Costs and planning
How much does law firm marketing cost?
Typical monthly ad spend by platform, how Google and Meta charge, real cost-per-click data from three markets, and how to work out what a signed case costs you.
By Santiago Alvarez, Founder, Ad Hoc Digital
Last updated
The short answer
If you read one part of this page, read this.
Most law firms we work with spend between $1,000 and $20,000+ a month on ads: roughly $1,000 to $10,000+ on Local Services Ads, $2,000 to $20,000+ on Google search ads, and $1,000 to $10,000+ on Facebook and Instagram ads. Your market, your practice area and how many cases you can take decide where you land.
This guide covers ad spend, the money paid straight to Google or Meta on the firm's own card, and the costs that sit around it. What an agency or an in-house marketer costs is a separate number, and it isn't covered here.
The figure worth managing is not cost per click, or even cost per lead. It is cost per signed case, and intake moves it as much as the ads do. We work with law firms across the US and Canada, and also in Australia and the UK.
Monthly ad spend
What law firms typically spend on ads each month.
Each platform has its own working range. The low end is roughly where a channel starts producing enough leads to judge; the upper end is open, because a firm with the capacity can keep buying.
| Channel | How you pay | Typical monthly ad spend | What moves it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local Services Ads | Per lead: answered calls, messages, voicemails, bookings | $1,000 to $10,000+ | Your bid per lead, answer rate, rating and review count |
| Google search ads | Per click, priced in an auction | $2,000 to $20,000+ | Click prices in your market, which searches you buy, ad and landing page quality |
| Facebook and Instagram ads | Usually per impression, priced in an auction | $1,000 to $10,000+ | Audience, ad quality, and how often people act on the ad |
Below about $1,000 a month in total, we usually tell firms to skip paid ads for now. The Google Business Profile and reviews return more at that level, and they make later ads cheaper.
Our Growth Guide sizes a plan to the budget you enter: no paid channels under about $1,000 a month, one paid channel up to $5,000, and two from $5,000 up.
How each platform charges
Google charges per click or per lead. Meta usually charges per impression.
Search ads bill you when someone clicks, Local Services Ads bill you when someone contacts you, and Meta bills you when the ad is shown. That difference changes what a wasted dollar looks like on each one.
- Google search ads: pay per click, priced by auction
Every search runs a fresh auction. Google ranks ads by Ad Rank, which weighs your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, and the search context, so a better ad can sit higher than a bigger bid.
You set a maximum cost per click, and Google says you are often charged less: roughly what it takes to beat the ad ranked just below yours. Budgets are set as an average per day; on a busy day Google can spend up to twice that, but not more than 30.4 times the daily average across a month. Read more on our Google Ads page.
- Local Services Ads: pay per lead
Google charges for valid leads: a call you answer or return, a text or email, a voicemail, or a booking (bookings are US and Canada only). Looking at your listing costs nothing. A missed call is charged when it comes in during your business hours and active ad schedule and the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds.
Your bid is the maximum you'll pay for a lead. Google credits low-quality leads automatically, in most cases within 30 days (not for advertisers in EMEA). For lawyers, LSA runs in the US and, in the UK, in Greater London only. See our Local Services Ads page.
- Facebook and Instagram ads: auction, usually billed per impression
Meta picks the winning ad by "total value", a mix of three things: the bid, the estimated chance this person engages or converts, and ad quality. A more relevant ad can beat ads with larger bids.
Meta says you're usually charged for impressions, the times your ad is shown, unless you choose otherwise when you create the ad. Some jurisdictions add location fees. Meta reaches people before they search, which suits case types nobody else advertises for. More on our Meta ads page.
If you're choosing between the two Google products, our Local Services Ads vs Google Ads guide compares them side by side.
Real cost-per-click data
What clicks cost in three markets we pulled this month.
In our October 2026 Keyword Planner pulls, injury and DUI searches in New Jersey and Florida carried bid estimates from about $20 to $210 a click. Estate planning in Ontario sat between about CA$2 and CA$11.
