How much should a law firm spend on Google Ads, by practice area?

Google ranks ads by Ad Rank, which weighs your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, the competitiveness of the auction and the context of the search. You usually pay less than your maximum bid: Google says you pay what's needed to clear its thresholds and beat the advertiser ranked just below you.

So the price of a click is set by your competitors as much as by you. An injury firm working on contingency can rationally pay $200 for a click when one case can bring a five- or six-figure fee. One personal injury client's single $250,000 settlement meant $82,000 in revenue for the firm. A flat-fee will can't support that bid, so estate planning auctions settle far lower.

1. 1

   Decide how many new cases you want, and can take

   Start from capacity. One LA tenant defense lawyer we work with was over capacity within two months, and we switched the ads off so she could catch up. Buying leads your team can't call back the same day raises the cost of every case.

2. 2

   Divide by your sign rate

   If you sign 1 in 4 qualified leads, 5 cases a month needs about 20 leads. Use your own number from the CRM; our intake metrics guide shows where to find it.

3. 3

   Divide by the share of clicks that become leads

   This depends on the page, the practice and the offer. Use your account's real rate if you have one. If you don't, run the math at a cautious rate and replace it after the first month.

4. 4

   Multiply by the click price in your practice and market

   Use the lower half of the planner range for your main search to start, then real cost per click once it exists.

5. 5

   Check it against what a case is worth

   The budget divided by the expected signed cases is your cost per signed case. If that's a small share of an average fee, the plan holds. Our cost per signed case guide goes through the formula.

Enough clicks to judge

A keyword needs about 40 clicks before its lead rate tells us anything. At $150 a click, 40 clicks is $6,000. At $8, it's $320. That gap decides how fast you learn anything.

A cap that can actually win

New campaigns start on Maximize clicks with a cost per click cap at or above the low end of the planner's range for the main search. One DUI campaign set at $40 against a $35 to $230 range got 1 view in 2 days. For injury and DUI we usually start around $75.

One case type first

A small budget split across three case types gives each too few clicks. Fund one properly, then add the next as an ad group in the same campaign.

Below about $1,000 a month in total

Our Growth Guide recommends the Business Profile and reviews first, before any paid channel. Our published range for Google search ads starts around $2,000 a month.

More on how injury and estate clients choose a firm on our personal injury and estate planning marketing pages.

Pause at 110% of the monthly budget

When month-to-date spend reaches 110% of the agreed monthly budget, the account pauses and we're alerted.

Pause on an extreme day

If a single day spends half of the monthly budget, the account pauses at once. That's the sign of a bid or budget gone wrong, not a busy day.

Warn on a big day or a cost per lead spike

A day at three times the normal daily rate, or cost per lead at double the usual, sends us a warning rather than a pause. Legal leads arrive in bursts, and pausing a good day costs cases.

Watch the bidding, not just the budget

On two accounts running Maximize conversions with no target, cost per click more than doubled within weeks with no change in either account, and clicks halved. Once an account has steady leads, about 30 a month, we set a target cost per lead near its real one.

One client put it this way in a review: "He treats our advertising budget like his own money" (James G. Bohm, Costa Mesa, CA). That's what guardrails are for. Ask anyone running your ads what stops a bad day from becoming a bad month. See how we run Google Ads for law firms.