Your First 90 Days as a PI Firm: The Marketing Playbook

TL;DR — A new PI firm should plan to spend $8,000–$15,000/month on marketing for the first 90 days, sign its first case in weeks 4–8, and exit day 90 with a verified Google Business Profile, an LSA-approved profile, 15+ Google reviews, a real website (not a business card), and a working intake process. The firms that hit this timeline almost always made the same five moves in the same order. The firms that miss it almost always tried to "do SEO first."

Key takeaways

Sign your first case in weeks 4–8, not month six. The fastest path is Google LSA + a barebones GBP + paid intake coverage — not SEO. SEO is a 2026-and-beyond move; it does not pay you in 2026 Q1 if you opened in January.
Budget $8,000–$15,000/month for the first 90 days. Below $8k you're invisible; above $15k you're wasting capital on channels that won't convert until your foundation is in place.
Google LSA approval takes 2–6 weeks. Submit your application in Week 1, not Week 6. The verification queue is the single biggest bottleneck for new PI firms in 2026.
Reviews are the moat. 15+ Google reviews by day 90 is the realistic, ethical target. Firms that hit it convert LSA leads ~40% better than firms with three reviews.
Skip the practice-area-page sprint, the podcast launch, the billboard, and the brand video. None of them sign a case in 90 days. Build them in months 4–12 once you have intake, reviews, and cash flow.

What "first signed case" actually depends on

A new PI firm has one job in its first 90 days: convert spend into a signed retainer fast enough to validate that the practice can grow. Everything else — brand, content, long-tail SEO, podcasting, conference speaking — is a month-six conversation.

The signed case in week 4–8 depends on five things, in this order:

A claimable, complete Google Business Profile.
An approved Google Local Services Ads (LSA) profile.
A working website that loads fast and answers the three questions every accident victim asks.
An intake process that picks up the phone — including after 6pm and on weekends.
Enough reviews to make the LSA + GBP + organic listings convert.

Notice what's not on this list: blog posts, social media, content marketing, brand strategy, a logo refresh, or a 60-page practice area microsite. Those are real, and we build them for established firms — but they are not the first 90 days.

How much should a brand-new PI firm spend on marketing in the first 90 days?

$8,000–$15,000/month, weighted 60–70% to paid (LSA + Google Ads), 20–30% to foundation (website, GBP, reviews tooling), and 10% to content. Below $8k you can't afford LSA + a real website + intake coverage simultaneously. Above $15k you're scaling channels you don't have proof on yet.

For deeper benchmarks across firm sizes, see our pillar on how much PI firms should spend on marketing. For a solo practitioner in the first 90 days, the simple math:

Line item	Monthly spend (mo. 1–3)	Notes
Google LSA	$2,500–$5,000	Starts the moment you're verified. Pause if cost-per-lead climbs above ~$120 in your market.
Google Search Ads (brand + injury keywords)	$2,000–$4,000	Backstop for LSA capacity. Run on tightly geo-targeted, high-intent terms only.
Website build / hosting / fixes	$1,500–$3,000 (front-loaded mo. 1)	Real site, not a template card. See our website design pillar.
24/7 intake (answering service or AI)	$500–$1,500	Non-negotiable. Missed calls are missed retainers.
Reviews tooling + GBP optimization	$200–$500	Often bundled.
Content (4 cornerstone pages)	$500–$1,000	Practice area landing pages only. No blog posts yet.
Total	$7,200–$15,000/mo	Tighten or expand based on market and case mix.

The week-by-week playbook

This is the sequence that gets a brand-new firm to first signed case in weeks 4–8. The order matters more than the speed.

Weeks 1–2: Submit the long-lead applications

Two things take weeks of waiting time and have to be started Day 1:

Google LSA application. Submit the firm and each attorney for verification. Background checks, bar verification, and insurance verification typically take 2–6 weeks. The single most common mistake we see new firms make is waiting until Week 6 to submit. By then the firm has burned six weeks of cash and has no high-intent paid channel running. See our Google LSA pillar for the full verification checklist.
Google Business Profile claim and verification. Claim, verify (video verification is now standard in 2026 — keep your bar card and office signage handy), and complete every field. Add real photos of your office, real hours, real service areas. This is the engine for the entire local SEO motion that compounds over the next 12 months.

