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HelpSelf Legal built an online legal tool that got to 1,400 monthly active users in 3 months. Now, we share learnings on how to market a consumer legal app.
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Let’s start with three compelling reasons you might be thinking about launching a consumer-facing legal business:
Maybe it’s your version of the legal profession’s Hippocratic Oath—driven by a desire to help those facing eviction, financial exploitation, domestic violence, or the denial of veterans’ or disaster-related benefits.
Or maybe it’s the entrepreneur in you. You recognize the opportunity to deliver legal services in the same convenient, digital-first format that consumers already expect from retail, healthcare, and financial services.
Whichever motivation drives you, the demand is clear: consumers are ready to pay for legal services that are affordable, accessible, and delivered in a format that meets them where they are. Legal professionals can meet this demand by offering services through scalable, user-friendly legal apps.
A legal app is an online tool that gathers data and generates decisions and/or documents based on rules embedded in the system.
Examples would be TurboTax, Clerky, and DoNotPay. Many legal apps are #BuiltOnGavel. For examples, check out JusTech, Hello Divorce, Landlord Legal, Colorado Name Change Online, and FixMyRental, to name just a few.
By now, if you’re using Gavel, you know that the technology is at your fingertips to build these tools yourself with very little financial investment. So, the tech exists. The demand exists. How can you connect those two? That’s where legal consumer marketing comes in, and it’s everything we’ll be covering below in 6 major lessons.
Before we get started with the lessons, we want to share some context around the metrics our consumer legal tool achieved. (Skip to lesson 1 if you already know the HelpSelf product and story.)
In a prior life, we built HelpSelf Legal, the “TurboTax” for domestic violence survivors in California. Here’s a screenshot of what the platform did.
We served consumers, legal aid organizations, and law firms—and the impact was deeply felt. We received countless heartfelt messages from users sharing how our product made a meaningful difference in their lives.
But it wasn’t just emotional validation—we had the metrics to back it up. Within our first three months, we reached 1,400 monthly active users. We charged an average of $15 per consumer user (not including more profitable enterprise clients such as law firms and legal aid organizations). Month over month, we saw consistent double- and triple-digit growth.
Focusing on our consumer segment, our users came from several key sources:
When we launched HelpSelf, we were selling to anyone who would pay—consumers, legal aid organizations, law firms, court self-help centers. Some of those became great referral partners, but in the meantime, we were spread too thin.
I was the only person doing sales and marketing. Our messaging wasn’t clear, and we couldn’t optimize what we were building. (This is the opposite of what we’ve done at Gavel, where we’ve focused on small law firms and targeted practice areas we know perform well on the platform.)
If you're reading this, you may decide you don’t want to build a consumer legal business at all. Maybe you want to sell your estate planning automation app to other lawyers instead of consumers. That’s a drastically different business model—different product expectations, support needs, pricing, and marketing strategy.
Whatever path you choose, be intentional and stick to it.
The two most important questions to ask when defining your ideal customer (ICP):
If you’re losing money on each sale, you’re not going to make it up in volume.
At HelpSelf, we didn’t focus early enough on customer acquisition cost (CAC). Our Google Ads were costing us $25 per customer—for a product we sold for $15. That didn’t include the hours I spent fielding questions or driving to the post office to mail filings to courts without e-filing. (Yes, we did things that didn’t scale!)
CAC is the single most important metric to watch—more important than revenue. We eventually solved our CAC problem through thoughtful, iterative changes to pricing and packaging. We introduced a three-tiered plan, and about a third of customers chose a high-touch subscription that included filing help, service of process, and referrals to attorneys.
Meanwhile, forget vanity metrics. Pageviews, impressions, bounce rate—they might be helpful later, once you’re driving qualified traffic. But in the early days, they’re just noise if the people visiting your site aren’t potential customers.
Have you ever gooogled something business-related and ended up on a Hubspot article—even when it had nothing to do with Hubspot? That’s no accident. Hubspot is a masterclass in top-of-funnel content.
They earn trust by creating genuinely helpful resources, and over time, that trust turns into conversion.
