PPC for law firms: paying for signed clients, not for people comparing fees at $100 a click

Where law firm accounts waste money

• Research searches billed as leads. "How much does a divorce cost", "can I sue for", "free legal advice", "statute of limitations". These match broad and phrase keywords, cost as much as a client search and almost never sign. Twelve months of search terms read line by line is the first task.
• One campaign for the whole firm. Family, immigration and personal injury share a budget, and the cheapest inquiries take it. Each practice area gets its own campaign, budget and landing page.
• A call counted as a client. Phone clicks and form fills are not signed clients. Call tracking tied to the keyword, intake software recording the outcome, and the case management system feeding back which inquiries became matters are what let Google optimize toward clients.
• The firm's homepage as the landing page. Someone who searched for an immigration attorney should land on a page about immigration law, with the attorney's name, the first step explained and the phone number at the top.
• Ads that would not pass the bar. Outcome claims, "specialist" where the state bar restricts the word, missing disclaimers. State bar advertising rules set what can be said, and the ads are written inside them.

What a click costs by practice area and metro

Average cost per click from Google Ads keyword data for the US, October 2026, for the search with the city attached. Market averages, not a forecast.

At these prices, 100 clicks cost close to $13,000. If one in eight calls and one in three callers signs, that is about $3,100 per signed case before the fee. If a third of those clicks were research searches that should have been excluded, the real figure was closer to $2,100. That is the arithmetic the account is run on, and it is why the negatives program and the intake tracking come before any bidding change.

What management includes for a law firm

1. A campaign per practice area, with exact and phrase match, a negatives program built from the research vocabulary of each area, and location targeting matched to where the firm takes clients and is licensed.
2. Measurement to the signed client. Call tracking, intake outcomes, and the case management system (Clio, MyCase, Filevine, Lawmatics or a spreadsheet) feeding back which inquiries opened a matter, imported to Google Ads as offline conversions. See conversion tracking.
3. A page per practice area, built by me, with the attorney, the process, the fee basis, and a phone number and form that work on a phone at lunchtime. See landing pages.
4. Local Services Ads alongside Search where the practice area qualifies, with the Google Screened process handled and the two channels compared on cost per signed client.
5. Brand and competitor terms decided, not defaulted. Whether to bid on the firm's own name depends on who else is bidding on it; competitor bidding is permitted but usually poor value and in some states restricted. Both reviewed monthly.
6. Microsoft Advertising once Google works: a professional audience on work devices, often at a lower cost per inquiry for legal searches. Microsoft Ads →
7. A monthly report in signed clients and cost per signed client, by practice area, alongside the platform numbers so the two can be compared.

Who this fits

US and Canadian firms from a few attorneys to mid-size regional practices, spending roughly $5,000 to $80,000 a month, in practice areas where a client is worth several thousand dollars or more: personal injury where the firm handles its own intake, family, immigration, employment, criminal defense, estate planning, business law. Lead resellers and mass-tort aggregators are not a fit. There is no law firm case on this site yet and none will be invented; the published cases show the method on other expensive auctions.

Questions people ask before hiring

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