Yes, partners.
We’re talking about lawyers and legal marketers who understand that exceptional digital results require a two-way street: our expertise paired with your industry knowledge, our strategic execution combined with your performance data, and our “Think as An Owner™” mentality matched with your commitment to long-term growth.
Here’s what separates our best partnerships from typical vendor relationships: Our most successful clients don’t just trust us with their digital visibility—they trust us with their conversion data, intake metrics, and revenue insights. Why? Because when you share your complete performance picture, we can optimize for what actually matters: qualified leads that convert to paying clients, not just pretty ranking reports.
We know you’ve probably been burned before by agencies that promised the moon and delivered generic strategies. That’s exactly why we put everything on the table upfront. No black boxes, no “trust us, it’s complicated” responses, and definitely no automated reporting dashboards that tell you nothing about your bottom line. The questions below address the real concerns we hear from savvy law firm leaders—the ones who’ve learned that the right marketing partner can accelerate growth, while the wrong one can waste months of momentum and thousands of dollars.
Ready to have that honest conversation? Let’s dive in.
Frequently Asked Questions about 9Sail’s Services
We track ROI through multiple mechanisms, including lead attribution systems that connect inquiries directly to SEO efforts, call tracking, practice area-specific keyword ranking improvements, and client acquisition cost comparisons against other channels. Our transparent reporting includes weekly meetings, monthly performance metrics, and we require client collaboration in revenue reporting to ensure accuracy. Unlike agencies focused on vanity metrics, we measure what matters: qualified inquiries that convert to clients and revenue generation by practice area.
We absolutely provide references from law firm clients across similar practice areas. Our documented success spans corporate transactional, litigation, various business law, entertainment law, personal injury, trust/estates, and elder law, among other areas. We work with boutique firms, mid-size practices, and Am Law 200 firms, and have established multi-year partnerships, evidenced in our case studies.
Our clients consistently highlight our partnership approach, responsiveness, and measurable results. We can connect you with firms in your practice area(s) who can speak to our expertise in navigating legal advertising compliance, understanding practice-specific competitive landscapes, and delivering ROI-focused campaigns that align with professional standards.
9Sail conducts comprehensive technical audits and provides detailed recommendations for everything from new site builds and rebuilds to optimizing your existing website. We’ll identify exactly what needs to be done technically to maximize your search performance, then work with your current developer or connect you with a trusted development partner to execute the actual implementation. We oversee technical optimization, including site speed improvements, mobile optimization, structured data implementation, and enhancements to crawlability and indexability.
This approach eliminates all the usual headaches: no risk of us owning your site, no proprietary platform dependencies, and no vendor lock-in scenarios that keep you up at night. We sit firmly on your side of the table as your technical advocate, ensuring everything gets done correctly. Think of us as the knowledgeable friend who knows what questions to ask your contractor and can translate between “marketing speak” and “developer speak.”
Whether you’re launching a new site or optimizing an existing one, we provide the specialized technical SEO expertise while you maintain complete control over your digital assets.
9Sail excels at collaborative relationships because we’re targeting different publications and goals than your traditional PR agency. While they’re chasing prestigious top-of-funnel/brand awareness placements in publications like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, we’re building digital authority through the digital-first publications that actually drive search rankings and AI citations.
Here’s the beautiful part: there’s typically almost no overlap. Your traditional PR team focuses on top-tier prestige publications for brand awareness, while we target digital-first sites like Vault, Inc., and industry-specific publications that search engines and AI systems actually cite. Different publications, different strategies, complementary results. We maintain open communication with your PR team to ensure we’re never stepping on each other’s toes, and we provide the educational transparency that helps everyone understand what’s being done and why.
Think of it as the dynamic duo effect: traditional PR builds your credibility, and we ensure prospects can actually find you when they’re ready to validate that credibility online. The result? Your existing PR investment works harder because prospects can now find you when they search. No competition, no confusion—just two strategies working together to dominate different parts of the visibility spectrum.
