Building Brands, Not Just Rankings: The Future of Legal Marketing
The legal industry isn’t exactly known for bold branding or creative risk-taking, but that’s exactly where the opportunity lies.
In this episode of Smart Route, MeanPug co-founder Bobby Steinbach joins Andrew Clark to talk about how his team is reshaping the way law firms think about marketing. Drawing from his experience as Director of Data Engineering at Morgan & Morgan and his background in startup culture, Bobby shares how data-driven strategy, creative design, and smart automation come together to help firms stand out in a crowded market.
He explains why the future of legal marketing entails more than chasing rankings or gaming algorithms. Building recognizable, authentic brands that drive long-term growth are needed to stand out. From the surprising comeback of traditional media (think billboards and vanity numbers) to the ongoing debate over AI in marketing, this conversation blends sharp insight with real-world lessons from the front lines of agency life.
Discover key takeaways:
- Why SEO alone won’t build sustainable visibility
- How branding and omnichannel strategy drive better ROI
- The surprising ways traditional and digital media now intersect
- What “multiplicative skills” mean for the next generation of marketers
Whether you’re an agency leader, law firm marketer, or data-driven strategist, this episode offers a playbook for scaling smarter and building a brand that lasts.
Where to Connect with Bobby
About Bobby Steinbach
Bobby Steinbach is the Co-Founder of and a former Director of Engineering at Morgan & Morgan, the largest plaintiff law firm in the country. With a deep background in software development, systems integration, and legal tech automation, Bobby now leads product strategy and AI development at MeanPug, where he helps law firms build smarter, more scalable client origination pipelines. He speaks nationally on topics ranging from AI in legal operations to performance tracking and intake optimization.
Bobby is a law firm marketing thought leader and co-host on both the Hot Docket and Devil’s Advocate Podcasts, a contributing author on several national and legal-specific publications, has spoken at various legal conferences, and has guest appearances on many legal-focused podcasts and webinars, including The Renegade Lawyer Podcast, Profit with Law, and Lawyerist.
TRANSCRIPT
Andrew (Host): Hey everyone, this is Andrew Clark, your host of the Smart Route Podcast brought to you by CallTrackingMetrics. I’m here today with one of our customers and the head of MeanPug, Bobby Steinbach.
Thanks for joining us, Bobby. We got connected through our partnership manager, who actually came over to my desk one day and said, “You’ve got to see this website—it’s hilarious.” It had such a memorable name and so much character that I knew I needed to talk to you. And you definitely didn’t disappoint.
Right away, your agency stood out. Especially in the legal industry—which, let’s be honest, can often feel a little buttoned-up—MeanPug really brings personality to the space. I think most of our listeners who’ve worked in marketing have probably handled a legal client or two at some point.
In my own agency days, I worked across personal injury, family law, and pretty much every vertical in legal—websites, digital marketing, you name it.
Bobby is the CEO and co-founder of MeanPug, and before that, he was the Director of Data Engineering at Morgan & Morgan—one of the largest plaintiff law firms in the country.
On top of that, Bobby’s also involved in a handful of podcasts, all with fantastic names. One of them—The Devil’s Advocate—immediately made me think of the Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino movie from the ’90s.
Bobby (Guest): Yeah, definitely Al Pacino. I think it might’ve been Keanu Reeves too.
Andrew: That’s right! Another one of your shows, The Hot Docket, also caught my attention. I love how distinct and creative your projects are, especially in a space that people often think of as traditional or even boring.
So, Bobby, I’d love to start there—tell us a little about yourself and how you first got involved in digital marketing.
Bobby: Yeah, thanks, Andrew. I’ll give you the whole spiel. I’ve been in legal marketing for about 11 or 12 years now. Like you mentioned, I was the Director of Engineering at Morgan & Morgan for about three and a half years before starting the agency.
We launched MeanPug in February 2020—fantastic timing, right?
Andrew: Yes, very!
Bobby: I don’t know how it would’ve gone if we hadn’t been set up as a remote-first company, but here we are. Things have gone really well. We’ve grown to around 25 employees across six or seven departments.
One of our core beliefs as an agency is that, to be successful in marketing today, you have to be good at everything. You can’t just specialize in SEO or PPC or TV. You need to be truly omnichannel—executing across all fronts.
That’s what we try to do for our clients. What I think makes us unique is that, typically for less than the cost of one full-time employee, our clients get access to an entire marketing team. That lets them compete at the same level as some of the biggest spenders in their market because we’ve already built the processes, tools, and people to deliver that scale.
