PPC for Law Firms: Building a Google Ads Account That Pays in Instructions

The Google Ads invoice lands, the click numbers look busy, and the partners still can't say which new matters the spend produced. For a law firm that's an expensive place to sit, because legal terms are among the priciest auctions on Google, and a few pounds lost on each click turns into thousands over a quarter.

Law firm PPC works when the account is built around how people actually instruct a solicitor: by practice area, by place, and very often by phone. Structure wins this auction more reliably than budget does. Our paid search management for professional services firms starts from that structure, and this guide sets it out.

We cover how to split campaigns, which searches to pay for and which to block, why the phone matters more than the form, what Google and the SRA expect from your ads and landing pages, and how to judge the account on cost per instruction rather than cost per click.

If you only have a minute

• Campaigns split by practice area and by intent give conveyancing, family and employment work their own budget and target, instead of one blended average that hides which work pays.
• In a worked example at £4,000 a month of media, a £100 enquiry becomes a £550 instruction once conversion and fees are counted, which is why cost per instruction is the number to manage.
• Clear Click runs Google Ads for professional services firms from £1,500 a month plus VAT, with calls and forms tracked through to instruction.

Why do legal searches cost so much on Google?

Google Ads is an auction, and the price of a click reflects what the advertisers in it think a new client is worth. A conveyancing instruction, a divorce or an employment claim can be worth hundreds or thousands of pounds in fees, so local firms, national legal brands and claims businesses all bid hard for the same searches.

That has two consequences. Waste costs more here than in most sectors, since one stray click on a broad term can cost what a whole morning of clicks costs elsewhere. And the firms that do well are rarely the ones with the biggest budget. They're the ones whose accounts only pay for searches that turn into instructions.

The reassuring part is that almost everything in a legal account is fixable without spending more. The fixes are structural, and they follow the order below.

How should a law firm structure its Google Ads campaigns?

Start with one campaign per practice area. Conveyancing, family, wills and probate, employment and personal injury behave like different businesses: different fees, different search volumes, different conversion rates, different hours when people pick up the phone. Put them in one campaign and Google drifts the budget towards whatever is cheapest to convert, which may not be the work the firm most wants.

Separate campaigns mean a separate budget and a separate target for each. If family law brings in instructions at £400 each and conveyancing at £150, you can see both numbers and decide where the next pound goes. A blended average can't tell you that.

High-intent searches and research searches

Inside each practice area, split the searches by how close the person is to instructing. "Divorce solicitor" plus a town name, "conveyancing quote" and "employment solicitor for unfair dismissal" come from people ready to speak to someone. "How long does probate take" or "what is a settlement agreement" come from people who are still reading.

We put the money on the first group and treat the second with care. Research searches are cheaper and plentiful, but they convert at a fraction of the rate, and organic content usually serves them better. Our guide to SEO for solicitors covers the pages that win that research traffic without a click bill attached.

Location targeting

Set location by how each service is sold. Family, criminal and personal injury work tends to be local, so a tight radius around the offices clients can reach makes sense. Conveyancing and wills can travel further if the firm works remotely, so a regional or national target may suit those campaigns.

One setting matters more than it looks. Google lets you target people who are in, or regularly in, your chosen area, or also people who have shown interest in it. For most firms the first option is the safer default, because it stops you paying for clicks from people elsewhere who were only reading about a place.

Negative keywords

Negative keywords stop your ads appearing for searches you'd never want to pay for. In legal accounts they save more money than any other single setting, because a large share of legal search comes from people who aren't looking to instruct a firm at all. The lists we start every account with include:

• "Free" and "pro bono", unless the firm offers a free first consultation and wants those calls.
• Jobs and careers: "jobs", "vacancies", "training contract", "trainee", "paralegal", "salary".
• "Legal aid", where the firm doesn't hold a legal aid contract. Firms that do will want the opposite.
• Do-it-yourself searches: "template", "form", "DIY divorce", "will kit".

Then we add to the list every week for the first couple of months by reading the search terms report, which shows the actual searches that triggered your ads. It's patient work, and it pays back quickly.

Why do phone calls matter so much in legal PPC?

A lot of legal enquiries start with a phone call. Someone facing a divorce, an arrest or a house sale falling through usually wants to speak to a person, and a contact form feels slow. If the account only counts form fills, it can't see a large share of what it produces, and Google's automated bidding learns from that partial picture.

Three things sort it out. Call assets on the search ads for practice areas where people phone, scheduled to the hours the phones are staffed. Call tracking on the website, with a tracking number that swaps in for paid visitors so each call is recorded against the right campaign and search. And a minimum call length, often 60 to 90 seconds, so wrong numbers and sales calls don't count as enquiries.

On formats, we start with call assets attached to ordinary search ads. Google has been moving advertisers away from the older call-only ad format, so we wouldn't build a new account around it, and call assets give the person the choice of calling or reading the page first.

The next step is telling Google which calls became clients. When the firm marks instructions in its case management system or CRM, and that outcome goes back to Google Ads as an offline conversion, bidding starts to favour the searches that produce matters rather than the ones that produce chats.