SEO is a long-term strategy, and 12 months is actually a reasonable expectation for substantial results. While we can show initial improvements in 3-6 months, such as technical fixes and on-page optimization, sustainable organic growth typically requires 8-12 months to fully mature.
Our process includes immediate technical wins, but the most significant ROI comes from our comprehensive approach: authority building through digital PR, content strategy implementation, and competitive positioning. The firms achieving our documented 6X-7X ROI have committed to long-term partnerships, understanding that quality SEO requires sustained investment to outperform competitors and capture market share.
Our approach is distinctly service area-focused rather than one-size-fits-all. Each practice area has unique competitive challenges, search patterns, and client behavior. Family law prospects search differently than corporate clients seeking intellectual property counsel.
We conduct practice-specific keyword research, competitive analysis for each service line, and develop content strategies tailored to how clients search for specific legal services. This granular approach allows us to prioritize practice areas with the highest revenue potential and adapt strategies based on the competitive dynamics and search volume for each specialty.
Our monthly retainer includes comprehensive digital visibility services: content marketing with outlines that make attorney contributions effortless, technical SEO optimization, PR-led link building for authority establishment, local SEO management, and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to future-proof your visibility in AI-driven search.
We also provide weekly check-ins, monthly strategy consultations, transparent reporting with full meeting summaries, and ongoing optimization based on performance data. Our white-glove service model means real humans making strategic adjustments – no automated services or templated approaches.
Our onboarding process spans 4-6 weeks and is highly structured. We begin with a comprehensive strategy discovery, including competitive analysis, keyword research, and website audit. This culminates in a custom blueprint creation with strategies tailored specifically for your firm.
Day-to-day, we handle most execution internally as an extension of your team. You’ll need someone to coordinate and provide business context, but our hands-on approach means we manage the technical implementation, content strategy, and optimization work. We’re available “at a moment’s notice” for urgent requests while maintaining organized delivery that consistently meets deadlines.
You maintain full ownership and control of all your digital assets. We believe in transparency and client empowerment – you own your website, analytics accounts, and advertising accounts. We work within your existing infrastructure and provide access/training so you’re never dependent on us.
Our collaborative approach means we can work with your analytics setup, provide recommendations for account structure, and ensure you maintain administrative access to all platforms. We’re partners invested in your long-term success, not vendors looking to create dependency relationships or vendor lock-in.
Citation and directory optimization is integral to our local SEO services. We conduct comprehensive audits of your current directory presence and tackle the tedious but critical work of cleaning up inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across platforms. Our citation optimization includes managing your Google Business Profile, optimizing attorney bio pages for name-specific searches, and ensuring consistent brand representation across all directories. We handle the quality control to ensure accuracy and compliance with legal marketing requirements while maximizing your local visibility.
We don’t manage your SuperLawyers, AVVO, or other premium legal directory profiles. We will, however, provide strategic guidance on whether these directories are worth your investment based on actual referral traffic and lead tracking. We’ll also advise whether you should create profiles on directories you’re currently missing, especially for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) purposes, because AI systems love pulling from multiple authoritative sources when recommending legal services.
9Sail is the legal marketing industry leader in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). We offer comprehensive AI optimization, including LLM Optimization for structured, sourceable content, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) for direct answer placement, and AI Overview Optimization to ensure prominence in ChatGPT and Google’s AI features.
Our cutting-edge approach prepares your firm for the AI-driven search landscape through citation-worthy content, structured data implementation, and strategic positioning in generative search results. We provide practical recommendations for leveraging AI tools while protecting your proprietary information through AI governance protocols.
Our pricing reflects a premium positioning with custom strategies rather than standardized packages. Investment levels scale based on firm size, growth ambitions, market competitiveness, and practice area complexity, rather than a simple per-practice-area pricing model. Adding practice areas involves strategic analysis of the competitive marketplace, keyword research, and content requirements specific to each new specialty. We’ll provide transparent pricing for expansion that reflects the additional work required while leveraging existing optimizations where possible.
9Sail’s documented ROI performance, legal industry specialization, and partnership approach make us the strategic choice for law firms serious about sustainable digital growth.