While those queue, register the business name, set up the phone system that will route to your 24/7 intake, get the malpractice insurance Google will ask for, and choose a domain. Don't pick a clever domain. Pick the firm name.

Weeks 2–3: Real website live

The website is not a brochure. It's a conversion surface that answers three questions in the first 5 seconds:

Are you a real personal injury lawyer?
Do you handle my type of accident?
How do I talk to a human right now?

Three pages are required at launch:

A homepage with a phone number above the fold, a 30-second elevator description of the firm, and trust signals (bar admission, photos, any reviews you have).
One practice-area page for the type of case you most want to sign (auto, truck, slip-and-fall — pick one for launch).
A contact page with a working form that pings your phone and email within 30 seconds.

Skip the team bios beyond the founding attorney. Skip the blog. Skip the practice area microsite for now. You can layer those in months 4–6.

Weeks 3–4: Reviews engine on

You will not sign cases at scale without reviews. New firms have a chicken-and-egg problem here: no clients means no reviews, no reviews means no conversions, no conversions means no clients.

Three legitimate sources of early reviews:

Past clients from your prior firm, if your bar rules and prior firm's policies allow. Many states do — check your jurisdiction.
Friends, family, and professional contacts who can honestly review your service or character. Bar rules vary sharply here. In Florida, Rule 4-7.13 prohibits deceptive testimonials and requires that any statements be truthful and not misleading. In New York, RPC 7.1 governs communications about services. Cite your specific state rule before asking for a single review.
Real new clients, the moment a case is signed. The ask happens at the retainer signing, with a follow-up text 48 hours later containing a direct GBP review link.

Target: 15+ verified Google reviews by day 90. We've watched firms hit this; we've also watched firms with five reviews underperform their LSA spend by 30–50% versus a peer firm with twenty.

Weeks 4–6: Paid channels live

By Week 4, LSA approval typically lands. The moment it does:

Turn on LSA at a moderate weekly budget ($600–$1,200/week to start). Set the case types tightly — auto and truck accidents are the highest-intent, most-claim-friendly LSA categories in 2026.
Launch Google Search Ads on a small, tight keyword list — your firm name, "[city] car accident lawyer," "[city] truck accident lawyer," and 5–10 close variants. No broad match. No "personal injury attorney" alone — too expensive, too low-intent.
Confirm intake is answering 24/7. This is where new firms hemorrhage. If your phone rolls to voicemail at 6:01pm, every after-hours LSA lead becomes a competitor's case. Use an answering service with attorney-trained scripts, or an AI-powered intake that picks up, qualifies, and books the consult automatically.

This is also the week your first signed case can realistically come through. Most do.

Weeks 6–10: Convert the inbound

Now the work shifts from launching to optimizing. The questions to ask weekly:

What is the cost-per-signed-case on LSA? On Search Ads? (You're looking for under $1,500/case in most markets, under $3,000 in the most competitive ones — Florida, Texas metros, Southern California.)
Which case types are converting and which are wasting spend? Pause underperforming categories.
How fast is intake responding? Anything over 5 minutes from lead to first contact loses ~50% of the lead.
Are reviews accumulating? If you're stuck at 4–5, the ask is broken. Fix the script.

For reference: across the 60-plus new PI firms RankWebs has helped launch since 2023, the median first signed case lands in Week 5–6, and the median firm exits day 90 with 4–9 signed cases.

Weeks 10–13: Build the next 90 days

By the last month, the foundation is doing its job and you can finally start looking past the immediate horizon:

Start the cornerstone SEO content. Three to five practice area pages, one location page if you serve multiple cities.
Plan the first content piece — a real one, not a 600-word "what to do after a car accident" post that lives nowhere.
Layer in retargeting (more on this in our retargeting playbook) so visitors from LSA-driven traffic don't disappear.
Begin tracking attribution — which channel actually sourced each signed case — so months 4–12 are spent doubling down, not guessing.

Should a new PI firm do SEO first?