Don’t expect to rank #1 on Google overnight. Keep creating quality content, cite reputable sources, and ensure your site’s structure (sitemap, internal links, etc.) makes your pages easy for search engines to crawl and value. While paid and earned search strategies have evolved, these timeless tips will set you on the right path:
1. Do the hard work to produce content people actually need.
Our highest-converting asset was a comprehensive series on domestic violence restraining order procedures for every California county—detailing filing and service rules, required local forms, self-help and legal aid resources, and the judges who oversee each court. We built a standard template for the data we needed, then either I or a researcher populated each page. This depth of hyperlocal, practical information drove massive organic traffic and conversions.
2. Give away valuable tools for free.
Not every resource needs to be a direct revenue generator—sometimes free tools become your strongest lead magnets. On HelpSelf, we offered a complimentary fee-waiver generator. Thousands of users came for that free service—and many converted to our paid $15 DIY package once they’d experienced our platform.
3. Leverage technology to amplify your marketing.
We could host a whole workshop on marketing tech, but here are a few tools that helped us understand, optimize, and scale:
– Keyword research: Use Moz, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to find high-intent search terms and assess ranking difficulty.
– Content optimization: Tools like Surfer SEO and Frase analyze top-ranking pages (word count, topic coverage) so you can create more comprehensive, authoritative articles.
– Technical health: Google Search Console alerts you to crawl errors, mobile issues, and indexing problems.
– Creative assets: Canva for graphics and Jasper.ai for draft copy can speed up design and content creation—think of them as your in-house designer and junior copywriter.
4. Repurpose every piece of content into multiple formats.
If you’ve invested in a white paper, turn it into a podcast episode, a series of social-media posts, a webinar, and a short video. Different audiences prefer different formats—casting a wider net ensures your expertise reaches more potential clients.
Let’s talk about search engine marketing and press. They are both hard. The competition is tough and they require constant fine-tuning. But if you can get it right, they will pay dividends.
At HelpSelf, we iterated until we got these both right. Initially, we handed over a fortune to Google for zero conversions. Speaking of vanity metrics, we were getting tons of leads per day, but they were terrible leads. They had no intent to buy, and they were incredibly expensive since we were competing against lawyers banking on huge retainers. So we narrowed our scope and used search terms like “domestic violence fee waiver” and “domestic violence restraining order not married” instead of broader catch-alls. The cost went down and the quality went up.
Similarly, press is competitive. Journalists are being bombarded by article pitches for every new startup, but at HelpSelf, this is one of the things we did best. We sent targeted messages to journalists who cared about our topic. We flattered them and made it clear that the message was meant for them and only for them. As a result, we received coverage in mainstream media like Mashable, on legal tech sites, and on startup sites. The press coverage itself also led to more press coverage - a virtuous cycle. My advice on this one: reach out to media, but be targeted. Think about where your audience is reading and consuming media. Post on Hacker News, bother Bob Ambrogi, email Tech Crunch.
When you’re competing for attention online, credibility can be your strongest differentiator. In a landscape full of flashy tech tools and generic legal apps, your legal background and subject matter expertise are what set you apart—so don’t bury them.
Even if you’re operating in a niche with little competition, most attorneys online are up against two main contenders:
At HelpSelf, we tested this head-on. We ran two versions of our landing page:
– One emphasized my experience as a pro bono attorney serving domestic violence survivors
– The other focused on the tech, positioning it like a LegalZoom or TurboTax-style experience
The result? The legally credentialed version led to nearly 50% more conversions and 2.5x faster purchase decisions.
Consumers are often cautious when it comes to legal tools—especially when the stakes are high. Show them they can trust you. Feature your credentials, your track record, and the real-world legal experience behind your product or service. In a crowded online space, authority builds trust—and trust drives sales.
You’ve built a solid product, customers are happy, and your marketing engine is running. So how do you fuel growth early on—especially through word of mouth?
The answer: exceptional customer service.
When you're just getting started, your early customers are also your best marketers. Fast response times, thoughtful support, and genuine friendliness can turn them into vocal advocates. These interactions directly impact your Net Promoter Score (NPS) and build trust that no ad campaign can buy.
Especially in a crowded market, standout customer service can be the reason you win.
Author: Dorna Moini (creator of HelpSelf Legal and now, CEO of Gavel)
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