foundations are in place.