Both partners are looking for a lawyer. Only one of them calls first.
When a partnership breaks down, two people start searching on the same afternoon. Whoever retains counsel first files first, controls the narrative, and gets to the accounts. We built the website, the campaigns, and the intake system for a commercial litigation firm that wanted to be the call that gets answered.
A commercial litigation practice built for the moment things go wrong fast.
Law Office of Alexander Schachtel is a Jersey City firm handling commercial litigation, business torts, partnership disputes, contracts, and related civil matters, with licensure across New Jersey and New York.
Unlike high volume practice areas, a partnership dispute doesn't wait. Both sides are searching for counsel on the same afternoon, and the firm needed a website, an ad account, and an intake system built for that kind of urgency, not for someone browsing over a weekend.
Commercial litigation isn't personal injury.
Almost every legal marketing playbook is written for personal injury: high volume, a statute of limitations measured in years, and a claimant who can afford to think about it over a weekend.
A partnership dispute works nothing like that. There are far fewer of them, each is worth considerably more, and the person searching is in the middle of something happening to them right now.
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It's a race, and both sides know it
Two partners in a dispute are both looking for counsel. The one who retains first can file first, seek injunctive relief first, and shape the record before the other side has read anything. Search volume is low, urgency is extreme.
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The lead is a phone call, not a form
Someone whose business partner just locked them out of the bank account does not fill in a contact form and wait. They call. Campaigns optimised for form fills were measuring the wrong action entirely.
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The firm does eighteen things
Civil litigation, business torts, contracts, debt collection, dissolution, real estate, employment, product liability, and eight kinds of personal injury. One homepage cannot speak to all of them, and paid traffic sent to it converts poorly for every one.
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Nobody is available at 8pm on a Sunday
Disputes escalate outside office hours, which is exactly when a solo or small firm can't answer. Every unreturned call is a matter that went to whoever picked up.
The hour after the search decides who gets retained.
We didn't change the ads to double the response rate. We changed what happens in the sixty minutes after someone clicks one.
Why 5x works here and wouldn't elsewhere.
Return on ad spend is a function of case value, not campaign cleverness. Understanding which practice areas can carry paid search is most of the strategy.
Where paid search struggles
- Search volume High
- Competition Extreme
- Cost per click Very high
- Fee per matter Modest
- Result Thin margins
Every firm in the county is bidding on the same terms. You can win, but the maths is unforgiving and the account needs constant attention to stay profitable.
Where it works
- Search volume Low
- Competition Moderate
- Cost per click High
- Fee per matter Substantial
- Result 5x achievable
Fewer people search for partnership disputes, and each one is worth enough that a handful of signed matters covers a year of spend. The scarce resource is qualified attention, not clicks.
ROAS here is measured against fees on signed matters, not gross recovery. That distinction matters, and any agency quoting a legal ROAS figure without stating which one they mean is worth a follow up question.
One page per problem, not one page for eighteen.
The firm handles everything from breach of contract to bicycle accidents. Paid traffic went to pages built for the specific matter, each with a single job.
The phone number is the conversion
Prominent, tappable, above the fold, repeated. A form is offered as the secondary option for people who can't talk right now, but on this practice area the call is the outcome worth designing for.
Match the search, not the firm
Someone searching for a partnership dissolution sees a page about partnership dissolutions. The mismatch between ad and landing page is the most common and cheapest to fix problem in legal paid search.
Credentials where the doubt is
Super Lawyers Rising Star, a top-50 New Jersey civil verdict, admission in both states and the federal courts. On a matter worth six figures, the question is whether this lawyer can actually try the case.
Two states, stated plainly
Jersey City sits across the river from Manhattan and many disputes touch both jurisdictions. Being licensed in New York and New Jersey is a genuine differentiator, and it needed to be visible rather than buried in a bio.
The credentials that carry the most weight on a landing page for a six figure dispute:
What the prospect actually sees.
One page per problem. The ad promises a partnership dispute lawyer, the page delivers exactly that, with the number as the first thing you can act on.
Two minutes, not next morning. The message that turns a missed call into a booked consultation.
Call ads, not form ads. Optimised for the action the prospect actually takes.
What we ran for three years.
Four workstreams, one team. Each links through to how we run it.
Website & landing pages
A new site plus dedicated landing pages per practice area, each built around a single conversion rather than a menu of eighteen options.
Custom website design AcquireGoogle Search & Call ads
Search campaigns segmented by practice area, with call ads carrying the load on the matters where the prospect picks up the phone rather than filling in a form.
Google Ads management RespondSMS automation
Immediate acknowledgement on every enquiry and every missed call, with a short finite follow up sequence that stops the moment a human replies.
SMS marketing ConvertEmail automation
Consultation preparation, document checklists, and reminders: useful in themselves, and quietly demonstrating competence before anyone has spoken.
Email marketingAttorney advertising has rules. We build to them.
New Jersey's Rules of Professional Conduct govern what a firm may say in its advertising, particularly around comparative claims, results, and anything that could create an unjustified expectation. Ad copy, landing pages, and automated messages were all written with that in mind and reviewed by the firm before going live. It's a constraint worth designing around rather than discovering after a campaign is running.
"Yauheni and his team have done an exceptional job managing our digital marketing campaigns. They are incredibly cost effective and provide attentive and dependable service. As a small business owner, it has been extremely difficult to find a competent marketing manager. Then we met these guys, who have delivered, greatly exceeding our expectations. We would recommend to all our friends and colleagues and anyone looking for a top notch marketer."Alexander Schachtel Law Office of Alexander Schachtel · Jersey City, NJ
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