What do Google and the SRA expect from your ads and landing pages?

Google treats legal services as an area with extra rules. The detail varies by country and by type of service, and some legal services, claims-related work in particular, can need verification or certification before ads will run. The practical approach is to check Google's current legal services policy for each practice area before launch, and to make sure every claim in an ad is accurate and backed up on the landing page.

The SRA asks for much the same from its side. Its rules require that what a firm says about its services and prices isn't misleading, and firms in England and Wales must publish price and service information for certain kinds of work.

7 areas of work: The SRA Transparency Rules require regulated firms in England and Wales to publish price and service information for seven areas of legal work, including conveyancing, probate and employment tribunal claims.

Source: SRA Transparency Rules, in force since December 2018.

Those rules and good PPC point the same way. Each practice-area campaign should land on a page about that service alone, with the fee information, the process and the people, rather than on the home page. For the seven areas covered, that page can hold or link straight to the SRA pricing information, so someone who clicked an ad about conveyancing costs finds conveyancing costs within a scroll.

Firms regulated in Scotland answer to the Law Society of Scotland, and the publicity rules differ in the detail, but the landing page principle holds. A page that matches the ad also helps in the auction itself. Google rewards relevance between the search, the ad and the page, and better relevance can mean paying less for the same position.

How should a law firm measure PPC results?

Cost per click sits at the top of every Google Ads report, and for a law firm it's the least useful number in it. The ones that matter are cost per enquiry, the share of enquiries that become instructions, and the fees those instructions bring in.

Take a worked example. A firm spends £4,000 a month on family law ads. Assume an average click costs £8, so the budget buys 500 clicks. At an 8% enquiry rate, that's 40 calls and forms, or £100 per enquiry.

Now assume one in four enquiries becomes an instruction. That's 10 new matters, and a media cost of £400 per instruction. Add a £1,500 management fee and the all-in figure is £550 per instruction. If an average family matter brings in £2,500 in fees, the month returned about £25,000 in fees for £5,500 of total cost.

Change one assumption and the picture moves a long way. If one in eight enquiries instructs rather than one in four, cost per instruction doubles, and no amount of bid tuning will fix that. Realistically, a Google Ads account can't make up for slow follow-up, so if enquiries wait a day for a call back, we'd say so early and suggest sorting that before the budget goes up.

That's why we ask firms for instruction data from the start, even if it's a weekly spreadsheet to begin with. Manual first, automate when the volume justifies it.

Where does PPC fit alongside SEO for a law firm?

Paid search buys enquiries this month. Organic search builds a supply of them without a click bill, but it takes six to twelve months to get there. The way we see it, firms do best running both from the same keyword research, with each channel taking the searches it wins most cheaply.

PPC also tells SEO what to write. A few months of search term data shows which practice areas and phrasings bring instructions, and that becomes the list of pages the organic work builds first. Once a page ranks well for a term, the firm can test pulling paid spend back on it. Our comparison of SEO and PPC budgets sets out how we'd split the money.

If you'd like paid search and SEO run from one plan with one set of numbers, our paid media team can help. See how we run paid media

Questions we get asked

How much does PPC for a law firm cost in the UK?

There are two costs: the media you pay Google and the management fee. Clear Click manages paid media from £1,500 a month plus VAT, and for a single practice area we'd usually suggest enough media budget to produce a steady flow of enquiries to learn from. Our guide to what PPC agencies charge in the UK sets out the fee models you'll meet.

Is Google Ads worth it for solicitors?

It usually is when the account is judged on cost per instruction and the fee per matter is high enough to carry legal click prices. It's harder to make work for low-fee, high-volume services in crowded areas. Two or three months of tracked calls and forms will show which group your practice areas fall into.

Can solicitors advertise on Google Ads?

Yes. Solicitors can run Google Ads as long as the ads follow Google's legal services policies and the SRA's rules on publicity, which mostly come down to being accurate and not misleading. Some services, claims-related work in particular, may need extra verification from Google first.

Should a law firm use call-only ads or call assets?

We start with call assets on standard search ads, scheduled to the hours someone is there to answer. Google has been moving away from the call-only format, and call assets let the person choose between calling and reading first. Either way, call tracking is what makes the results measurable.

How long does it take for Google Ads to bring in new clients?

Ads can bring calls within days of launch. A fair read on cost per instruction usually takes two to three months, because legal matters take time to convert and the account needs that period to learn which searches pay.

What should a law firm's PPC report show?

Cost per enquiry and cost per instruction by practice area, next to spend, with calls and forms counted separately. A report built on clicks and impressions describes activity rather than clients. We'd also expect it to say what changed in the account that month and why.

Where we fit

Clear Click is a UK search and CRM consultancy, and paid media is the side of the business Alistair leads. We run paid search for professional services firms, building accounts by practice area and measuring them on cost per instruction, with management from £1,500 a month plus VAT.

If your firm already runs Google Ads and you'd like an outside view of the structure, or you're weighing up whether to start, get in touch and we'll talk it through. You can also read more about our search advertising service first.