PPC Agency for Law Firms
PPC for Lawyers, Built on Qualified Leads and Signed Cases
A law firm marketing agency that follows every click from form submission to your CRM, sends the leads your team accepts back into Google's bidding, and reports a cost per case you can budget around.
Get a Free Cost Per Case Analysis
Send us your website and budget. We'll review your account and your lead data and tell you what a qualified lead and a signed case cost you today, and where that number can come down.
Form Submissions Are Not Signed Cases
Most law firm Google Ads accounts are set up to count form submissions. That is what Google reports, so that is what the account learns to buy more of. The problem is that most form submissions never become cases. The person is in the wrong state, the facts don't meet the statute, or they want free advice. When we took over one national firm's account, the previous month had produced about 650 form submissions and only 35 qualified leads. The firm paid the same price for all 650.
We set the account up differently. Before we touch Google Ads, we work with your team to define what a qualified lead is and which stages a lead passes through on the way to a signed case. Every form submission and tracked call is saved in your CRM with the Google click ID that produced it. When your team marks a lead as qualified, or a case as retained, we send that update back to Google Ads as an offline conversion. From then on, Google bids for the leads your team accepted, not for form submissions. On that national firm's account, cost per qualified lead dropped by half after the switch. The firm scaled from $10K to $140K a month over six months, and more than 1,400 qualified leads came through.
The landing page filters before the form is ever submitted. We don't send paid clicks to your website. We build one page per practice area, and one per state where there is enough volume, and the form on that page asks the same questions your team asks first: which state, what year, what happened. The ad, the page, and the form all describe the same type of case, so people who don't qualify tend to leave before they submit. We've written up why dedicated landing pages outperform website pages if you want the full argument.
Running Google Ads PPC for your Law Firm?
The three problems we see in almost every law firm account
Form Submissions That Never Become Cases
The account produces plenty of form submissions and calls, but most get disqualified: wrong state, wrong facts, or a claim that never meets the statute. The lead count looks healthy while the case count stays flat, and every disqualified submission still costs someone's time to review. An account that bids on form submissions is telling Google to buy more of exactly this.
Nobody Knows What a Case Costs
You know what a click costs and what a form submission costs. Nobody can say what a qualified lead or a signed case costs, because nothing connects the ad account to your CRM. Budget decisions get made on lead counts, the number that says the least about revenue, and every increase is a guess.
Budget Spent on Searches That Can't Become Cases
Money goes to research questions, do-it-yourself searches, students, and matters your firm doesn't take. No ad copy can turn those into cases. Without your team's disqualification reasons flowing back into the account, nothing flags them as waste.
One System from Search to Signed Case
Google Ads brings in the demand, practice-area pages filter it, and your CRM data improves both.
Google Ads Management
- Campaigns organized by practice area and state
- Bidding on qualified leads confirmed in your CRM
- Negative keywords built from your disqualification reasons
- Budgets raised on cost per qualified lead
Practice-Area Landing Pages
- One page per practice area and state
- Form questions match what your team asks first
- Click-to-call for people who prefer the phone
- A/B tests measured against a documented control
Connected to Your CRM
Lower Cost per Qualified Lead
- • Every click tied to a CRM outcome
- • Calls and form submissions scored the same way
- • Disqualification reasons feed back into targeting
- • Budget follows what a signed case is worth
How a Law Firm Engagement Runs
Four steps, from defining a qualified lead to scaling the budget.
Define a Qualified Lead
We sit down with your team and write out the stages a lead moves through: form submission or call, qualified lead, signed case. The definitions come from how your firm already works, not from our assumptions.
Set Up the Tracking
Every click gets an ID. Form submissions and tracked calls land in your CRM with that ID attached, and each stage change is sent back to Google Ads as an offline conversion.
Launch and Learn
Campaigns go live on dedicated practice-area pages. The first weeks of spend show which searches, states, and pages produce leads your team accepts.
Scale on the Numbers
Budget goes up when cost per qualified lead says it can. Practice areas and states that produce qualified leads cheaply get their own campaigns and their own budgets.
