Fees, not inquiries
Rank channels by fees earned so one signed matter outweighs fifty inquiries.
Marketing attribution for family law firms
Which channels produced retained clients?
Match retained matters and the fees they earn to the inquiries and campaigns that produced them.
- No card required
- Nothing to install
- Cancel anytime
Family Law workspace FY2026 Sample data
Fees traced to a channel
$348,000 58% of $600,000 paid
- Google Ads $264,000 · 44%
- Meta Ads $54,000 · 9%
- Email marketing $30,000 · 5%
- Direct / Unknown $252,000 · 42%
Direct / Unknown is shown, never shared out across the channels above.
Google Ads · LeadFY2026 14 · (•••) •••-0134
Closed sale · FY2026 27$5,500
Matched · high confidence
The blind spot
What's actually happening
Family law inquiries are emotional, urgent and frequently price-driven. Most consultations do not retain, and inquiry volume says nothing about which channel produces clients who do.
What you get
Built for family law firms.
Matters resolve much later
A matter signed this year and resolved next still traces to the ad behind it.
Defensible in a partner meeting
Every match is auditable and reversible, and matters that trace to nothing are shown as Direct and Unknown rather than shared out across the paid channels.
A worked example
The number you can take into a budget meeting.
Not impressions, not leads, not cost per click. Closed revenue, by the channel that produced it, for a period you choose — with the portion we could not trace shown rather than quietly shared out across your paid channels.
Total revenue$600,000paid fees
Attributed to a channel$348,00058% of revenue
Average deal$5,500per paid sale
Match rate60%of sales matched
| Channel | Sales | Revenue | Share | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 48 | $264,000 | 44% | |
| Meta Ads | 11 | $54,000 | 9% | |
| Email marketing | 6 | $30,000 | 5% | |
| Direct / Unknown | 44 | $252,000 | 42% |
01
Consultation volume is not retainer volume
Most family law marketing produces consultations. Retention rates differ sharply by channel, and so do the matters themselves — a straightforward uncontested divorce and a contested custody matter differ by an order of magnitude in fees.
Ranking on fees earned rather than consultations booked separates the channels producing viable clients from those producing people comparing prices.
02
Referral from other professionals is a channel
Accountants, therapists and other attorneys refer a substantial share of matters, and firms usually treat that as unmeasurable while measuring ads precisely.
Added to the lead file, each client tagged with the referrer, professional referral becomes comparable — including which referrers send matters that actually retain.
03
An inquiry made in a crisis and a retainer signed weeks later
Family law demand arrives at an emotional peak and converts on a different timetable entirely. Somebody searches at midnight after an argument, speaks to two firms, and then does nothing for a month while circumstances change — and retains when a deadline or an incident forces it.
The gap is short by legal standards and long by advertising standards, which is the worst combination: too long for a conversion window to catch reliably, too short for anybody to treat it as a considered purchase and plan for it.
Matching the retainer and the fees collected against the original inquiry closes it. The person who called in March and retained in May are one match, and the March campaign is credited with what the matter went on to bill.
04
Hourly work makes the matter's value unknowable at the start
A consent order agreed quickly and a contested case running through hearings begin identically and end thousands of dollars apart. Nothing at intake predicts which is which, and the fee is discovered rather than quoted.
That makes retainers signed a particularly poor ranking metric here, because it treats the two as equivalent at exactly the moment the difference is invisible.
Ranking on fees actually billed and collected resolves it after the fact, which is the only time it can be resolved. Channels that bring contested work move up, and a firm can decide deliberately whether that is the work it wants more of.
05
Discretion is a product requirement, not a preference
Family clients are unusually sensitive about being identified, and firms are right to be careful about what leaves the building. That instinct is often what stops a practice measuring anything at all.
The match needs a contact detail, an amount and a date. No matter type, no names beyond what you choose to include, nothing about the circumstances. What you do not export is not held, because there is nothing to hold.
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, isolated to your workspace and deletable in one click, and we act as a processor with a DPA available. The smallest export that works is also the least exposure, and it is the one we ask for.
Why it matters
What changes when you can prove it.
You stop defending the budget and start growing it
"We generated 400 leads" invites an argument. "This channel closed $186,400 last quarter, here is the reconciliation" ends one. The teams that can show closed revenue by channel are the teams that get the next increase approved, because they are asking with evidence rather than with conviction.
You can cut the wrong channel without a fight
Killing spend is politically harder than adding it, because someone always owns the channel being cut. A number that reconciles to the sales export takes the argument out of the room — you are not overruling a colleague's judgment, you are reading the same ledger they are.
Your reporting survives the finance review
Platform-reported conversions do not reconcile to revenue, and eventually someone in finance notices. Reporting built from your own closed-sales export starts from the number finance already trusts, which is why it holds up when it is checked.
You answer in an afternoon, not a quarter
Because this reconciles exports rather than tracking visitors, it works on months that have already closed. You are not instrumenting now to learn something in ninety days — you can answer for last quarter today, which is usually when the question is being asked.
Honest answers
The pushback we hear from Family Law.
They say
Most consultations do not retain.
We say
Which is why fees are the measure. Unretained consultations appear as unmatched leads and cost nothing.
They say
Matters vary enormously in size.
We say
Which is why ranking on fees rather than matter count matters — export the fee figure and the comparison is meaningful.
They say
Our clients' situations are sensitive.
We say
Only a contact detail, a fee and a date are needed. No matter details of any kind.
Pricing
Flat monthly pricing. No per-call fees.
