A 30-day plan
for a law firm.

Most 30-day plans start with a new website or a burst of content. For a law firm, I'd start with what's already out there. A Google profile description written years ago, a directory listing calling someone a specialist, a boosted post about injury claims: they're all advertising, and rule 36 applies to every one of them.

There's a practical reason too. Everything after week 1 sends more people to your listings and pages. Fix them before you turn the volume up, not after a complaint points them out.

Pick your state and tick the kinds of work you do. The list adjusts, remembers your ticks on this device, and counts rule risks separately from growth tasks.

List every place the firm appears: the website, each Google Business Profile, directories, social pages, and landing pages left over from old campaigns. Read each against two questions. Is anything no longer true? Does anything imply accreditation a lawyer doesn't hold? Only accredited specialists can call themselves accredited specialists.

If you do injury work, the rules depend on the state. In NSW there's no specific injury advertising ban, so the check is mostly about claim farming. In Queensland, the limits apply to advertising on any website other than your own, so treat paid search and social media as restricted. In WA, check against section 17 of the Civil Liability Act.

Google's rules for law firms are specific. Each public-facing lawyer can have a profile, the firm gets its own, and names can't carry service or location keywords. Remove profiles set up for practice areas, and fix any name that reads 'Family Lawyers Gosford' when the sign on the door doesn't.

Then compare each lawyer's page with the public register. The NSW register is searchable by accredited specialisation and language, and Victoria's register shows area of practice, languages and accreditation. Where the register knows something useful that your site doesn't, like a second language, add it.

Pick the three problems that bring in the most work and give each its own page, written the way clients describe the problem, naming the state. The SEO page covers how, and the AI search page covers how those pages end up quoted.

Then test an enquiry end to end. Ring the firm from a mobile after hours, and fill in the web form. Note who replies, how fast, and whether anyone asks how you found the firm. That last question is the only measure you'll ever have of referrals and word of mouth.

Add one line to the site on how you charge. In NSW, Victoria and WA, formal costs disclosure has thresholds, starting with none needed up to $750, but people want a sense of cost long before they become a client.

Now spend. Turn on call reporting first, then start Google Ads on urgent, specific searches with negatives for free legal help. Check any social ad line against Meta's personal attributes rule. Immigration firms should read Google's government documents policy before running visa ads.

If anyone offers to sell you injury leads, stop. NSW bans paying for referrals of many injury claims, and Queensland banned paying claim farmers for claimants' details in 2022.

Finally, pick one moment to ask for reviews, like when a matter closes, and ask every client then. The QLS warns that only asking happy clients may be a problem, and Google's review policy says the same.

Month two is about reading what you set up. Compare the source answers from new clients with the calls and forms the tracking caught, and you'll see which channels the software misses. Keep the ads that brought booked consultations and cut the rest. Then add one new problem page a fortnight, in the order clients ask about them.

Every three months, run week 1 again. Lawyers join and leave, rules change, and listings drift. The firms that stay out of trouble aren't the ones with perfect marketing. They're the ones that check it on a schedule.