PPC for Law Firms, Where Every Click Is Expensive
Legal is one of the most expensive verticals in paid search. At $50 to $300 a click, small structural mistakes stop being inefficiencies and start being the difference between a profitable channel and a very costly one. The work is mostly about not wasting money.
What changes at this scale
Lead quality beats lead volume, by a lot
At legal click prices, a campaign producing plenty of cheap unqualified enquiries loses more money than one producing fewer good ones. Negative keywords, geo precision and intent filtering carry more weight here than in almost any other vertical.
LSAs and search are different games
Local Services Ads sit above search, price per lead rather than per click, and allow lead disputes. For many practice areas the right answer is both with a deliberate split, not one replacing the other. That decision is worth making before the budget commits.
Ad copy is regulated
Outcome claims, superlatives and specialisation language are all constrained by state bar rules, and ad copy is as subject to them as any other advertising. Compliance gets reviewed as part of writing it, not after a complaint.
Track to the signed case
Cost per lead is a vanity number in legal. What matters is cost per signed, retained matter, and that requires call tracking and intake data connected end to end. Without it, you are optimising toward the cheapest leads rather than the best ones.
Everything you get
- Account audit and wasted spend analysis
- Campaign restructure by practice area and geography
- Local Services Ads setup, optimisation and lead disputes
- Negative keyword architecture built for legal intent
- Geo-targeting precision and radius strategy
- Compliance-reviewed ad copy and extensions
- Landing page and intake conversion optimisation
- Call tracking wired through to the intake system
- Lead quality scoring and feedback loop into bidding
- Competitor ad monitoring by market
- Budget pacing and seasonality management
- Reporting on cost per signed case
Common questions
Should we run LSAs, Google Ads, or both?
Usually both, with a deliberate split that depends on your practice area and market. LSAs typically produce a lower cost per lead and let you dispute bad ones. Search gives control over messaging and reaches intent LSAs do not cover. The ratio is worth modelling before committing budget.
We're getting leads that are nowhere near our practice area. Why?
Almost always negative keyword gaps combined with broad match, sometimes with geo settings including people merely interested in your area rather than located in it. Both are fixable in the first fortnight and both are expensive to leave running.
What's a realistic budget to start?
In competitive legal markets, meaningfully below $5,000 a month in media rarely generates enough data to optimise on before the budget runs out. If you are under that, I would generally fix intake and landing pages first and come back when the spend can justify itself.
Do you charge a percentage of ad spend?
No. In a vertical this expensive, percentage-of-spend pricing rewards a vendor for spending more of your money. Pricing is a flat monthly fee tied to scope.
Can you dispute Local Services Ads leads for us?
Yes, and it is worth doing systematically rather than occasionally. There is a free tool on this site that reviews an LSA lead export and flags the ones worth disputing.
Want a straight read on where you actually stand?
Book a free discovery call. I'll come having already looked, and you'll get the findings either way.