Service
Google Ads for solicitors: legal clicks are among the dearest in the country, so we buy few and buy them well
National firms and claims companies bid the price of a legal click to levels a high-street firm cannot recover on volume. A local firm can still make adverts pay, in the practice areas where the client has already decided to instruct, on a landing page that states the fee, with a telephone number that appears in the report. That is the whole method. Everything else on this page is the list of things we decline to bid on.
Yes, no, and for a season
Where a legal click can pay, and where it is a gift to Google
| Search or situation | Bid? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Conveyancing quote, by town | Yes | The client wants a figure today; a page with the fee and an instant quote form recovers a dear click. |
| Wills, LPAs, probate | Yes | Cheaper clicks, clear intent, fixed-fee pages land well. |
| Unfair dismissal, employee side | Yes, with care | Urgent and specific; a page that explains the time limit plainly wins the call. |
| A new department | For a season | Ads bring the first matters while the practice page earns its place. |
| 'Solicitors near me', 'solicitors <town>' | No | The map pack sits above the adverts and the click is dear. The office profile wins this for nothing. |
| Personal injury, in general | No | Claims companies bid the click beyond what a local firm can recover, unless there is a specialism and a tracked pipeline. |
| Any campaign without a practice page | No | An advert landing on a homepage that lists twelve services wastes the click. The page comes first. |
| Any campaign without call tracking | No | If the report cannot show which advert rang reception, nobody can say whether it paid. |
The shape of a campaign that pays
Narrow by design
It does not advertise “legal services”. It advertises probate in two named towns to people who typed those words, sends them to the probate page with the fee on it, and rings a number the report can see. Exact and phrase match only, a negative list that strips out jobs, courses, legal aid where the firm does not offer it and the names of national firms, and a landing page that would work without the advert.
- Terms
- The practice area by town, nothing broader.
- Landing page
- The practice page, or a campaign page built from it, with the fee above the fold.
- Tracking
- A tracking number routed to the right desk and form events per advert.
- Reading
- Cost per enquiry by practice and town, monthly, in plain figures.
Where adverts sit
Rented visibility on top of owned visibility
The office profiles cost nothing and move in weeks. The practice pages are earned and keep working for years. Adverts are rented: fast, and gone the day the budget stops. In that order they pay for themselves; bought first, they pay for a lesson. The order and the fees are on the pricing page.
Questions firms ask us
What should a firm budget for Google Ads?
Enough to learn something in a month: for most firms a few hundred pounds of clicks on one practice area in one town, scaled where it pays and stopped where it does not. The management fee is on the pricing page; click spend goes to Google directly and is never marked up.
Which comes first, adverts or the pages?
The office profiles, because they are free and fast; then the practice pages; then adverts on top when there is a page worth landing on and a reception that answers. Adverts without pages teach the same expensive lesson every month.
What do the SRA's rules say about advertising?
The standards on publicity apply: nothing misleading, the firm's regulated status shown, no unsolicited approaches in person. Adverts that promise outcomes, or 'no win no fee' without the terms, are the ones that cause trouble. Your COLP sees every advert before it runs.
Advertising inside ChatGPT?
When it opens to UK professional services we will test it the way we test Google: a small budget, tracked calls, a plain verdict. It is not on sale here today. Being named in the free answers, on the AEO page, is the part worth doing now.
How is the spend reported?
Monthly: spend, clicks, calls, forms, and which practice area and town each came from, with cost per enquiry. A campaign that did not pay is named as such, with what changed.
Ask whether adverts make sense for the firm yet
Tell us the town and the practice areas you want to grow. We check the searches and the click prices and say whether adverts, the pages, or both, and in which order.