Leaving Scorpion is four phases in a fixed order: confirm your access, export anything with a retention window, start the slow transfers, then give notice and cut over. The order matters more than the notice letter.
Firms notice the website first. The paid media stack is the part that keeps spending money while it is broken.
What Leaving Scorpion Involves
An exit is a permissions problem and a scheduling problem before it is a contract problem. Your paid media, your analytics and your website sit on different systems, each with its own owner and its own clock.
Handle the whole thing as one event and something breaks. Usually tracking, and you find out a month later.
The first two phases are yours alone. Confirming access and exporting what expires need no notice and no permission, so neither one tips your hand.
The last two do not work that way. They sit in somebody else’s queue, which is why they get scheduled rather than performed.
That somebody is not always the agency. On the number port it is the receiving carrier, and on the Business Profile it is Google.
None of this is legal advice, and it does not replace having your own counsel read the agreement you signed.
What You Own in Your Paid Media Accounts, and What You Don’t
Owning an asset and holding the permission that controls it are two different things. That gap is an access level, and you can check every one of them yourself in an afternoon.
Seven assets decide the exit. Each raises the same three questions: who holds the controlling permission, what you can recover without the agency, and how long it takes.
Your Google Ads Account and Its Campaign History
Unlinking a Google Ads account from a manager account does not take it away from you.
Google’s documentation says the account “won’t lose its own account campaign history or access to any Google Ads features.” An admin on the manager account “or the client account” can unlink.
Only Admin can. Google documents five access levels: Email-only, Billing, Read-only, Standard and Admin. A firm on Standard edits every campaign but can neither unlink nor grant access to a new agency.
Three things carry on untouched: campaign history, access to Google Ads features, and the ability to link to a new manager account.
Three stop. Remarketing lists on a manager-level shared tag stop populating, and ad groups targeting them stop running. A cross-account conversion tag stops recording. An account on monthly invoicing stops serving.
Put a date on the unlink. None of those six is a contract term; they are the account mechanics behind how google ads works for law firms.
Scorpion’s published FAQ describes transferring “full ownership of key accounts such as Google Analytics/GA4, Google Local Services Ads, social media accounts, website content, and more.”
Its acquisition article publishes a near-identical list.
Both lists close with “and more,” and neither names the Google Ads account. Name it yourself in writing: the customer ID, and Admin access.
Your Local Services Ads Profile
Local Services Ads access is permission-based, and Google’s LSA documentation describes no ownership-transfer procedure at all.
It documents five access levels mirroring Google Ads, the top one Administrative, which “can manage users and access.” They sit under Access and Security, where an administrative user changes a level or removes access.
That page covers access levels and stops there. So secure Administrative access on the profile you already have, and stop waiting on a handover that has no published process behind it.
For a plaintiff-side firm this is often the account that matters most, because local services ads for law firms sit above the paid results and take calls before anyone scrolls.
Your Call Tracking Numbers
You can take your tracking numbers with you, but the port is authorized by an administrator on the account that holds them, and the receiving provider starts it.
CallRail’s port-away documentation says you “own the numbers you create in CallRail” and that it will not “block or reject any port-out requests that have been approved by an administrator on your account.”
It also says “the receiving provider will initiate the port,” and warns against deactivating numbers or closing the account until the port is confirmed complete.
What happens to historical call records afterwards is not addressed on that page. Export the recordings and the call log before anything starts.
Your Meta Ad Account and Pixel
Your Meta exit comes down to one question: which business portfolio owns the ad account and the pixel, regardless of who has been running the campaigns.
Meta’s partner documentation says you can only add partners to a business portfolio if you have full control of it, and that even a partner with full control “cannot share the business asset with another business,” because only the organization that owns the asset can share it onward.
Two outcomes follow. If the assets sit in the firm’s portfolio with the agency added as a partner, removing the agency is a permissions change the firm makes alone, and the pixel keeps its data.
If they sit inside the agency’s portfolio, they are not the firm’s to reassign, and meta ads for law firms starts again from an empty pixel.
Your GA4 Property and Its Data
A GA4 property inside an agency-owned Analytics account cannot be moved by the firm alone, however much access it holds on the property itself.
Google’s documentation on moving a property says you need the Administrator and Editor roles on both the source and destination accounts.
All reporting data is “moved (not copied),” settings, data streams and Google Ads links transfer, and the tracking ID does not change.
Change history from before the move stays with the source account, and the destination account’s property cap, 50 by default, applies.
Google Ads is the opposite case, where either side can unlink. That is the argument for setting up google analytics 4 for law firms in the firm’s own Analytics account from the first day.
Your Domain, Search Console, and Google Business Profile
Registrar control unlocks other assets by itself. Google’s site-ownership documentation verifies a domain property through DNS, so a firm that controls its registrar can verify its own Search Console property alone.