They don’t have to worry about hiring, performance metrics, onboarding, or AI optimization—we handle all of that.
All we do is work with law firms. No other industries.
As for our name, MeanPug, I always say I should come up with a fake backstory, because the real one’s not that exciting. It’s like when someone asks how you got a scar and you wish you could say it was from a knife fight defending your family, instead of just falling off a bike.
That’s kind of how our name story goes. We knew we wanted to be different—that’s been a theme since the beginning. When we were naming the agency, we didn’t want to be another “Law-X” or “Legal-Marketing-Something” type of company.
We wanted to stand apart. We really loved the branding and tone of Mailchimp—fun, approachable, but still professional—so that inspired us as we thought about our own name and identity.
Andrew: Yeah, that makes sense.
Bobby: That was definitely something we wanted to model after. I had a pug—still do, actually—she’s sitting right here. So we started brainstorming names that were catchy, short, available, and included “pug” somehow.
Eventually, MeanPug just stuck.
Andrew: Nice. I can imagine it’s a great conversation starter when you’re meeting clients. Even if it’s not the most dramatic origin story, it’s memorable—and that alone makes it valuable.
Bobby: Exactly.
Andrew: And what’s cool is that it really carries through across all your digital properties. I get a strong sense of your personality and brand just from your website. I imagine that kind of distinct identity is a big differentiator in such a competitive space.
You’re up against some large agencies, but in the legal industry especially, it often comes down to relationships and authenticity.
Speaking of that, I’d love to talk a bit about your experience at Morgan & Morgan. From what I gather, your background is in computer science, which connects naturally to your work in data and automation. What was it like working for such a large law firm in that kind of marketing and data engineering role?
Bobby: Pretty amazing, honestly. You can’t really replicate that kind of experience—being in-house at a juggernaut like Morgan & Morgan, which is one of the biggest players in personal injury marketing.
We got to experiment in ways smaller agencies just can’t. We could test strategies, see what worked and what didn’t, without worrying about breaking the bank or jeopardizing the business.
One of the best parts of their culture was how open it was to experimentation. It was very much a “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” kind of environment. There were no bad ideas.
That freedom gave us a chance to innovate—and if something didn’t work, no one got torn down for it.
We were actually one of the early adopters of CallTrackingMetrics at Morgan & Morgan.
Andrew: Wow!
Bobby: Yeah, I’m not sure if they’re still clients today, but we did a lot of really interesting work with CTM back then.
Andrew: That’s awesome. I’d love to hear how you first discovered CallTrackingMetrics.
Bobby: It’s kind of an interesting story. So, Yehuda Apfelbaum—who I believe now leads a lot of digital marketing at Morgan & Morgan, maybe even as CMO—was actually the COO of an agency that worked with Morgan when we joined.
That agency eventually stopped working with Morgan, but toward the end of our time there, Yehuda came back to Morgan in-house, leaving the agency side. I think he brought the relationship with CallTrackingMetrics from his previous agency and reintroduced it to the firm.
Andrew: Okay, got it.
Bobby: Yeah, I’m not sure exactly how far back the relationship goes, but Yehuda was definitely the one who made that introduction.
Andrew: That’s awesome. Fast-forward to 2020—starting MeanPug wasn’t an overnight decision. What was that journey like? What went into your decision to leave the in-house world and launch your own agency?
Bobby: It was really a combination of factors. First off, neither Andrew nor I are lawyers, so there was always a ceiling to how far we could go at Morgan. We could keep growing in title and responsibility, but true ownership wasn’t on the table.
That was always in the back of our minds.
Another factor was that before Morgan, Andrew and I were actually the first couple of employees at a startup in New York—a secondary ticket marketplace. I was the first engineer, and Andrew was the first paid digital hire.
That industry is tough—super competitive, high volume, and usually low margin. So we had to be incredibly innovative to stand out. We pushed hard, experimented constantly, and eventually grew that startup to about $10 million ARR before it was acquired.
Andrew: Wow.
Bobby: Yeah, so we carried that scrappy, startup mindset with us. We knew how to carve out a niche and find a product–market fit—though I hate that term. We were confident we could build a viable business around whatever came next.
That said, we didn’t always know it would be a legal marketing agency. Our first idea was actually to focus on SMB clients.
Andrew: Really?
Bobby: Yeah, we first tried going after roofers, electricians, plumbers—really any type of service-based SMB. I think we even had a waste disposal client in the mix. That was our initial direction.