Keyword Planner shows a low and a high bid estimate for each search. Google defines them as roughly the 20th and 80th percentile of what advertisers have historically paid to show above the regular results in the chosen location. They describe the going rate, not what you will pay per click.
| Search | Area | Avg. monthly searches | Bid range per click |
|---|---|---|---|
| "personal injury lawyer" | New Jersey | 5,400 | $50.00 to $210.00 |
| "truck accident lawyer" | New Jersey | 1,300 | $19.97 to $191.89 |
| "motorcycle accident lawyer" | New Jersey | 480 | $63.00 to $161.31 |
| "dui lawyer" | Florida | 9,900 | $35.00 to $175.00 |
| "estate planning lawyer" | Ontario | 2,900 | CA$2.02 to CA$10.93 |
| "real estate lawyer" | Ontario | 4,400 | CA$4.00 to CA$21.07 |
The gap follows what a case is worth to the firms bidding. An injury case on a contingency fee can be worth tens of thousands of dollars, so firms will pay $100 or more for a click. A simple will is a smaller fee, so the auction settles far lower.
At $50 to $210 a click, $2,000 buys roughly 10 to 40 clicks of "personal injury lawyer" in New Jersey. At CA$2 to CA$11, CA$2,000 buys a couple of hundred clicks or more of "estate planning lawyer" in Ontario. The same budget can be plenty for one practice and thin for another.
What moves the number
Six things decide where your firm lands in the range.
Market and practice area set the price of each click or lead. Case capacity, seasonality and, on Local Services Ads, your answer rate and reviews decide how much of it you should buy and what you pay.
- Your market
A big metro has more searches and more firms bidding on them; a smaller town has fewer of both. Pull the numbers for your own area before you set a budget.
- Your practice area
Personal injury and DUI searches carry far higher bids in our pulls than estate planning. The more a case is worth to the firms in the auction, the more they will pay for a chance at it.
- Competition
Google says auction competitiveness affects what you pay per click. When a large firm enters or leaves your market, your costs move even if you changed nothing.
- Case capacity
Buying more leads than you can call back the same day raises your cost per signed case. The right budget starts from how many new matters your team can actually take each month.
- Seasonality
Demand and competition shift through the year, differently for each practice. Review the budget month by month, not once a year.
- Answer rate and reviews on Local Services Ads
Google ranks LSA listings on your bid, how likely the ad is to produce a lead, and profile quality. It says missed calls may hurt your responsiveness, and it names rating, number of reviews and average response time. Our Google Verified guide covers getting listed.
Costs firms forget
The costs that sit around the ad spend.
Ad spend is the line everyone sees. Intake time, landing pages, call tracking, photos and video, and a CRM sit around it, and skipping them usually raises the cost of every signed case.
- Intake staff time or an answering service
Someone has to pick up every call while your ads run and return every form fast: a person's time on payroll, or an answering service's monthly bill. On LSA, unanswered calls in business hours can still be charged.
- Landing pages
Sending a "truck accident lawyer" click to a generic homepage wastes part of every click. Each case type you advertise needs its own page. See our websites work.
- Call tracking
Many legal leads arrive as phone calls. Without a tracking number per channel, you can't tell which channel brought the call, or work out cost per signed case.
- Photo and video
Meta ads need fresh creative, and Local Services Ads use lawyer headshots. Budget for a shoot, or your own time filming.
- A CRM and follow-up
A CRM holds every lead, sends the instant text, prompts follow-up and records which leads signed. It is a monthly software cost, and it makes the rest measurable. That's the core of our systems work.
Cost per lead vs cost per signed case
Cost per lead is a step. Cost per signed case is the answer.
A $60 lead that never signs costs more than a $300 lead that does. Divide each channel's ad spend by the cases it signed, then compare that to what a case is worth to you.
Add up the month's ad spend per channel
Take it from each platform's billing page. Keep channels separate.
Count the leads each channel produced
Calls from tracking numbers, forms, messages and bookings. Keep the ones you didn't answer: they are part of the cost.
Mark every lead with what happened
Qualified or not, consultation booked, signed, turned away, or lost. Without this, nothing else here can be measured. Our guide to law firm intake metrics covers the fields to track.
Divide spend by signed cases
Ad spend for the channel divided by cases it signed is your cost per signed case. Do it per channel, because one strong channel can hide a weak one.
Compare it to what a case is worth
Use your average fee per matter, or for contingency work a realistic expected fee. If the cost per signed case is a small slice of that, buy more; if it isn't, fix intake or targeting before adding spend.
Judge over several months
One month is noisy, and LSA leads arrive in clumps. Look at blocks of a few months, longer where fees arrive at settlement.
