Lemon-law firm: eligibility screening and automated follow-up

Results as reported by our founder, from the firm’s own records; rounded. Anonymized. This is work our founder led before founding Probative; the firm’s own teams also contributed.

The starting problem

Scaling a stalled program. A boutique, regional lemon-law practice was spending about $80K a month on advertising. Too many inquiries were ineligible, and too much of the follow-up was done by hand, so staff time went to cases that could never sign and to chasing paperwork.

What we changed

1. Tightened eligibility questions and targeting. The questions that decide eligibility came first, and targeting was narrowed to the searches most likely to come from eligible owners.

2. Segmented campaigns by vehicle and issue. Campaigns were split by vehicle and by problem, so each owner saw an ad and a page about their car and their defect.

3. Automated reminders for missing documents and unsigned agreements. Email and SMS reminders went out automatically when a document or a signature was missing, so fewer applications were abandoned halfway.

The program ran on Google Search, SEO and remarketing, with email and SMS follow-up. Remarketing ran only within each platform’s policies, and no Customer Match or look-alike audiences were built from client lists.

The results

• Cost per signed case: $4,000 → $2,000 (−50%).
• Signed cases: 20 → 40 a month at comparable spend (+100%).
• Projected fee-value return on ad spend: 2.5× → 5×.
• Annual firm revenue: $2M → $4M (+100%). This is the firm’s total revenue. Many factors contributed to it, and it is not revenue we claim to have caused.
• Other wins: eligible-inquiry share 35% → 60%; faster document collection; bilingual intake; fewer abandoned applications.
• Engagement: 18 months.

The figures are as reported by our founder from the firm’s own records, rounded. We don’t publish the firm’s name, location or dates.

How it was measured

Signed cases were counted from the firm’s own case records, not from platform reports, and compared on the same basis before and after. Spend came from the ad accounts the firm owned. Projected fee-value return on ad spend is the projected attorney-fee value of signed cases divided by ad spend. Percentages are computed from the figures above and rounded. Today the same measurement runs every week in our Monday report, under The Probative Standard and our method for reporting results.

What this means for your firm

In lemon law, an ineligible inquiry costs twice: once in ad spend and again in staff time. Screen early, segment by vehicle and problem, and let reminders do the chasing. The practice detail is on our lemon law page.