What Our Law Firm PPC Management Includes
Six workstreams that connect ad spend to signed cases
Bidding on Qualified Leads
- Every ad click followed from the search to your CRM
- Qualified-lead and signed-case stages sent back to Google Ads as offline conversions
- Bidding aimed at qualified leads, not form submissions
- Higher conversion values assigned to later stages
Lead Scoring That Matches Your Team
- Lead definitions set with your team, not assumed
- Qualified and unqualified submissions separated in every report
- Phone calls tracked alongside form submissions
- Disqualification reasons turned into keywords and negatives
Dedicated Practice-Area Landing Pages
- One page per practice area, matched to the search that brought the click
- Screening questions built into the form
- Click-to-call for people who prefer the phone
- A/B tests measured against a documented control
Follow-Up for People Who Aren't Ready Yet
- Email and SMS follow-up for long research phases
- Visitors who didn't submit added to remarketing audiences
- Lower-commitment offers for early researchers
- Warm handoff to your team when the person is ready to talk
Search Term Cleanup
- Ongoing review of search terms for research and do-it-yourself intent
- Negative keyword lists for matters your firm doesn't take
- Wrong-state and out-of-area searches blocked
- Spend concentrated on searches that can become cases
Reporting Built for Partners
- Cost per qualified lead by campaign, keyword, and state
- Qualified and unqualified volume shown side by side
- Budget recommendations tied to how many leads your team can handle
- Monthly strategy calls that include feedback from your team
Phone Calls, Response Time, and People Who Aren't Ready Yet
A lot of legal leads come in by phone. People with strong cases often skip the form and call, so a good share of your qualified leads never touch a thank-you page. If those calls aren't tied back to the clicks that produced them, Google is learning from only part of the picture and your reports undercount what the ads produce. We use tracked phone numbers so every call is matched to its click and sent back to Google Ads the same way a form submission is. A qualified call counts as much as a qualified form. Our guide to offline conversion tracking for phone calls covers the setup.
Response time matters before any follow-up sequence does. Someone who submits a form is usually comparing firms in that same hour, and the first firm to respond well sets the bar for everyone after. We measure response times on every engagement and set up automatic first replies where your team can't answer fast enough on its own. Our article on speed to lead explains why the first few minutes after a form submission matter more than the rest of the week.
Not everyone is ready to talk in that hour. Some people research for weeks before contacting a firm: reading about the statute, comparing options, deciding whether the problem is worth pursuing. Paying for a second click when they finally decide is the expensive way to stay in front of them. Email and SMS follow-up is the cheap way. Someone who submits a form but isn't ready yet gets a short sequence that answers the questions they are already researching, and your team gets a warm handoff when they reply. People who visit without submitting go into remarketing audiences, so the follow-up doesn't rely on email alone.
See Our Results
How bidding on qualified leads from the CRM grew a national lemon law firm's Google Ads budget from $10K to $140K a month in six months while cutting cost per qualified lead in half.
Google Ads for Law Firms FAQs
How qualified-lead bidding, call tracking, and ad approval work in practice.
Yes, when the account is set up to buy the right thing. Popular practice areas produce plenty of form submissions, and most of them never become cases: wrong state, wrong facts, or a claim that doesn't meet the statute. If Google Ads is told a form submission is the goal, it buys more form submissions. If it is told a qualified lead is the goal, using data from your CRM, it buys more qualified leads instead. On one national law firm's account, that change cut cost per qualified lead in half while the monthly budget grew from $10K to $140K in six months.
Each ad click gets a click ID, and we save that ID with the lead in your CRM. As your team moves the lead through its stages (qualified lead, opportunity, signed case), we send each stage back to Google Ads as an offline conversion. That gives you a cost per qualified lead and a cost per case, broken down by campaign, keyword, and state. It also gives Google a better signal to bid on. Phone calls work the same way: a tracked number ties each call back to the click that caused it, so a call and a form submission are scored alike.
Advertising rules vary by state bar, and your firm knows its obligations better than we do. You tell us what needs review, whether that is claims, disclaimers, or specific wording. Every ad and landing page goes through your approval process before it runs, and nothing goes live that your team has not cleared. We manage the campaigns. We don't give legal advice, and that includes advice on advertising compliance.
Form submissions and calls usually start within the first few weeks. Qualified leads take longer to show up in the numbers, because the data has to flow from your CRM back into Google Ads and Google needs enough of it to learn from. On one national law firm's account, cost per qualified lead fell by more than half in the six weeks after we switched the bidding. Some practice areas also have a long research phase, where people read for weeks before contacting anyone. That is why email and SMS follow-up is built into the system from the start rather than added later.
Qualified leads. Form submissions are the default because they are easy to track, but in busy practice areas they are the wrong target. A form submission costs a fraction of what a qualified lead costs, so an account judged on lead count drifts toward cheap, unqualified submissions. Bidding on qualified leads takes more setup: click IDs stored in your CRM and offline conversions sent back to Google Ads. It changes what the budget buys, and it changes the monthly conversation. Instead of arguing over lead counts, you and we look at one number, cost per qualified lead, and your team has already checked every lead behind it.
Our management fee starts at $2,500 a month, and we work best with firms spending $10K a month or more on ads. That floor is not arbitrary: bidding on qualified leads needs enough conversions to learn from. The law firm case study we've published started at $10K a month and grew to $140K a month over six months, because cost per qualified lead held steady as the budget went up. The spend itself is not the goal. Each increase is approved only after the numbers show the account can handle it.
Ready to know what a signed case costs you?
We'll look at your account and your CRM data and show you the gap between what you pay per form submission and what you pay per case. Request your free analysis below.
Get a Free Cost Per Case Analysis
Send us your website and budget. We'll review your account and your lead data and tell you what a qualified lead and a signed case cost you today.