Legal clicks are the most expensive in the auction, and most firms are buying the wrong ones. A Google Ads campaign for a law firm has to be built by practice area, with the ads on when the searches happen, the landing page about the one problem the searcher has, every call recorded against the keyword that produced it, and every word inside the bar’s advertising rules. We run paid search and Local Services Ads for firms nationally, from the agency that has worked with attorneys since 2015.
What every firm campaign we run is built on, whatever the practice area.
Personal injury, criminal defense, family, estate, bankruptcy and immigration are separate campaigns with separate budgets, bids and pages. A firm-wide campaign pays injury rates for estate clicks.
Criminal defense is searched at night and on weekends; estate planning on weekday mornings; injury within hours of the accident. The schedule comes from the firm’s own intake log.
The spot above the paid results, priced per lead, with the licensing and background verification handled and the leads that were never a case disputed.
No promised outcomes, no misleading comparisons, the disclaimers the state requires, and no review tactics that put the license at risk.
The firm accounts we take over leak in the same places, and the first month is spent closing them.
Law firms were among our first clients in 2015, and the paid team has run campaigns for injury, defense, family, estate and bankruptcy practices across the country since. We know what a click should cost in each practice area and each market, and we know the bar rules the ads have to live inside.
Management is priced on the account, not on the spend, and the account stays in the firm’s name.
A personal injury or criminal defense click can cost what a contractor pays for a day of clicks. A firm cannot afford broad match, a homepage landing page or an unanswered phone. The campaigns we build are structured by practice area, scheduled to the hours the searches happen and measured on retained clients, not on traffic.
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What attorneys ask before they hand over a budget.
The ad budget is set by the firm and paid to Google directly, and legal clicks are the most expensive in the auction, with personal injury and criminal defense at the top. Our management fee is priced on the size of the account rather than a percentage of spend, so a larger budget is not in our interest unless it brings more clients. The free audit gives an estimate by practice area and market.
Both, for most firms. Local Services Ads take the top of the page at a per-lead price and need the Google Screened verification; Google Ads reach the searches Local Services Ads do not cover and let the firm control the landing page. The two together hold the paid spot and the screened spot on the same search.
Yes. Ads, extensions, landing pages and any review request are written to the advertising rules of the bar the firm answers to: no promised outcomes, no misleading comparisons, disclaimers where they are required and no paid or fabricated reviews. If a tactic would put the license at risk, we do not run it.
Yes, and each gets its own campaign. Personal injury, criminal defense, family, estate, bankruptcy, immigration, employment and business litigation have different hours, phrasing and prices, and a firm-wide campaign pays the most expensive practice area’s rate for all of them.
The firm does. We build in an account in the firm’s name and work in it as a manager; the history, audiences and conversion data stay with the firm if it ever leaves. An existing account is audited and rebuilt inside rather than replaced.
Calls start as soon as the ads and the Local Services Ads profile are approved, usually inside the first two weeks. The first month is spent cutting the searches that do not become cases and moving the budget toward the ones that do, so the cost per retained client falls through the first quarter. We report calls, consultations and retained clients, not clicks.
The people who would run your firm’s campaign, in their own words — how the practice-area campaigns get built, and where the waste goes.
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Legal is the most expensive category in paid search and the one with the least room for a sloppy account. PPC management for a law firm is the work of buying only the searches that become clients, at the hours they happen, in the markets the firm actually practices in, and proving it with the intake data rather than the click data.
Every account starts with the firm’s own records. We read the intake log and the search terms that produced the retained clients, map them by practice area and by county, and build a campaign for each practice area on those phrases. Negative keyword lists are worked every day, so the budget stops paying for the practice areas the firm does not handle, the job seekers and the people researching a case they will never bring.
Search campaigns on Google Ads carry most of the budget. Local Services Ads sit above them with the Google Screened badge, priced per lead, and we handle the verification and dispute the leads that were never a case. Remarketing on Display and Meta brings back the visitor who read the practice page and did not call, within what the bar rules and the platforms allow for legal advertising.
A firm that runs one campaign is paying its most expensive practice area’s rate for every click. Personal injury is the most expensive auction in the country and the one where the search happens within hours of the accident, from a phone, by someone who will call the first firm that answers. Criminal defense is searched at night and on weekends, by the arrested person or their family, and the criminal lawyer marketing work covers it in detail. Family law is searched quietly, over weeks, with a customer who reads before calling. Estate planning is a weekday-morning search by an older client who wants to see a face. Bankruptcy, immigration and employment each have their own hours, their own phrasing and their own price.
We build one campaign per practice area with its own budget, bids, schedule and landing page, and set the location targeting by the counties the firm actually practices in rather than a radius from the office. The monthly review moves budget between practice areas toward the one where a retained client cost least.
Each campaign lands on a page about that one practice area, fast on a phone, with the attorney’s face, the office and a number that is answered. Where the page is missing, we build it as part of the campaign.
Marketing only counts when the phone is answered. We record every call against the keyword and the practice area that produced it, report the calls that were missed or went to voicemail, and read the intake outcome back into the account so the bids follow retained clients rather than clicks. For most firms the fastest gain is not a new keyword but an answering service and a text-back on the missed calls.
Every ad, extension and landing page is written to the advertising rules of the bar the firm answers to: no promised outcomes, no misleading comparisons, the disclaimers the state requires, and no paid or fabricated reviews. A compliant campaign is slower to write and far cheaper than a complaint.
The ad data tells us which practice-area terms turn into clients, and the law firm SEO program builds its pages on those, so the organic rankings and the map pack grow on terms already proved to pay and the paid budget can come down as they take over. Campaigns are built in an ad account the firm owns, the fee is priced on the size of the account rather than a share of the spend, and the monthly report shows spend, calls and retained clients by practice area.
A firm is found on a practice-area term and judged on its reviews, so law firm SEO, Local SEO and Reputation Management run beside the Paid Advertising work, and the campaigns are built on the terms the organic data has already proved bring clients.
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