I want to talk to you directly for a minute, not as a marketer, not as a salesperson, just as someone who has spent over 20 years in this industry watching lawyers get a bad deal from the people they hire to handle their web presence.
If you're paying a large legal marketing agency thousands of dollars a month and feeling like you're just another account number, this letter is for you. If you signed a contract and only later realized you don't actually own your own website, this letter is for you. If you've tried to get a simple change made and waited two weeks for someone at a call center to respond, this letter is definitely for you.
You're not alone, and you're not overreacting. The legal web marketing industry has a real problem, and most lawyers don't find out about it until they're already locked in.
The Conveyor Belt Model
The largest legal marketing firms in this space serve thousands of law firms simultaneously. That's not a criticism on its face, scale is how businesses grow. But it creates a structural problem for you as the client. When a firm has thousands of accounts to manage, your site is not a priority. Your emails get routed to account managers who each handle dozens of clients. Your website is built on a template that has been deployed hundreds of times, with your name and practice areas swapped in. The agency's proprietary platform means you can't take your site elsewhere when you leave, so every month you stay feels like you're renting something you should own.
The monthly fees for these services routinely run $2,000 to $5,000 or more, sometimes significantly more if paid advertising is included. That's $24,000 to $60,000 a year for a website that belongs to them, managed by people who learned your name from a CRM entry.
I'm not saying those firms can't produce results. Some do, for some clients, particularly large firms running aggressive ad campaigns in competitive markets where the budget justifies the overhead. But for a solo practitioner or a small firm of two or three lawyers, you are almost certainly overpaying for something generic, and the people handling your account are stretched too thin to give you the attention your practice deserves.
What You Actually Need
Most lawyers don't need a marketing agency with offices in three cities and a proprietary technology platform. They need someone who answers when they write, knows their site inside and out, and can make a change the same day it's requested. They need someone who remembers that they specialize in family law in Phoenix and doesn't have to look that up every time there's a question. They need someone who notices when the site is down before the lawyer does, not after a client writes to ask why the contact form bounced.
That's not a technology problem. That's a relationship problem. And large agencies, by design, aren't built for relationships. They're built for throughput.
You Should Always Own Your Website
This point matters enough to say clearly: your website should belong to you. Not to the agency. Not to the platform. To you.
When an agency builds your site on their proprietary system, they own the infrastructure your business runs on. If you want to leave, you start over. You lose the SEO history, the content, the design work you paid for. The switching cost is built into the model deliberately. It's how they retain clients who might otherwise leave.
A website built on a platform you control, with you as the account holder for your own hosting, means you own everything. Whether that's WordPress, a custom static site, or any other platform that fits your needs, the account is in your name and the content is yours from day one. You can work with any developer in the world. You can cancel any service relationship and your site keeps running exactly as it was. Nobody can hold your digital presence hostage.
Every account I set up is in your name. Every piece of content belongs to you from the moment it's published. If you ever decide to stop working with me, you leave with everything intact. That's how it should work.
No Contracts. No Lock-In. No Surprises.
My service works like a Netflix subscription. You pay a flat weekly rate, starting at $50 a week, and while that subscription is active I'm your web guy. You can reach me whenever you need something. I handle updates, maintenance, security, content changes, design tweaks, technical problems, research, advice, or whatever else falls within your web presence. Some clients message me every day. Some check in once a month. Some just want the peace of mind of knowing someone is watching the site and handling maintenance without being asked.
The rate scales based on your needs and how much you're asking of me week to week. There is no setup fee. There is no long-term contract. There is no cancellation penalty. You can stop the subscription any time, for any reason, with no notice required. The site is yours and keeps running whether or not we're working together.
I've had clients stay for years. I've had clients pause for a few months and come back. I've had clients cancel and then refer their colleagues to me. None of that happens if the relationship is built on lock-in rather than value.
One Person, Not a Ticket Queue
When you message me, I read it. I respond. I know your site, your practice, your preferences, and your history. There's no account manager standing between us, no support ticket number, no escalation process. You get a direct line to the person actually doing the work.
That's not a scalability pitch. It's an honest description of how I work, and it's the thing my clients tell me they value most. After years of dealing with agencies where every contact feels like starting from scratch, the experience of reaching someone who already knows the context is genuinely different.
I work with a small number of clients at a time on purpose. Not because I can't handle volume, but because the model only works if I can actually give each client real attention. The moment I'm running a call center, I've become the thing I'm describing as the problem.
What This is Not
I want to be honest about what I'm not, because I think you've probably had enough of overselling.
I'm not an agency with a team of 50 specialists. I'm not running large-scale paid advertising campaigns. I'm not the right fit if your growth strategy depends on aggressive PPC in a highly competitive personal injury market with a $20,000 monthly ad budget. Those scenarios exist and there are firms built for them.
What I am is the right fit for a solo practitioner or small firm that wants a well-built, compliant, fast, accessible website that you actually own, maintained by someone who is genuinely paying attention, at a price that doesn't require you to bring in two new clients a month just to break even on the marketing cost.
The Simple Version
You went to law school to practice law, not to manage a marketing agency relationship. Your time and attention belong in your practice. The web side of your business should run in the background, handled reliably by someone you trust, without consuming your budget or your energy.
If that sounds like what you've been looking for, I might be your new Web Guy. No pitch, no pressure. Just a straightforward conversation about what you need and whether I'm the right person to help.
And if you're currently locked into a contract with someone who built your site on their platform, it may be worth understanding exactly what you own and what you don't before that contract renews.