Measurement

1. "What number will you optimize to, and show me the definition."

Credible: screened inquiries and signed cases, with stage definitions written down before launch. Disqualifying: leads, form fills, calls or cost per lead, because in birth injury those numbers can be made smaller without producing a single additional case.

2. "How will you know a lead became a signed case six months later?"

Credible: a CRM integration or a monthly outcome export agreed in the contract, with offline conversions fed back to the ad platforms. Disqualifying: "we'll ask you how it's going."

3. "Show me a report from a current client, redacted."

Credible: spend, inquiries, contacted, screened, signed, cost per screened inquiry, cost per signed case, by channel and by month, with assumptions printed. Disqualifying: impressions, clicks, rankings and a cost per lead chart.

Birth injury specifically

4. "Which search queries will you refuse to bid on?"

Credible: medical-information queries (diagnoses, symptoms, treatments) excluded by default, with a negative list you can inspect. Disqualifying: "we bid on everything related to birth injury."

5. "What does your intake script ask a parent in the first five minutes?"

Credible: the facts a medical-legal review needs, in an order that respects the family, with explicit language that nobody yet knows whether negligence occurred. Disqualifying: no view on intake at all, which means the largest lever in the system is unmanaged.

6. "What happens when our review capacity is full?"

Credible: spend is paused or redirected, and the plan names the ceiling it was built for. Disqualifying: "we'll keep scaling; more leads are always better."

Compliance

7. "Show me the ad copy and the targeting you would use on Meta."

Credible: educational creative to broad audiences; no health-interest targeting; no custom audiences built from inquiry data; nothing that implies a viewer's child has a condition. Disqualifying: health-based targeting, server-side tracking "to get around the restrictions," or distressing imagery.

8. "What data leaves our CRM and goes to an ad platform?"

Credible: stage outcomes and campaign identifiers only; never condition fields, narratives or medical details; you can inspect the payloads. Disqualifying: "the pixel handles it."

9. "Which attorney advertising rules apply in our states, and where are the disclaimers in your templates?"

Credible: a specific answer per state and templates with the disclaimers built in. Disqualifying: a blank look, or "that's your compliance department's job."

Commercial terms

10. "Who owns the accounts, the data and the content when we leave?"

Credible: you do, in your name, from day one. Disqualifying: agency-owned ad accounts, domains or landing pages that vanish with the contract.

11. "Do you serve any other firm in our practice area and market?"

Credible: no, in writing. Disqualifying: yes, or "we keep them separate internally."

12. "How are you paid?"

Credible: flat fees for services, media separate and unmarked. Disqualifying: a share of fees or recoveries, payment per signed case, or referral arrangements, each of which raises professional-conduct questions and hands the agency control of your intake.

What a credible engagement looks like on paper

  • A written data dictionary with stage definitions, signed by your intake lead.
  • A specification of campaigns, exclusions, creative, landing pages and tracking, approved before launch.
  • Budgets, targets, and stop and scale rules agreed in advance.
  • A monthly report that stops at the signed case and prints its assumptions.
  • Month-to-month terms, your accounts, one firm per market, no fee sharing.

That is the standard we hold ourselves to on how we work. If another agency meets it, hire them with confidence; the questions above are worth more to your firm than any agency's deck, including ours.