The price here is the price on the invoice, plus any sales tax that applies — no per-call, per-minute or per-form fees. Growth usually fits divorce and family law practices — thirteen months of history to compare a month to the same month last year, and a PDF you can put in front of whoever holds the budget.
Recommended
Growth
A business scaling ad spend
$49/mo
billed monthly
- 1 workspace · 2 seats
- 1,000 sales records / month
- 13-month history (year over year)
- Campaign drill-down and period comparison
- PDF + shareable read-only report
- Your logo on every report
Questions
Questions we get about Family Law.
Anything else? Talk to us — a person answers, usually the same day.
Retained matters: a client contact email or phone, the fee, and a date.
Yes, with a matter-type column.
Yes — add referred clients to the lead file with the referrer as their source.
As long as it turns out to be. There is no window to fall outside of: however much time passes between the inquiry and the retainer, it matches if the client is in both files.
Encrypted, isolated per workspace, deletable in one click, DPA available.
No. Nothing beyond the three matching fields is required or read.
Yes. Those matters were recorded because you billed for them rather than because anybody was tracking, so a finished year matches exactly as well as the current one.
Matter rows analyzed in a calendar month. Inquiry rows do not count.
Collected, where you can export it. Write-offs and unbilled time are real in family work and they are not uniform across sources.
Twelve to eighteen months. The retainer follows the inquiry by weeks, but the fees accrue over the life of the matter.
Yes, with a matter-type column mapped as Product / service, which shows contested and agreed fees separately with the attributed share of each.
No. A phone number or an email is enough. Names only help you recognize a row when reviewing a flagged match.
Yes, by mapping a fee-earner column as Product / service (one extra breakdown per import).
No, though this is a phone-led practice area and a call export raises the match rate noticeably where it exists.
They cost nothing against your allowance and appear as unmatched leads, which is what makes inquiry-to-retainer conversion visible per channel.
Monthly for the current picture, quarterly for decisions. Fees in family matters accrue over months, so consecutive monthly runs mostly add income to matters you have already seen. The quarter is where a channel has accumulated enough resolved work to be judged, and it is still short enough that you can act on what it says.
Read it against the same month last year rather than against last month. Family inquiries follow the calendar — the new year and the end of the school year both move volumes — so a thin month is often seasonal. If it stays thin for three months against its own history, that is when it is telling you something.
It does not say whether a matter was worth taking, how much partner time it consumed, or what a client would have done had you never advertised. It attributes collected fees to the source the client came from. Profitability and workload sit in your practice management figures, and reading the two side by side is the sensible use.
The fee is credited automatically to whichever listing produced the earlier inquiry; the duplication is not reported as a separate figure. How large the overlap is across a year is still worth knowing — two directories reaching mostly the same people are two subscriptions doing one job — and it is measured by comparing the two directories' lists with each other before you combine them.
Yes, mainly in the window. A firm retaining a handful of matters a month should look at a year and use the output as a ranking, not a percentage. A larger firm can read a quarter with confidence and cut it by fee earner or office. The mechanics are the same; the sample size is what differs.
Nearby
Also worth reading.
Estate Planning
Match engaged matters and fees to the seminars, inquiries and campaigns that produced them.
See how it worksLaw Firms
Match signed, fee-earning matters to the calls and ads that produced them — including the ones that settled a year later.
See how it worksPersonal Injury
Match signed, fee-earning matters to the calls and campaigns that produced them, across settlements that land a year or more later.
See how it worksWhere your sales already are
What to export, by system.
Clio
Match collected fees to the campaigns and calls that produced the client, across the months between the first call and the money.
What to exportMyCase
Export collected fees, upload the inquiries that produced them, and rank your marketing on money rather than on consultations booked.
What to exportPracticePanther
Export collected fees, upload the inquiries beside them, and rank marketing on what clients paid rather than on consultations booked.
What to exportRocket Matter
Export collections from Rocket Matter, upload the leads behind them, and rank marketing on money received rather than hours recorded.
What to exportSmokeball
Export billings from Smokeball, upload the leads behind them, and rank channels on work that was worth doing.
What to exportActionstep
Export billings from Actionstep, upload the inquiries behind them, and get an answer per practice group rather than per firm.
What to exportLawmatics
Export your leads from Lawmatics, match them against collected fees, and rank intake sources on what they actually produced.
What to exportLEAP
Export billings from LEAP, upload the quote requests and referrals behind them, and rank sources on matters that completed and were paid.
What to exportFrom the blog
Further reading.
Your call tracking knows which ad rang the phone. It does not know which call paid.
Call tracking answers one question well: which campaign produced the ring. It has no view of what happened after the call ended, which is where the money is decided. This is what the gap costs, and how to close it without replacing the call tracker you already have.
Read the articleNobody clicks a billboard, which is why it can be measured honestly
Out-of-home advertising is sold on impressions nobody can click and measured, increasingly, with location data few buyers ask about. For a business that closes by phone or in person there is a better route: a number on the board, sales matched back to the calls it produced, and a comparison between the places the board could be seen and the places it could not.
Read the articleMulti-touch attribution and marketing mix modeling are answering different questions
One tracks individuals and cannot see causation. The other infers causation and cannot see individuals. Vendors sell them as competitors, which is convenient for whoever is selling. Here is what each can and cannot tell you, and what a mid-market business should do instead of buying either.
Read the article
Start today
Stop guessing which ads pay off.
Upload two exports and see your real revenue by channel in minutes. 14 days free, no card.