Google Ads · Solicitors
Google Ads for law firms, where the wrong practice area empties the budget
Legal search carries some of the most expensive clicks in the UK, and a single click can cost more than a plumber pays for an entire enquiry. That removes any room for a general campaign. The decision is which two practice areas you are willing to fund properly, and which you are prepared to leave alone.
In short
Google Ads for solicitors in the UK needs a different build from a generic Google Ads account, and this is how PipelineOS structures it. One campaign per practice area, never a firm-wide one. The practice areas behave so differently that sharing a budget guarantees the cheapest one wins. The first ad group to build is Divorce and family: evening and weekend scheduling with call extensions. The most common way this goes wrong: one campaign called after the firm, covering every practice area.
How we build it
One campaign per practice area, never a firm-wide one. The practice areas behave so differently that sharing a budget guarantees the cheapest one wins. Family work searches in the evening and at weekends, often from a mobile, and the enquirer wants to speak to a person quickly. Wills and probate searches in daytime hours, skews to desktop and an older demographic, and converts on reassurance and fixed fees. Conveyancing searches around exchange season, is fiercely price-compared and is dominated by comparison sites. Employment and personal injury are contested by national firms funding claims on conditional fee arrangements with budgets you cannot match.
Match type discipline is stricter here than in any trade sector. At £15 a click, a single irrelevant broad match query is a material loss, so campaigns run on exact and tightly controlled phrase only, with search terms reviewed at least weekly and often daily in the first month. The negative list has to catch the legal sector’s particular pollution: law courses, training contracts, paralegal jobs, legal aid searches where you do not hold a contract, free legal advice, Citizens Advice, template documents and DIY will kits.
Geography and scheduling are set per practice area rather than per firm. Family and conveyancing are usually local. Specialist work — contentious probate, professional negligence, immigration, niche commercial — can run county-wide or national, because clients will instruct remotely for a specialism. Family runs evenings and weekends. Commercial runs office hours. SRA price transparency rules require published costs for several areas including conveyancing, probate and employment tribunal work, which is worth treating as a competitive advantage rather than an obligation: a landing page with real fee ranges converts markedly better than one that asks people to call for a figure.
Ad groups
The account structure in practice. Ad groups stay tight so the ad can genuinely match the search, which lowers cost per click for the same position.
| Ad group | Example keywords | Bids and handling |
|---|---|---|
| Divorce and family | divorce solicitor [town], child arrangements solicitor, separation legal advice | Evening and weekend scheduling with call extensions. The enquirer wants a person now, so an unanswered phone at 8pm on a Sunday wastes the most expensive clicks in the account. |
| Wills, probate and estates | probate solicitor [town], will writing solicitor, estate administration cost | Daytime hours, older demographic, desktop-weighted. Fixed fees published on the landing page convert this group better than any ad copy change. |
| Residential conveyancing | conveyancing quote [town], conveyancing solicitor fees, sale and purchase conveyancing | Heavily price-compared and contested by comparison sites. Only viable with an instant online quote tool; without one the cost per instruction rarely works. |
| One commercial specialism | commercial lease solicitor, shareholder dispute solicitor, employment tribunal defence | Pick one you genuinely want. Wider geography, exact match, highest bids, and measure to instruction rather than enquiry because the cycle runs months. |
Running Google Ads for a solicitor business already?Send us view access or a screenshot and we will tell you what we would change first, at no charge.
Call 07443 392243WhatsAppBudget and the arithmetic
A firm advertising two practice areas properly is generally looking at £1,000–£4,000 a month. Clicks run £5–£25 depending on area, with personal injury and some commercial terms higher still. Cost per enquiry typically lands between £60 and £300, and enquiry quality varies more in law than in any trade because a large proportion of legal searchers are seeking free advice rather than instructing anyone.
The arithmetic decides which areas you can afford. Residential conveyancing at a £900–£1,600 fee cannot sustain a £150 cost per enquiry once you allow for the quotes that go elsewhere, so it only works with an instant quote tool and high volume. Family, where an initial fixed-fee appointment leads to a matter commonly worth £3,000–£10,000, absorbs £150–£300 per enquiry comfortably. Personal injury at £20 to £40 a click against nationally funded advertisers is a fight most regional firms should decline, and we would say so before taking the budget rather than after.
Four ways this goes wrong
- One campaign called after the firm, covering every practice area. The cheapest area takes the budget and the specialism you actually wanted to grow never gets shown.
- Broad match anywhere in a legal account. At £15 a click the tolerance for a stray query is effectively zero, and legal broad match reaches law students, job seekers and people wanting free advice with impressive reliability.
- A landing page that will not state fees. SRA transparency rules already require published costs in several areas, and the firms treating that as a marketing asset rather than a compliance chore convert noticeably better.
- No out-of-hours handling for family enquiries. Those searches peak on Sunday evenings, and a voicemail message at that moment loses a matter worth thousands to whichever firm answers.
The two pages behind this one
This page is the intersection. For the wider picture:
Google Ads in general
Everything about marketing for solicitors
Questions
Which practice areas should a regional firm avoid advertising?
Personal injury and road traffic claims, in most cases. Those auctions are dominated by nationally funded claims businesses bidding £20 to £40 a click, and a regional firm cannot buy enough volume to learn anything before the budget is gone. High street crime and legal aid work is similarly poor, because the searchers are usually looking for funded representation.
Does publishing fees really help?
It helps twice. The SRA already requires published costs for conveyancing, probate, employment tribunal and several other areas, so a page with real ranges is compliance you have to do anyway. It also removes the largest reason legal enquiries go cold, which is a prospect ringing three firms to find out what something costs and instructing whoever answered plainly.
How long before a legal campaign can be judged?
Enquiry volume tells you something within a month, but instruction data takes longer, particularly in commercial and probate work where months pass between first contact and engagement. We track enquiry to appointment to instruction in the CRM so that the reporting reflects the actual cycle, rather than declaring a campaign a failure at day thirty.
Related
Talk to a human
Google Ads for your solicitor business
Tell us the area you cover and your average job value. We will say what is realistic before you spend anything.