Case Study: ProVantage Helps Law Firm in Texas & Arkansas

Nearly every person in search of legal services turns to the internet, and most potential clients can find attorneys via our newest service, ProVantage. Carefully created based on feedback from attorneys, consumer insights, and leveraging our vast expertise in the legal space, ProVantage simply helps lawyers increase their online visibility four-fold. 

The resulting process allows lawyers to expand their legal presence across the Martindale-Avvo top directories – Avvo, Martindale, Nolo, and Lawyers.com – a.k.a. the top four legal directories in 2023. So, lawyers have maximized exposure on the world’s largest network of legal consumer websites, and there’s a bonus: they can easily manage and update info for all these sites from one myM•A Action Center dashboard. 

This includes managing awards, bio info, and digital reviews across Google, Martindale-Avvo, Facebook, and Yelp – all in one place. 

How it’s Going

Attorneys like James Scurlock of Wallace, Martin, Duke, & Russell have witnessed significant growth after adopting Martindale-Avvo’s ProVantage. In February, we sat down with Scurlock to discuss his experience with the new service and how it exceeded his expectations. 

First, a little background: Wallace, Martin, Duke & Russell has served the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas since 1975. They focus on business law, criminal defense, estate planning, family law and labor/employment law. The firm has exceptional Martindale-Hubbell AV ratings, rating at the highest standard in both categories, with a “V” (very high) in General Ethical Standards and an “A” (very high to preeminent) in Legal Ability. 

The Problem…

With a couple firm locations under his belt, Scurlock reached out to his account manager (AM) at Avvo and requested a focus change in law firm advertising to cover both Texas and Arkansas. His AM suggested the newest service, ProVantage, to increase his law firm’s marketing coverage.

…and the Solution

Scurlock’s AM walked through the ProVantage package and how the cross-marketing with Nolo, Martindale, and Lawyers.com would work. At this point, Scurlock had already been working with Avvo for four years to increase his Texas legal presence. He was pleased with Avvo’s business practices: he’d previously used the company to launch an independent Arkansas practice, and Avvo was such a tremendous help that he had to stop the service because he had become too popular and couldn’t keep up with the work.

“When I first launched my own kind of independent practice in Arkansas many years ago, Avvo helped me so much that I had to stop using you because I got too popular and could not return the phone calls anymore,” he laughs.

He was confident that Wallace, Martin, Duke & Russell could trust Avvo to secure the firm’s reputation, so he enrolled the firm in Complete Profile Plus (now called ProVantage) around the end of December 2022. The firm Wallace, Martin, Duke & Russell was officially one of the first users. 

Highly relevant leads started pouring in from Lawyers.com and the Martindale sites immediately after launch. Scurlock and his firm are beyond pleased with the results after only a few months of using ProVantage. The system worked so well that Scurlock could take leads in other practice areas he didn’t handle and divvy them out to the firm’s partners and associates.

“The partners in our firm especially have doubled down and further committed to Avvo — because they have seen the value in what you guys have done, specifically for me and expanding my presence and seeing the secondary impact of what it’s done to improve the overall reach and depth of service that the firm as a whole is offering.”

The success with Complete Profile Plus impressed the firm’s partners. They increased their commitment to Avvo after seeing the quick value the product has brought to their firm.

Results

By February, the firm had reached out to around 20 leads from the ProVantage package and of those leads, 10 became clients. Plus, the firm’s website traffic has increased tenfold, from under 100 hits per month to visitors in the thousands and they now are averaging more than 1,000 visitors per week.

At first, the managing partners hesitated to invest in marketing with Avvo, but the plan has certainly paid off.

“The partners at first were like, ‘Are we sure we should be investing this much?’ And I said, ‘I think we absolutely should.’ I think our monthly spend is about a thousand dollars.”

When Scurlock compares the firm’s Avvo results to those of their past marketing company, there is simply no contest. His previous firm was spending five times the amount on another marketing firm and not seeing a return on investment. When he started with Avvo, he immediately began receiving five to ten leads per week.

“Everybody in my firm is happy with you guys!” says Scurlock. So much so that the firm is even discussing moving its web services to Avvo to make its website even more responsive.

ProVantage is Martindale-Avvo’s newest legal marketing solution. It was built to elevate attorneys’ digital presence and put law firms in their target market’s spotlight. When your law firm is ready, contact a Legal Marketing Expert to amplify your business.