Search Console reports search performance, not ad performance, and its default report view covers the past three months. Export before cutover.
Google Business Profile works differently. A profile can have multiple owners but “only one primary owner,” and it “must have at least one other owner or manager to transfer primary owner access to.”
Owners have “full control over the profile” while managers “can’t add or remove users or remove the profile.” Removed users’ “replies to reviews, posts, comments, and other actions stay on the Business Profile.”
Read Your Contract Before You Give Notice
What your contract permits depends on which service line you are trying to leave, because Scorpion’s own published FAQ describes two different terms.
That FAQ states that Scorpion typically requires a 12-month contract for its marketing technology and certain marketing services like SEO, and that digital advertising services like Google Ads, LSAs and Meta are typically month-to-month terms.
Your paid media and your marketing technology may not be on the same clock, so a partial exit may be available where a full exit is not.
Check that before you draft anything. A firm that assumes one 12-month wall can spend the year waiting out a term the ad accounts were never on.
Find the notice period next, because it sets the earliest date every other step can hang from.
None of that substitutes for the document you signed, so have your own counsel read it for notice period, renewal language, termination and handoff terms, and any IP or work-product terms.
How to Sequence Your Exit So Case Flow Doesn’t Stop
Everything with a lead time starts before the notice letter, and everything with a retention window gets exported before anything is unlinked.
- Confirm Admin on all seven accounts, by name, before you say anything: Google Ads, LSA, Meta, GA4, Search Console, Business Profile, call tracking.
- Export everything with a retention window: call records and recordings, conversion and search-term data, creative and landing-page assets.
- Start the number port first, the longest clock. CallRail’s documentation says that due to regulations outside its control “the process typically takes 4-6 weeks.”
- Get added as a Google Business Profile owner a week before you need primary ownership. Google’s documentation puts the restriction on the newly added user: someone who tries to transfer primary ownership “in their first 7 days” will “get an error.”
- Add the new agency and confirm tracking fires before cutover.
- Give notice in writing, once steps 1 to 5 are done.
- Coordinate a same-day campaign handoff so paid traffic never goes dark.
- Verify conversions are recording after cutover. It is the check that catches a broken tag before a month of spend does.
Run it out of order and you pay for a month of traffic that lands nowhere.
What Happens to Your Website and Rankings
Scorpion’s published FAQ says you own your website once the length of your contract is complete.
While you will not own the underlying system, “in the same way you wouldn’t own WordPress (or any other content management system),” the assets, “domains, content, and imagery,” are yours.
The same page says its team “will ensure you receive your website’s static files, design assets, and content for future use,” and that you will need another vendor to rebuild the site on a content management system of your choosing.
A rebuild off a proprietary platform means three pieces of work: website design, a URL map, and a redirect plan. Your new website vendor owns all three.
Organic rankings after a platform migration depend on how the migration is done. Nobody can promise you a number in advance.
Choosing Who Runs Your Paid Media Next
Ask every firm you consider for law firm ppc services how the accounts will be held, and get the answer before you sign anything.
Four positions to hold in the next contract:
- Your domain, at a registrar in your own name.
- Your Google Ads account with your firm as Admin, the agency linked as a manager account.
- Your Meta ad account and pixel in your own business portfolio, the agency added as a partner.
- Your GA4 property and call tracking numbers in accounts you administer.
Agree those four and the next exit is a permissions change.
Shortlist legal ppc agencies or legal marketing agencies, and if you are weighing legal-specific versus generalist marketing agencies, ask each firm the same question: whose name goes on the accounts.
If you want a second set of eyes on your access levels before you give notice, book a strategy call.
Frequently Asked Questions About Leaving Scorpion
Do I Own My Google Ads Account, or Does Scorpion?
In practice, whoever holds Admin decides, whatever the contract says on paper. Open Admin, then Access and security, then Managers to see which manager account is linked to yours. Unlink sits under Remove access.
Will I Lose My Google Ads Conversion History If I Switch Agencies?
No. Google’s documentation says that “once unlinked, the Google Ads account owner can be linked to a new manager account,” so re-linking is routine.
Can I Move My Local Services Ads Profile to a New Agency?
Not through any documented process. Google’s LSA documentation describes access levels and no ownership transfer, so secure Administrative access instead of planning a handover.
Do I Keep My Call Tracking Numbers and Call Recordings?
Yes to the numbers, on the account administrator’s authorization, and yes to the recordings only if you export them first. CallRail issues a Customer Service Record for the receiving provider, and the number stays active until the port is confirmed.
Does Scorpion Require a Long-Term Contract?
Per Scorpion’s published FAQ, it depends on the service line: “Yes, Scorpion typically requires a 12-month contract for our marketing technology and certain marketing services like search engine optimization (SEO). Digital advertising services like Google Ads, LSAs, Meta, etc. are typically month-to-month terms.”
