Legal Marketing Has a Data Problem
Every legal marketing guide starts the same way: build a website, invest in SEO, run Google Ads, and post on social media. The advice is generic because the data behind it is generic.
Nobody publishes what firms actually spend. Nobody breaks down channel allocation by market. Nobody shows which firms dominate and on which channels. The result is an industry where firms spend millions based on recommendations, not evidence.
We changed that. Our market intelligence tracks $150 million in monthly legal advertising spend across 30 designated market areas. We know who spends what, where, and how. This article uses that data to show what legal marketing looks like when you measure it instead of guess.
The Scale of Legal Marketing
The numbers are larger than most firms realize.
AdImpact tracks 3,720 legal advertisers across 150 US markets. Legal services account for 6.11% of all local broadcast impressions nationally, making it one of the most concentrated advertising verticals in local media.
The American Tort Reform Association tracked 16.4 million legal ads airing in 2023 alone. That’s 45,000 ads per day. Personal injury advertising represents the largest segment, followed by mass tort and pharmaceutical litigation.
This isn’t a cottage industry. Legal marketing is an industrial-scale operation where the largest PI advertisers spend $2 to $4 million monthly in a single market.
Five Markets, Five Different Realities
The first thing the data shows is that there is no such thing as a universal legal marketing strategy. Every market is different.
Los Angeles: $22.5 million monthly, 120% growth, 33% CTV. The nation’s most expensive and fastest-growing legal ad market. Jacoby and Meyers leads at $4.4 million monthly. Three firms spend over $2 million each. CTV adoption is high. Competition is fierce. You need scale to survive here.
Dallas: $6.9 million monthly, 26% growth, 10% CTV. One firm, Thomas J. Henry, controls 34.7% of the market through $2.4 million in monthly broadcast. Dallas is a traditional market where TV and radio dominate. CTV is almost untouched.
Atlanta: $12.9 million monthly, 118% growth, 48% CTV. The streaming capital of legal marketing. Seven of the top 10 firms allocate over 50% to CTV. Thompson Law runs 69% streaming. Atlanta shows where other markets are headed.
Houston: $7.2 million monthly, 20% growth, 18% CTV. A three-way battle between Jim Adler, Morgan and Morgan, and Thomas J. Henry. Radio captures 34% of spend, the highest among major markets. All three leaders run 0% CTV.
Washington DC: $2.6 million monthly, 3% CTV. The nation’s most broadcast-heavy legal ad market. The entire CTV allocation is approximately $78,000 monthly. A single firm spending $25,000 on streaming would capture a third of all legal CTV impressions in the capital.
The Channel Shift Nobody Prepared For
Legal marketing was built on broadcast television. The firms that created the category, Morgan and Morgan, Thomas J. Henry, Jim Adler, Morris Bart, did so through local TV and radio over the past 20 to 30 years.
The viewing audience moved. The advertising budgets didn’t.
Streaming now captures 44.8% of total television viewing nationally. Among adults under 50, the figure is higher. CTV advertising spend in the legal category grew 241% between Q1 2023 and Q4 2025.
Yet the average CTV allocation across 210 markets remains under 25%. In many of the largest markets, it sits in single digits.
This creates a measurable inefficiency. The firms reaching the streaming audience are building brand recall with viewers that broadcast-only competitors never touch. The firms not on streaming are paying for broadcast impressions that reach a shrinking share of total viewing. The guide on what growing PI firms do differently shows the specific practices separating firms that adapt from those that stagnate.
What Winning Legal Marketing Looks Like
The data identifies three models that work.
Model 1: Broadcast dominance. Thomas J. Henry’s $2.4 million monthly on broadcast in Dallas delivers 34.7% market share. Morgan and Morgan’s 22-market footprint delivers presence across the country. These firms outspend everyone on television and own the channel. This works if you can sustain the budget. Most firms cannot.
Model 2: Streaming first. Thompson Law in Atlanta at 69% CTV. Dozier Law Firm at 81%. Dennis Law Firm at 75%. These firms treat streaming as the primary channel and broadcast as the supplement. They accept higher CPMs for household-level targeting and measurable attribution. This works in high-CTV markets and as a counter-strategy to broadcast-dominant incumbents.
Model 3: Channel arbitrage. Thompson Law in Dallas spends $177,000 monthly on CTV in a market where the dominant firm ($2.4M budget) allocates just 8.5% to streaming. The math is simple. You can’t outspend the broadcast leader on broadcast. You can outspend them on the channel they barely use.
All three models share one trait. They are based on data about the specific market, not generic advice about legal marketing. The model that works in Dallas does not work in Atlanta. The model that works in Houston does not work in Los Angeles.
The Measurement Gap
Legal marketing has a measurement problem. Broadcast television, which captures the majority of spend, offers limited attribution. You know your ads ran. You know roughly how many people saw them. You don’t know which viewers called, which visited your website, or which became clients.
CTV changes that calculus. Streaming advertising provides household-level attribution. You can track which households saw your ad, which visited your website afterward, and which called. The connection between advertising spend and client acquisition becomes measurable.
For marketing directors reporting to CFOs, this distinction matters. A $500,000 monthly CTV budget that shows a measurable pipeline of leads survives budget review. A $500,000 monthly broadcast budget that relies on brand awareness metrics does not, at least not indefinitely.
The firms that build measurable legal marketing, with attribution from ad impression to signed case, will have a structural advantage over firms running unmeasured broadcast.
What to Do With This Data
If you run legal marketing for a personal injury firm, start here.
Know your market. Read the market-level data. What is the total spend? Who leads? What is the CTV adoption? What is the competitive concentration? Every decision you make should start with your market’s specific numbers, not national averages.
Find the gap. Every market has one. In Dallas, it is CTV (10% adoption in a $6.9M market). In Houston, it is CTV (18% adoption with three leaders running 0%). In New York, it is CTV (11% adoption in the nation’s largest market). The gap is almost always on streaming because the biggest spenders are almost always on broadcast.
Budget for frequency. Whether you choose broadcast, CTV, radio, or a mix, budget to reach the frequency threshold on your chosen channel. Three to six household exposures per month on CTV. 20+ weekly spots on radio. Consistent weekly flights on broadcast. Thin allocation across all channels produces thin results.
Measure everything. CTV attribution, call tracking, website visit correlation, intake form tracking. If you cannot measure it, you cannot defend it in a budget meeting.
Commit. The firms dominating our data did not get there in 90 days. Thomas J. Henry has dominated Dallas broadcast for years. Morgan and Morgan has been in 22 markets simultaneously for years. Thompson Law has been running streaming-first for years. Legal marketing rewards consistency.
Every step in this framework starts with the same input: your market’s specific competitive data.
The Numbers Do Not Lie
Legal marketing is a $3 billion industry that largely runs on assumptions. The data shows something different than the assumptions suggest.
The dominant firms built empires on broadcast television. The viewing audience has moved to streaming. The gap between where firms spend and where people watch represents the largest strategic opportunity in legal marketing today.
The question for every managing partner and marketing director is straightforward. Do you follow the patterns of 2005, or do you follow the data of 2026?