We liked the SMB model because it felt somewhat tech-forward. A lot of what you do in that space can be monetized quickly, and in theory, your risk is spread out. No single client makes up a huge portion of revenue, which we thought was appealing.
Andrew: Sure.
Bobby: But the flip side, as anyone who’s worked with SMB clients knows, is that the expectations don’t always match the contract value. You get plenty of low-budget clients who expect high-budget results.
Andrew: Yes—100%. And from my own experience, you meet a lot of characters in that world. Those mismatched expectations can definitely wear you down. I can imagine that gets frustrating fast. Did you ever feel like, “What am I doing?” or did you always know, “We’ll make this work”?
Bobby: There have definitely been ups and downs—like any business. But never a point where I thought about quitting.
I think the number-one trait you need to be an entrepreneur is pain tolerance. You’ve got to be willing to deal with a lot of discomfort and uncertainty. I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for that.
That said, we eventually pivoted from SMBs to legal marketing. It became clear that we had a natural selling point because of our time at Morgan & Morgan. Early on, we used to joke: If you’re building a search engine, you’d hire ex-Googlers. If you’re building a law firm, you should hire ex-Morganers.
Andrew: That’s a great line.
Andrew: That makes total sense. As you started growing the team—it began with just you and Andrew—was it a fast ramp-up, like “let’s scale as quickly as possible,” or was it more methodical, growing as you added clients and services?
Bobby: We’ve gone through a few different mindsets with that. Early on, we came out of a hyper-growth startup environment, so we naturally wanted to move fast. We definitely scaled quickly—maybe too quickly at first—which created some challenges.
But we were able to course-correct. Since about 2021, we’ve found a really steady rhythm—around 40–50% growth year over year. We’ve been scaling revenue and team size consistently, and it’s been sustainable.
Andrew: That’s awesome. And as you mentioned earlier, you offer a wide range of marketing services. Do you have a personal favorite—something you really enjoy working on—or does it depend on what your clients need?
Bobby: I like that you called us a “marketing chameleon”—that’s a pretty good description. We adapt to whatever our clients need, but personally, I love brand-building work.
There’s nothing better than creating a fresh brand from scratch—either for a new firm or for one that’s stuck with an outdated look. I think we’re especially strong there.
A lot of agencies in the legal space take a “copy what works” approach. Someone likes another firm’s website and says, “Let’s do something like that.” Then everyone ends up looking the same.
We take a different approach. Our creative team draws inspiration from outside of legal. For example, our creative director comes from a high-fashion background—she’s used to designing sleek, modern, elevated visuals.
The same goes for our other designers and developers, who bring influences from outside the industry. We push clients to look at websites beyond other law firms when discussing what they like or don’t like. That’s a big part of why our work looks and feels different from the crowd.
Andrew: Yeah, I can totally relate. Having worked on legal sites myself, I’ve seen that “copy the big dog” mentality—and it leads to everything blending together. Bringing in outside inspiration and character is huge.
Which leads me to my next question: what’s the legal marketing landscape like right now? It’s been a while since I’ve been in that world, but I know AI is top of mind for everyone. I imagine the legal space is no different.
What kinds of trends or topics are you hearing most often in your conversations with clients?
Bobby: There are really two sides to that. One is what’s happening between agencies—what we and our peers in the legal marketing world are talking about. The other is what our clients are asking about when it comes to how we execute for them.
Those two conversations are related, but they’re not always the same.
Andrew: Sure.
Bobby: So focusing on what’s happening across agencies first—the biggest trend we’re seeing is private equity rolling up the space. It’s happening both on the law firm side and on the provider side.
That’s both scary and interesting. On one hand, consolidation often leads to poorer service, which ironically creates sales opportunities for agencies like ours. On the other hand, some of these rollups are happening fast and under the radar, which makes the competitive landscape unpredictable.
Then there’s AI, which is the other huge conversation. Everyone’s using it to some extent, but the real question is how. Do you replace your existing content production pipeline entirely with AI? Do you just augment it with AI tools? Or do you rely on vendors who’ve built AI into their products?
Right now, most teams are wrestling with that decision every day.
Andrew: Yeah, I can imagine that’s an ongoing conversation across your agency.
Bobby: All the time. I can’t think of another period where there’s been this much volatility in how to do the day-to-day work. What’s the “right” way to execute changes month to month?
Andrew: Sure. And flipping that around to your clients—what are you hearing from them? Are the requests still mostly around website builds and paid ads, or are there new trends emerging?
