Most law-firm ads pay for clicks that land on a homepage, where the visitor looks around and leaves. We fix the landing page and the tracking first, then build ads that offer people something useful and follow up with everyone who responds.
I'm Joshua David Little. I've run my own consulting firm since 2004, I've helped attorneys prepare complex cases for trial, and I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads.
I came into legal marketing when a lawyer I'd worked with asked me to look at her ads. I found what I've since found almost everywhere: ads paid for by the click, sending people to a homepage that was never built for someone arriving cold from Google. In every other industry I'd worked in, an ad like that comes with a way to get the person's contact details and permission to follow up.
Most people who click a law firm's ad aren't ready to book a consultation that day. On average, about 94 of every 100 clicks on a law firm's search ad don't produce a lead.¹ A firm paying for each of those clicks is paying mostly for people it will never hear from again.
The ad account reports clicks and leads. Your intake knows who signed. Unless someone connects the two, nobody can tell you what a signed client actually cost, and every decision about your budget is a guess.
In personal injury, top-of-page bids on the main searches run from about $66 to $100 at the low end to $340 to $495 at the high end. A firm can spend its whole budget competing for those words. Smaller firms win on the specific situations their clients search for, with a page built for each one.
A cheap click is worth little if the person never calls. A long list of leads is worth little if none of them hire you. The number that tells you whether your Google Ads are working is what each signed client cost, set against what that client is worth to your firm. When the leads are plentiful and wrong, the cause is sometimes a campaign setting, and that can be fixed.
We work in order of impact. The fixes that do the most come first, and most of them happen outside the ad itself.
The ad's words match the page it lands on. Someone who clicks an ad for "divorce lawyers in Nashville" lands on a page about divorce in Nashville, with a useful resource to ask for and a short form of five fields or fewer.
Conversion tracking is set up so each lead counts once, and a phone call counts only when it lasts long enough to be a real conversation, usually 30 to 60 seconds.
Worked out from your average case value, your close rate, and the share of fees you're willing to spend to win a case. That target guides the bids, in place of a click price.
Auto-applied recommendations, automatic ad suggestions, and final URL expansion let Google change your campaigns on its own, and Google's goals aren't always yours. We turn them off and make each change on purpose.
Searches with words like free, DIY, salary, and jobs are blocked, including in Performance Max campaigns, so you stop paying for people who were never looking for a lawyer.
A low click-through rate usually means the ad isn't relevant to the people seeing it. A pile of poor leads may mean a setting needs changing. On the back end, we compare who signs from Google with who signs from ChatGPT ads, Local Services Ads, and referrals.
Bid on "divorce lawyer," send every click to the homepage, and report clicks and leads at the end of the month.
Campaigns built around the specific situations your clients are in, each landing on a page that offers a resource and captures the visitor, followed up, and tracked through to the signed engagement.
Access to your ad account, which belongs to your firm and stays with it. Your average case value and close rate, so we can set a target. Your intake records, so leads can be matched to the clients who signed. A review of the ad copy before it runs. In my experience, most clients spend 2 to 3 hours a month across the whole engagement.
Family clients often prepare quietly for months before they hire anyone. Ads that offer a preparation guide or workbook reach them during that stretch, and follow-up keeps your firm in front of them until they're ready. Top-of-page bids on the main family searches run from $3 to $5 at the low end to $30 to $39 at the high end, so what a signed client costs depends heavily on what happens after the click.
Head-term bids reach $340 to $495 a click. One Pennsylvania injury-firm owner put a signed auto case at $2,000 to $3,000 in most markets, and owners elsewhere put it at $4,000 to $6,000. A smaller firm wins on the specific situations people search for and on its own pages for them. I've worked the litigation side of injury cases, helping attorneys prepare them for trial, so I build campaigns around the cases worth signing.
Med-mal cases sign months after the first click, so a count of leads tells you very little. We judge each campaign by signed cases. Before your firm spends anything, we can build a campaign in draft and read Google's own forecast for your market.
Elder-law clicks can be inexpensive, and the words in the ads need care.
Business and estate clients search for these services less often, so for those firms we usually lean more on search optimization and AI answers than on search ads.
New clients at about $200 each, leads at about $21, and about $135,000 in estimated case value.²
Leads at about $44, booked consultations at $234 each, and about $75,000 in estimated case value from $6,547 in ads.²
A 14.1% conversion rate, at $46.29 per conversion. Legal search ads average 5.55%, at $131.63 a lead.¹
Your Google ads promote the same resources as the rest of your marketing, and every response goes into the same follow-up. Local Services Ads run beside search where they fit, ChatGPT ads beside Google, and every campaign lands on a page built for it. As your Fractional CMO, I watch what a signed client costs across all of them and move the budget toward what works. And when the right people are calling and too few of them sign, I train your intake and sales team to close more of them.
Your homepage is built for people who already know they want to talk to you. Most people who click an ad are earlier than that. A page about their exact situation, with a useful resource to ask for, gives them a reason to stay and gives you a way to follow up.
It depends on your practice, your market, and what a case is worth to your firm. We work out a target from your average case value and close rate, and measure against it every month.
Ask them what each signed client cost. If they can't tell you, their tracking isn't connected to your intake, and nobody knows.
Yes, and the account should belong to your firm. If an agency set it up in its own name, that's one of the first things we'll talk about.
Ads that promote a resource can produce leads soon after they launch. Knowing what a signed client costs takes longer, because people take time to sign. We report on both every month, and we need your intake records to do it.
The strategic marketing assessment includes a look at your account and your landing pages, so that's the place to start.
¹ LOCALiQ, 2026 search advertising benchmarks: attorneys and legal services average a 5.55% conversion rate and a $131.63 cost per lead.
² Case value estimated from average case value.
A 45-minute to one-hour video call with me. Before we meet, I look at your ads and landing pages. On the call, we map your firm's marketing together on a whiteboard, and you keep the map whether or not we work together.
Currently accepting a limited number of Fractional CMO relationships.