If you've ever received a monthly marketing report from an agency and felt like it was written in a foreign language, you're not imagining things. Most law firm advertising reports are full of metrics that agencies care about internally and attorneys don't need to understand to know if their advertising is working.
This post explains the law firm advertising report in plain terms: the four numbers that actually matter, what they tell you, and why many of the other numbers in a typical report exist to distract rather than inform.
The 4 Numbers That Actually Matter
1. How many calls came in this month?
This is the primary output of your advertising. Not clicks, not website visits, not "ad engagements" — phone calls from people who found your ad because they were searching for an attorney.
This number should be front and center on any report you receive. If you have to dig to find it, or if it doesn't appear at all, that's a significant problem with the reporting.
What it tells you: Whether your ads are generating actual leads. A call is a real person who took action. Everything else is activity.
2. How many of those calls were answered?
Call tracking logs every call from your ads, including calls that went to voicemail or weren't answered. The answered vs. missed breakdown is often the most important insight in the first few months of advertising.
If 25 calls came in and 18 were answered, you have an 72% answer rate — room to improve but generally functional. If 25 calls came in and 9 were answered, something is broken in your phone coverage, and more advertising spend will only amplify the problem.
What it tells you: Whether your intake is capturing the leads your ads generate. The ads create the call. Your phone coverage determines whether that call becomes a consultation.
3. What did each call cost?
Divide your monthly ad spend by the number of calls you received. That's your cost per lead call.
Example: $1,500 in ad spend, 21 calls. Cost per call: ~$71.
Compare this to the range you were quoted for your market and practice area. If it's within range, the targeting is working as expected. If it's significantly higher, something may need adjustment. If it's significantly lower, the ads are outperforming the projection.
What it tells you: Whether you're getting the lead volume you're paying for. This is the core efficiency metric for law firm advertising.
4. What's the trend?
A single month's data is a data point. Three months of data is a pattern. Look at whether call volume is increasing month-over-month, whether cost per call is holding steady or rising, whether answered rate is improving.
Month one is usually the lowest-performing month — targeting is fresh, intake is still adjusting. Month three tends to be meaningfully better. If month three is worse than month one, something needs to change.
What it tells you: Whether performance is improving over time, which determines whether the investment is worth continuing.
The Numbers That Don't Tell You What You Need to Know
Most agency reports include many more metrics than the four above. Here's what some of the common ones mean — and why they don't help you evaluate whether your advertising is working.
Clicks: How many times someone clicked on your ad. Clicks are not calls. Someone can click your ad and immediately leave your website without contacting you. Clicking is not a meaningful outcome for a law firm.
"Impressions": How many times your ad appeared in a search. Your ad appearing is not a result. It's an event that may or may not lead to a result.
"Quality Score": An internal Google metric that reflects how well your ads, keywords, and landing page align with each other. It affects your costs. It's something your agency should care about. It is not a number you need to monitor.
Average position: Where your ad appeared on the page relative to other ads. Not relevant to outcomes.
"Engagement rate": How many people interacted with your ad in some way (not necessarily called). Used primarily by agencies that manage display and social advertising, where engagement is meaningful. For the type of advertising we run for law firms, calls are the measure, not engagement.
What a Good Report Looks Like
A report that actually helps you manage your advertising:
Lead section (front of the report):
Total calls this month: 21
Calls answered: 18
Calls missed: 3
Cost per call: $71
Trend section:
Month 1: 15 calls, $85/call
Month 2: 19 calls, $79/call
Month 3: 21 calls, $71/call
Notes:
Targeting adjusted on [date] to exclude [x zip codes] that were generating low-quality calls
Monday mornings are highest-volume call time — recommend ensuring phone coverage during that window
Next month: testing a revised ad for estate planning searches
That's a useful report. It tells you what happened, what it cost, and what's changing. It takes five minutes to read.
What to Ask If Your Current Report Isn't Like This
If you're working with an agency and their reports are full of metrics you don't recognize with calls buried somewhere in the middle, ask for a simpler version. Any agency managing your account should be able to give you a plain-language call summary on demand.
If they can't — or if they push back on the idea that calls are the metric that matters — that's information about how they think about your business.
At Crow & Pitcher, the weekly summary is calls, answered/missed, and cost per call. The monthly review is trends plus what we're adjusting. Nothing requires a marketing background to read.
Book a 15-minute call if you want to see what our reporting looks like before you commit to anything.
Crow & Pitcher sends weekly call summaries to every client. Monthly review calls walk through the data together — no jargon, just leads and cost.
Ready to see the math for your firm?
Book a 15-minute call. No slide deck — just your numbers and an honest conversation about whether it makes sense.
Get Your Free Estimate