No. SEO is the slowest channel — 6–12 months for organic rankings on competitive PI queries — and a brand-new firm has neither the domain authority nor the review velocity to rank in 90 days. Spend the first 90 days on LSA, paid search, GBP, and reviews. Start serious SEO investment in month 4, not month 1. Our local SEO pillar covers the long-game motion in detail.

This is the single most expensive mistake we see new firms make: hiring an SEO vendor in Week 1, paying $3,000/month for "content strategy" and "keyword research," and signing zero cases through six months because the agency is optimizing for a horizon that doesn't pay until month nine.

What should a new PI firm skip in the first 90 days?

Skip anything that doesn't trace to a signed retainer in 90 days. The list, in rough order of "things new firms get talked into and shouldn't":

A podcast. Average legal podcast generates zero signed cases in year one.
A 90-page practice area microsite. Three pages convert. Ninety pages don't until month nine.
Brand video shoots. A real one is $15,000–$40,000. Save it for month 6+.
Billboards. Useful for established firms with 50+ reviews and recognizable names. Useless when you have three reviews and no recognition.
Social media content calendars. Social media is a long-game brand asset, not a 90-day case generator.
A blog. You will write blog posts. In month 4. Not now.
TV ads. Don't.
A "marketing director" hire. $90k–$140k/year in salary, plus benefits, before the firm has signed-case data to manage against. An AI-powered marketing platform costs less than half that and produces faster.

What does month 4 onward look like?

Once foundation is in place — LSA running, 15+ reviews, intake handling volume, first 4–9 cases signed — the playbook shifts to scaling and diversifying.

Month 4–6:

Begin serious organic SEO investment. Cornerstone practice area pages. Local content.
Start retargeting on Meta and YouTube to recapture website visitors.
Add a paralegal or first associate if case volume justifies.
Begin testing Facebook Ads for top-of-funnel awareness.

Month 7–12:

Branded content (video, long-form articles).
Expand to additional practice areas if signing rate supports it.
Local sponsorships, bar association presence, attorney referral relationships.
First attribution audit: which channels actually source the signed cases?

The firms that stay disciplined in months 1–3 — resisting the urge to spend on shiny things — are the ones with the cash and the data to make months 4–12 productive.

Frequently asked questions

How long until a brand-new PI firm signs its first case?

For firms following this playbook, weeks 4–8 is typical. The bottleneck is almost always Google LSA verification, which takes 2–6 weeks. Firms that submit LSA in Week 1 sign earlier; firms that wait sign later.

Can you launch a PI firm with less than $8,000/month in marketing?

Yes, but with longer timelines and more personal effort. Below that budget, you'll need to substitute time for money — relentless personal outreach, attorney referral relationships, court hallway networking, and slow-build organic SEO. Plan for 6–9 months to first signed case, not 6–8 weeks.

Should I hire a marketing agency or an in-house marketing person for a new PI firm?

Neither in the first 90 days, in most cases. A traditional agency is too slow and too retainer-heavy for a firm without revenue. An in-house hire costs more than the marketing budget itself. The right move is a tightly scoped AI-first vendor or platform that handles LSA, paid, GBP, and intake without a full retainer commitment. See our lead generation pillar for the full vendor decision framework.

What's the single biggest mistake new PI firms make in the first 90 days?

Hiring an SEO agency in Week 1. SEO doesn't pay until month 9–12, and the spend during months 1–3 should go to channels that produce signed cases now (LSA, paid search, intake coverage, reviews). SEO comes second, not first.

Do bar advertising rules limit what a new firm can do in the first 90 days?

Yes — significantly. Most state bars regulate testimonials, superlatives, fee comparisons, and certain digital advertising practices. Florida (Rule 4-7.13), Texas (Disciplinary Rule 7.02), and New York (RPC 7.1) are among the strictest. Before launching any campaign, review your specific state rules and budget for compliance review. The American Bar Association's Model Rule 7.1 is the baseline; your state likely adds more.

If you've just opened a PI firm — or you're three months in and realize the foundation isn't where it should be — we'll map your specific 90-day playbook, including the channels that match your market, your budget, and your bar's rules. Request a free AI audit. 48-hour turnaround, no sales call required. The next 90 days are the most expensive you'll spend; spend them on the right things.