This playbook is for trial users at family law firms configuring GavelGrow for the first time. By the end of the 90-day cycle below you will have separate intake flows for divorce, custody, child support, and prenup matters; missed-call SMS recovery firing within 60 seconds; and referral-source attribution wired into every lead record. The goal is to close the gap between leads who arrive in distress and your attorneys — track your own contact rate before and after to measure the lift for your firm.
Looking for the Family Law marketing pitch? See /solutions/family-law.
If a family law prospect does not get a live answer within minutes of reaching out, most move to the next firm on their list and do not call back. Your setup priority is missed-call SMS recovery and a calm, confidentiality-aware tone in every automated touch.
Divorce intake is not custody intake is not prenup intake. Generic forms either ask too much or too little, and either way leads feel unheard. Your setup must include separate intake flows for divorce, custody, child support, and prenup matters from day one.
Referrals from financial advisors, therapists, and prior clients drive a disproportionate share of family law revenue. Without source attribution, you cannot tell which referring partners actually send signed cases versus consultations. Setup must capture referral source on every intake.
Stand up case-type intake, missed-call recovery, and the confidentiality controls family law demands.
Tune the intake by case type, build the referral dashboard, and shorten time-to-consult for emotional leads.
Use 500-firm benchmarks, formalize referral cultivation, and lock in repeatable reporting.
Bracketed tokens like [city] are placeholders — replace with your firm service area before launching campaigns.
40-50% of paid budget — typically the highest-volume and highest-value family law category
[city] divorce attorney[city] divorce lawyerbest divorce lawyer near meuncontested divorce attorney [city]high asset divorce lawyer [city]25-30% — emotional intent, often higher conversion but lower retainer than complex divorce
child custody lawyer [city]custody attorney near mechild support lawyer [city]fathers rights attorney [city]modification of custody lawyer [city]10-15% — narrower volume but signals informed buyers and often referral-driven
prenup attorney [city]postnuptial agreement lawyermediation attorney [city]collaborative divorce lawyer [city]LGBTQ family lawyer [city]5-10% — cheap clicks; protects against competitor bidding on your name
[your firm name][your firm name] reviews[partner last name] divorce lawyer[firm name] family law[firm name] [city] attorney10-15% — soft intent; route to educational nurture rather than immediate consult
how much does a divorce cost [state]first consultation divorce lawyerfree consultation family attorneyshould I file for divorcehow to start a custody caseDrives conditional logic for the rest of the form. Divorce, custody, child support, prenup, and modification each surface a different question set.
Family law is highly venue-specific. Captures whether the matter is in your firm practice area; routes out-of-jurisdiction leads to a referral workflow.
For divorce, drives complexity assessment (short marriage vs long marriage). For custody, distinguishes married parents vs unmarried.
Custody and child support intake branches off this. Even in pure divorce intake, presence of minor children changes the case scope.
Y/N + name if known. Tells the attorney whether this is already a contested matter and lets your firm run a quick conflict check before the consult.
Domestic violence, emergency custody, or pending court date elevate priority. Flagged leads route to same-day callback regardless of normal queue.
Required field. Choices include attorney name, financial advisor, therapist, prior client, Google, Yelp, social. Foundation of the referral attribution dashboard.
Lead can be marked sensitive on intake; restricts visibility to designated staff via role-based permissions. Critical for high-profile or interfamily matters.
Family law leads often cannot speak freely from home. Capturing preferred call windows prevents missed connections during awkward hours.
All sequences are TCPA-compliant by default — STOP / HELP keywords honored automatically, consent events captured to an append-only audit log.
Targets are anchored to the GavelGrow 500-firm benchmark dataset.
Target: $72 mid-market average; $36 top-quartile (per the 500-firm benchmark)
If off-target: If your CPL is above $90, audit case-type segmentation — divorce, custody, and prenup should each have their own campaign so you can pause underperformers.
Target: Aim for full coverage via live answer + missed-call SMS recovery combined; track your firm baseline before and after this playbook
If off-target: If contact rate is not approaching full coverage, missed-call recovery is misconfigured or the front desk is dropping calls. Audit the call routing schedule first.
Target: Track per source and benchmark against your firm own historical baseline
If off-target: If conversion is trending down, intake is usually failing on tone or speed. The missed-call SMS template tends to be the culprit — re-read it as a lead in distress.
Target: Track per attorney and per source; this is mostly a sales metric, not a marketing one
If off-target: If attorneys see this trending down, the lead quality from a specific source may be the issue — segment conversion by source.
Target: Aim for full coverage; leads without a captured referral source break downstream attribution analysis
If off-target: If coverage is not approaching full, the referral-source field is not required on every form path. Fix this before running any partner attribution analysis.
Target: Track quarterly; identify which referrers drive the most signed cases for your firm specifically
If off-target: Use the dashboard to identify your top senders and schedule appreciation outreach. Underweighted referrers often respond strongly to a quarterly thank-you.
On every intake form path, enable the sensitivity / confidentiality flag as a checkbox. Leads with the flag enabled are visible only to staff in your firm Sensitive Matters role group. Configure roles under team settings during your Days 1-30 setup. Every view, export, and edit is captured in the append-only audit log.
Add a practice-fit confirmation question early in the intake form. Out-of-scope leads can be marked Referred Out and assigned to a partner firm in your network. Track referral-out volume in the dashboard so you can quantify the value of your inbound network even when you do not retain the matter.
Use case type as the primary intake selector and capture a secondary related-matters multi-select on the same form. The lead record holds both case types; conditional fields surface the right questions for each. Attorneys then quote a unified retainer rather than two siloed engagements.
Avoid sending sensitive matter detail via SMS — TCPA-compliant messaging is for confirmations and scheduling, not case substance. Use the unified inbox email channel (TLS 1.3 in transit, AES-256 at rest) for any communication with substantive content. Train intake staff on this distinction during onboarding.
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