Independent measurement: keep your agency, know what it signs

Independent measurement is for firms that want to keep their current agency, or their in-house team, and know what it signs. We measure the work in signed cases every week, from read-only access, against your own records. Your agency keeps running the ads. You get numbers you can check.

ILLUSTRATIVE. A fictional firm, last 4 weeks, to show the idea only. Conversions the agency reported: 64. Leads that were real conversations: 39. Signed cases in the firm’s CRM: 7. Media: $18,400. Media cost per signed case: $2,629. Gap between our count and the CRM: 0.

The gap between 64 and 7 is the point. Neither number is wrong; they measure different things. Only one of them is what the partners care about.

Who it’s for

• Firms that like their agency, or are under contract, and want an outside check before renewal.
• Firms with an in-house marketer who wants independent numbers to show the partners.
• Firms that buy leads and want to see which ones sign. In one 2026 federal suit, an injury firm alleges it rejected 204 of 265 leads from a vendor, at about $5,000 a lead (E.D.N.Y. No. 2:26-cv-04412; Rankings.io; an allegation, not a finding).
• Firms with several vendors, who need them judged on the same numbers.

61% of firms have less than moderate confidence measuring marketing returns across channels (Martindale-Avvo). This service exists for that gap.

How it works

1. You grant read-only access to your ad accounts, call tracking and CRM, or send a regular export. We change nothing.
2. Your agency keeps managing the ads, bidding and pages.
3. We map your CRM stages to The Probative Standard’s at kickoff, and print the mapping in the report.
4. Every Monday, you get what signed, what it cost and how our count compares with your CRM’s and with what the platforms report.
5. Twice a year, we design a fair test with you: spend turned down in some areas and compared with similar areas, to see what the spend actually adds.
6. When we find a problem, we show you the rows behind it, and the agency can see the same rows.

Our conflict rules

Probative also runs ads for law firms, so we hold ourselves to written rules. Every proposal and contract for this service carries this statement, word for word:

“Probative also manages ads for law firms. While we measure your current agency, we won’t offer to take over its work unless you ask in writing. Your agency can see the same Ledger you see.”

The “Ledger” in that statement is the Monday signed-case report. And:

• We don’t manage what we audit. While we measure your agency, we don’t run your ads.
• Findings come with their data. Anything we report about your agency comes with the rows behind it.
• If you later move your ads to us, your next report says so, and from then on our own work is tested the same way, under The Probative Standard’s rules for grading our own spend.
• No exclusivity. This service carries none, and it doesn’t stop us measuring other firms.

The first 90 days

What we look at first

The first weeks usually find the same few things:

• Counting. Whether the agency counts short calls, duplicate leads, job seekers or existing clients as leads. One Florida injury firm’s marketing director found about 570 of an agency’s 600 reported monthly calls lasted under two seconds (podcast).
• Ownership. Whether your ad accounts, Business Profile and phone numbers are in your firm’s name. Anyone can see who pays for a firm’s Google ads under “Ads funded by” in the Ads Transparency Center (Google).
• Brand credit. How much of the agency’s reported success is people searching your firm’s name, who may have found you anyway.
• Spanish. Whether Spanish-speaking callers are tracked, answered and signed at the same rate as English-speaking ones.

What the report shows for each vendor

Every vendor gets the same columns, so an agency, a lead seller and your own team can be compared on one page.

Adding a senior owner

Independent measurement tells you what each vendor signs. If you also want someone senior to plan the budget across all of them, our fractional CMO can be added to this service.

After an in-house handover

Firms that take our optional handover, where we train their own team to run the work, often keep independent measurement afterwards as their outside check. In that case, its setup fee is waived.

Ethics notes

• We never contact your agency’s clients, your prospects or anyone else on your behalf.
• We don’t share one firm’s data with another firm, ever.
• We give no legal advice about your vendor contracts. What we can tell you is what the numbers show.

How it changes by practice

Every practice can use it. It is most common in personal injury, where firms often run several vendors at once and lead buying is widespread, and in employment law, where long signing times make agency reports hard to judge.

Start with the measurement study if you want a one-time look first. The full report format is on the signed-case reporting page.