Bobby: The biggest shift we’re seeing is that people are finally realizing SEO isn’t magic. For years, I’ve been saying that if you put all your eggs into the technical SEO basket—checking boxes you think Google wants—you’ll lose.
What you really need is brand. You need people to recognize your name, know who you are, and associate you with authority. When you do that, it lifts everything: social, paid, traditional media, organic—every channel performs better.
Not to mention, you’ll show up more in AI-driven answer engines too.
It’s more important than ever to think holistically about visibility, not just chase backlinks or fix minor technical errors. Ask why you’re doing something. Is your site slow and that’s hurting user experience? Then fix it. But if it’s something minor—like having two H1s on a page, one hidden—it’s probably not worth your technical budget.
Andrew: That makes total sense. You’re definitely preaching to the choir there. It’s so easy to get stuck in the checklist mindset—doing what worked for the last ten sites.
Bobby: Exactly.
Andrew: And speaking of evolving strategies, we talked earlier about tools like CallTrackingMetrics. Are you finding clients open to using what some might call more “traditional” channels—like phone tracking, outdoor advertising, or even streaming ad placements? What does the marketing mix look like across your clients?
Bobby: It’s hard to generalize. The marketing mix for a market-leading personal injury firm in Colorado looks completely different from that of a solo transactional attorney in New York.
That said, we’ve definitely seen a shift back toward traditional media. My co-founder, Andrew, is a big believer in billboards—partly because you’re negotiating CPMs with humans, not algorithms. He’s got strategies that make them surprisingly cost-effective.
I’m more on the technical side, focused on how to use AI to improve performance and efficiency, so I naturally lean more digital. But overall, yes—there’s been a movement back toward traditional channels.
Andrew: That’s great to hear. We’ve been hearing the same from other guests—marketers getting “back to basics.”
Bobby: Exactly. And what’s crazy is that vanity phone numbers are making a comeback too. There are only a handful of major number brokers in the market, and we’ve seen seven-figure deals for memorable phone numbers.
If you’re investing in 500 billboards, it makes sense to have a number people actually remember.
Andrew: Absolutely. We see that all the time here in the Baltimore–D.C. area—all the big attorneys have their billboard campaigns and catchy numbers.
Speaking of which, I’d love to hear more about how you’re using CallTrackingMetrics in your client work. I imagine it varies by client size and goals, but are there core use cases you rely on?
Bobby: Definitely. We use CTM in three main ways—and we’re exploring a fourth.
First, we use it for performance audits. For example, we recently ran an audit and found that 60% of one client’s calls weren’t being answered after hours. The biggest needle mover for them wasn’t improving rankings—it was simply picking up the phone.
Second, we use CTM for value passback and attribution. Since CTM captures UTMs, we can push that data into what we call our “proxy CRM”—a middle layer between our clients’ front end and their CRM. That lets us send campaign-level conversion data back to the ad platforms to optimize spend. You can’t really do that without a reliable attribution layer.
Third, we’re starting to expand our call-level analysis. Right now, we capture caller data and basic information, but we want to go deeper—analyzing metrics like call duration, ring time, and pickup speed to assess agent performance.
Because CTM exposes those metrics through its API, we can use that data to identify bottlenecks and improve responsiveness. It’s nice knowing the tech isn’t the blocker—it’s just up to us to build on top of it.
Andrew: That’s awesome to hear, and I know our team will be glad to hear that feedback. As we wrap up, I always like to ask guests to share a bit of advice for young marketers getting started—whether in agency life, in-house, or something else.
There’s a lot of talk about AI replacing entry-level jobs, but I think there’s still plenty of opportunity out there. You just have to be a little scrappier than before. What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Bobby: I read something a few years ago that really stuck with me—and I’ll probably butcher the quote—but the idea is this: It’s much easier to be in the top 75th percentile across five or six skill sets than in the top 1% of one.
If you combine those skills—say, 75th percentile in marketing, AI, Excel, domain expertise (like legal), and data analytics—you become uniquely valuable. You’re the only person who can connect those dots.
Sure, being world-class in one skill is great if you can pull it off. But for most of us, going wide and multiplicative—building a diverse stack of skills—is a more realistic and valuable path.
Andrew: That’s a fantastic note to end on. And I couldn’t agree more. Even for those of us who’ve been in marketing a while, it’s a great reminder: keep learning, keep diversifying, and never get too comfortable.
Bobby, thank you for joining us today—and thanks to our listeners as always. Be sure to follow Smart Route on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and leave us a review if you enjoyed this episode. We’ll see you next time.
Bobby: Thanks, Andrew.