Business law isn't one practice — it's six. Most agencies bid for one.

Both, when budget supports it. They cover different intent. LSA owns "business attorney near me" — local, generalist, ready-to-call queries that convert fast for formation and basic contract work. PPC owns the long-tail and decision-stage intent — "breach of fiduciary duty attorney," "commercial litigation [city]," "M&A counsel" — where sophisticated buyers are researching firms before booking. Most firms get the best results running PPC at $7K–$15K/month with LSA layered on for $2K–$3K/month — Cueto ran roughly an 85/15 split.

Wide range depending on sub-practice. Formation and basic contract queries can run $40–$80 CPL because volume is high and intent is transactional. Commercial litigation and M&A typically run $150–$300+ CPL because volume is low and each lead is sophisticated and high-value. Blended across a multi-practice account, $80–$130 CPL is a healthy range — Cueto held $88–$108 across the engagement on $20K monthly spend. Cost per signed retainer is the more honest metric, but it requires 60–90 days of HubSpot data to measure cleanly.

Per-practice ad group architecture within a single campaign, with reporting that shows you which sub-practice is generating which leads. We weight budget by what's actually converting at your firm — if your formation work is closing fast and your IP work is sitting in consultation backlog, we shift spend toward formation that month. The reporting is the discipline that makes this work: per-channel + per-practice weekly, not one blended CPL.

Differently than for higher-volume practices. M&A query volume is low — you're not going to generate 50 leads/month from "M&A attorney" searches. But each lead is worth $50K–$500K+ in fees, so one signed engagement pays for a year of advertising. The strategy shifts: tight long-tail keyword targeting, premium ad copy register, credential-led landing experience, longer sales cycle tracked in HubSpot. We'd typically recommend M&A as one ad group within a broader campaign, not as a standalone effort.

Referrals are your best leads — we'd never argue otherwise. But referrals are also unscalable; you can't 3x your case load by asking your network harder. Paid media supplements your referral pipeline with net-new clients in adjacent practice areas you don't yet have referral coverage for. The right way to think about it: referrals are your floor, ads are your ceiling. Every business law firm we've worked with already had a referral pipeline — we add the layer above it.

Honest answer: for most business law firms, LinkedIn is expensive relative to outcome. CPMs are 3–5x higher than Google, intent is much lower (people aren't actively searching for a lawyer on LinkedIn), and the conversion paths are longer. There are exceptions — niche practice areas like cannabis regulatory, healthcare compliance, or specific M&A verticals where the audience truly lives on LinkedIn — but as a default channel for general business law, Google PPC + LSA dominates. We'd recommend testing LinkedIn only after PPC is mature and you have a specific audience hypothesis to validate.

Yes. 30 days' notice to your current vendor. During that window we take ownership of Google Ads, GA4, GTM, CallRail, HubSpot — always in your name, never ours. We audit existing campaign structure (usually one consolidated "business attorney" campaign — we rebuild as per-practice ad groups), inherit historical conversion data, and stage new structure. Day 31, we go live. No double-spend month. You keep every account if you ever leave us.

Standard timeline: 10–14 days from contract to first live spend. Day 1–4: account audits, ownership transfers, per-practice keyword research, GTM/CallRail/HubSpot integration. Day 5–9: campaign and ad group build by practice area, copy approvals, landing experience review. Day 10–14: advertiser verification cleared, campaigns launched at intentionally controlled spend to validate tracking before ramping budget. Business law takes slightly longer than other verticals because the per-practice architecture requires more upfront keyword and copy work.