Practice area
Data coverage · Q3 goal
Two markets
in one practice.
Plaintiff and defense employment are two different businesses sharing a practice area. One runs B2C acquisition economics with class-action TV flights. The other runs B2B relationship sales into HR and GCs. Firmatics is building the data layer both sides have needed.
US market
$20B
Data coverage
Shipping Q3
$20B
Combined plaintiff + defense
60,000+
Employment attorneys
~75K
Annual EEOC charges
2
Totally different playbooks
The market
Plaintiff and defense
share the practice.
Not the economics.
Employment is the only major legal vertical where plaintiff and defense firms both operate in volume, and their marketing looks nothing alike. Plaintiff-side firms run consumer-acquisition economics (TV, PPC, class-action intake). Defense firms run B2B sales into HR, GCs, and executive teams.
Add wage-and-hour class actions (B2C at scale) and individual discrimination cases (niche, precedent-driven), and you have four distinct sub-markets with totally different buyer psychology. We're building the dataset each needs.
What makes it different
Plaintiff firms represent workers. Defense firms represent companies. Completely different ICPs, channels, and economics.
A wage-and-hour class action can be 1,000+ plaintiffs. Marketing one case or a 500-person case costs roughly the same, but the payoff is orders of magnitude different.
Defense-side employment marketing runs on LinkedIn, SHRM, and HR-professional channels. Very few other legal verticals have a real B2B play.
Most employment statutes shift fees to the losing party. Plaintiff firms get paid differently than PI, fee math reshapes case selection entirely.
Where the money goes
$800M a year,
split down
the middle.
Plaintiff-side employment firms allocate like mini-PI operations. Defense-side firms spend like B2B SaaS. The split in channel mix is one of the most pronounced in law.
2026 Employment channel mix · plaintiff side
Sources: iSpot · Google Ads Transparency · SEMrush · Firmatics industry estimates. Defense-side allocation differs substantially, covered in the State of Employment Law report.
National plaintiff platform
$5–15M
National class-action plaintiff firms spending on TV + digital to source plaintiffs for mass wage-and-hour and discrimination actions.
Regional plaintiff
$300K–1.5M
Plaintiff firms serving a metro or state, mixing PPC and content with select class-action marketing.
Defense-side
$500K–5M
Defense firms market via LinkedIn, HR trade pubs, sponsored webinars, and SHRM advisorys. Completely different spend profile than plaintiff.
What employment firms face
The problems specific
to employment marketing.
Generic legal marketing advice misses the split.
A PI agency saying they "do employment" won't understand defense-side ICP or LinkedIn thought-leadership economics. You end up paying for the wrong playbook.
Class-action intake is its own discipline.
Sourcing 500 plaintiffs for a wage-and-hour class is nothing like handling individual PI intakes. Most firms lose 60%+ of qualified class members to intake friction.
Fee-shifting warps your math.
Statute fees mean a case that settles for $20K can generate $150K in attorney fees. Case selection, marketing, and intake all require different math than contingency-only models.
Your competitor's customer roster is B2B gold, and invisible.
Defense-side firms fight over Fortune 1000 accounts. Knowing which firm advises which company is the deal. No standing source tracks this.
LinkedIn ad dynamics are a black box.
Defense-side audiences are HR directors, GCs, CHROs. LinkedIn is the primary channel, and most firms can't benchmark CPMs, creative, or targeting against competitors.
Wage-and-hour TV flights live and die on bellwethers.
Active wage-and-hour cases against a major employer can support national TV for 18 months. When certification fails, spend collapses overnight. Portfolio discipline is critical.
Data layer · Employment
The dataset
we're building.
FIRM PROFILES
Q3 2026Split-labeled firm dataset
Every US employment firm profiled with plaintiff/defense/dual labeling, practice mix (wage, discrimination, wrongful, class action, ADA), and Marketing Firm Score.
CASE VOLUME
Q3 2026EEOC + PACER filings
Federal + state employment filings resolved to firm. Volume trends, class-action participation, statute mix, the longitudinal performance dataset.
DEFENSE ROSTERS
Q4 2026Fortune 1000 client-of-record
Which defense firms represent which major corporations, sourced from docket appearances, SEC filings, and public announcements. The defense-side deal map.
LINKEDIN INTEL
Q3 2026B2B ad + thought leadership
Competitor LinkedIn ad creative, sponsored content cadence, employee-advocacy signals. The B2B marketing visibility layer defense firms actually need.
CLASS ACTIONS
Q3 2026Active class + collective tracker
Every active wage-and-hour and discrimination class action, lead counsel, certification status, plaintiff count, settlement progression.
VENDOR INDEX
Q4 2026Employment vendor directory
Class-action notice administrators, lead-gen aggregators, deposition vendors, e-discovery for employment. Verified pricing and operator reviews.
Every legal marketing tool we've bought treated employment like a minor PI variant. It's not. Until Firmatics, nobody built for the class-action economics and the B2B side at the same time.
In practice
How employment firms
will use it.
Map plaintiff-firm specialty mix
See competitors' focus (wage, discrimination, ADA, class actions) and positioning, so you know where whitespace sits in your market.
Scout Fortune 1000 defense targets
Know which employer represents itself vs. outside counsel, and which outside firm they're currently using.
Track active class actions
Every live wage-and-hour or discrimination class, its lead counsel, certification status, and settlement trajectory.
Benchmark LinkedIn B2B spend
Defense-side competitor LinkedIn ad spend, creative, and audience signals, visibility nobody else provides.
Source a lateral attorney
Find employment attorneys by specialty (class-action plaintiff, ERISA, EEOC practice, executive compensation) and tenure.
Plan class-action TV budget
Benchmark peer national plaintiff firms on class-action TV spend, creative cycles, and audience targeting before committing a flight.
Win a GC RFP
Walk into defense-side RFPs with real visibility into how competing firms have positioned for similar engagements.
Diagnose intake drop-off
Class-action intake benchmarks: what's a normal qualified-to-signed rate for a wage class vs. an individual discrimination case.
Evaluate geographic expansion
Employment law volume varies enormously by state, CA, NY, FL, and TX dominate plaintiff activity. Size before you expand.
Employment by firm size
Different stages.
Different playbooks.
1–5 LAWYERS
Solo & Boutique
Niche plaintiff specialty, high-value individual cases.
Explore →
6–20 LAWYERS
Growing
Regional practice, early class-action work, multi-channel intake.
Explore →
20–50 LAWYERS
Scale
National class actions, sophisticated B2B marketing infrastructure.
Explore →
50+ LAWYERS
Enterprise / PE
Full-service practice, defense + plaintiff arms, AmLaw tier.
Explore →
How to engage
Start with Community.
RECOMMENDED
Community
$2,000/mo · no lock-in
Monthly strategy session with a senior legal marketing operator, employment operator peers in Slack, class-action + B2B playbooks, first access to the dataset.
Explore
GO DEEPER
Market Intelligence
Custom · invite-only
Employment dataset launches Q3 2026. Reserve a seat for early access.
Reserve access
GO ALL IN
Strategic Advisory
Custom · waitlist
Employment-specialized advisor on the bench, plaintiff + defense variants.
Join waitlist
FAQ
Common questions about employment.
Do you serve plaintiff and defense equally?
When is employment data coverage shipping?
How do you source defense-side client-of-record data?
Do you cover ERISA and executive compensation?
What is a Marketing Firm Score?
Early access
Be first when it ships.
Employment coverage ships Q3 2026. Early-access firms get the dataset before public release, a pre-publication State of Employment Law report, and priority bench access.