Real results show the same math. One DUI defense solo generated $13,500 from $600 in ad spend on Local Services Ads in 12 days. A Toronto real estate solo brought in $10,875 from just over $300 in ad spend on Google search ads in its first week. For one personal injury firm, a single $250,000 settlement meant $82,000 in revenue. Another DUI solo brought in $45,000 in a month with over 60% lead-to-retained conversion. Individual results, not promises.
Common mistakes
Where firms go wrong.
The budget mistakes we see when firms come to us, most of them about measuring the wrong thing.
Judging a channel on cost per click or cost per lead
Cheap clicks on vague searches and cheap leads that never answer the callback look good in a report and sign nothing. Judge every channel on cost per signed case.
Spreading a small budget across every platform
At $2,000 a month split three ways, no channel gets enough leads to learn from or to judge. Put it into one channel that fits your practice, then add a second when the first is working.
Buying more ads before fixing the phone
If calls go to voicemail during the day, more spend buys more missed cases. On Local Services Ads it also costs you twice: missed calls in business hours can be charged and can hurt your responsiveness.
Not knowing which part of a quote is ad spend
Some proposals bundle ad spend and service costs into one monthly number. Ask how much goes to Google or Meta, and pay it on the firm's own card in an account the firm owns, so you can see it.
Real results
What this looked like for real firms.
Three results that show cost per signed case in practice: a DUI solo on Local Services Ads, a new real estate firm on Google search ads, and a single injury settlement that paid for the whole system more than 10 times over.
Identifying details are anonymized to protect our clients. Individual result, not a promise or prediction of any specific outcome for your firm.
FAQ
Questions lawyers ask us.
Straight answers to the questions that come up most.
How much should a law firm spend on marketing?
We know of no reliable percentage-of-revenue rule, so we don't use one. Start from how many new cases you can take each month and what a case is worth. For ad spend alone, our working ranges are $1,000 to $10,000+ a month on Local Services Ads, $2,000 to $20,000+ on Google search ads, and $1,000 to $10,000+ on Meta. The Growth Guide suggests a plan for the budget you enter.
What is a good cost per lead for a law firm?
We don't publish a benchmark, because a good number depends on your fee and on how many leads you sign. Work backwards instead: decide what you can pay for a signed case, multiply by the share of leads you sign, and that's your ceiling per lead. A firm that signs 1 in 10 leads and accepts $1,000 per signed case can pay up to $100 per lead; one that signs 1 in 5 can pay $200 for the same outcome.
Is Local Services Ads cheaper than Google search ads?
Not necessarily, but you only pay when someone contacts you. Search ads charge per click whether or not the person calls, and give you more control over case types. Our LSA vs Google Ads guide compares them.
Does the ad spend go to the agency or to Google?
With us, it goes straight to Google or Meta on the firm's own card, in accounts the firm owns. You see every dollar in the platform's billing page. What an agency charges for its work is a separate cost that this guide doesn't cover.
Do these numbers apply in Canada, Australia and the UK?
How Google and Meta charge is the same. Local Services Ads for lawyers runs only in the US and, in the UK, Greater London. Google's Canada page lists home services only, and Australia has no Local Services Ads. Click prices differ by market and currency, as the Ontario figures above show.
How does AI search fit into the budget?
Being named in ChatGPT or Google's AI answers isn't bought per click, so it isn't ad spend. It builds over months from your Business Profile, reviews and clear pages. Our guide on showing up in ChatGPT and our AI search page explain how it works.
Where we do this
The services this guide touches.
What this looks like when we run it for a firm, with a demo for your practice on each page.
Sources
Where these facts come from.
Official pages we read when writing this page. Platforms and rules change, so check the current version before you act on any of it. This is marketing guidance, not legal advice.
- Google Ads Help, Actual cost-per-click (CPC): Definition
- Google Ads Help, Ad Rank: Definition
- Google Ads Help, About average daily budgets
- Google Ads Help, About Keyword Planner forecasts
- Local Services Help, How leads work
- Local Services Help, How ranking works
- Local Services Help, About Automated Local Services Ads lead credits
- Local Services Help, Local Services Ads availability (UK)
- Meta Business Help Center, About Ad Auctions
- Meta Business Help Center, How Meta Charges for Ads
Written by
Founder of Ad Hoc Digital. Leads strategy and works directly with every client firm on AI search, Local Services Ads, Google Ads and Meta ads.
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