The most expensive click in the world.

Enough to buy meaningful volume in one market rather than a trickle in five. The average injury firm running Google Ads spends $33,172 a month, though plenty of single-market firms run profitably on far less by narrowing to two or three claim types. What does not work is spreading a thin programme across every accident term in a large metro; you buy a handful of clicks a day and never gather enough data to optimise on.

Because the cases are worth so much. Injury clicks run $50 to $500 or more depending on the market, with 'car accident lawyer' averaging $158 in New York City and passing $300 in Los Angeles and Chicago. Every firm in your city is bidding on the same handful of queries with the same contingency maths behind them. That is exactly why account structure and page quality matter more here than anywhere else — there is no cheap traffic to hide behind.

Almost always, and as a separate decision rather than a leftover budget. Local Service Ads take about 40% of the typical injury budget and produce 50.3% of signed cases at $205 per lead, while paid search produces more enquiries at a lower price that convert less often. They sit in different places on the screen and answer different moments. We manage both and move budget between them on cost per signed case.

Three ways. We dispute Local Service enquiries that do not meet Google's criteria every week, because that money is genuinely recoverable and most firms never claim it. We tighten match types and negatives so the queries themselves qualify better. And we review a sample of calls with your intake team each month, which is the only reliable way to learn which queries actually sign. Lead quality is a campaign problem, so we treat it as our job.

Tracking and landing pages go in during the first three weeks, the account rebuild lands in weeks three to six, and cost per signed case usually starts moving in the second month. The first month is deliberately about measurement rather than heroics — on a campaign this expensive, optimising against numbers you do not trust is how firms burn a quarter of the year's money. If something obvious is wasting money on day one, we switch it off immediately.

Yes, and it stays in your firm's name. We work inside your Google Ads account, your Local Service Ads profile and your analytics, added as users. Nothing is built in an agency-owned account, so if the relationship ever ends you keep the history, the conversion data and the learning that took months to accumulate. If a current provider holds any of that, helping you get it back is the first thing we do.

Ask who will actually work on the account day to day, and whether you can email them. Ask what appears at the top of the report — if it is impressions or cost per click rather than signed cases, the incentives are wrong. Ask whether they run your competitors in the same city. And ask who owns the account. A firm that answers all four plainly is rarer than it should be.

Strategy, the account rebuild, weekly optimisation, ad copy, landing pages, tracking, Local Service management, lead disputes and reporting. We price it against the size of the programme rather than as a percentage of spend, because a percentage quietly rewards an agency for spending more of your money. You will see the fee and the media spend as separate lines.

They are better together. Paid search tells you within weeks which queries sign cases, which is far better evidence than any keyword tool, and that intelligence goes straight into the SEO build order. Organic then lowers the average: injury leads cost $183 from SEO against $442 from Google Ads, so every keyword you rank for is money you can move to a market you cannot yet reach.

We build dedicated pages, because a general website page and an ad-matched page perform very differently at these prices. The average law firm converts 2.2% of visitors into leads while the best reach 5-7%, and most of that gap is page-level. The pages live on your domain, in your style, and you keep them. Your existing site keeps doing its job for organic visitors.

Closely, because that handover decides the return on everything upstream. Leads contacted within five minutes convert 21 times better than those contacted after thirty, so we measure response time as a campaign metric and report it beside spend. Where the gap is after-hours coverage we will say so and help you cost the fix. That conversation is uncomfortable once and profitable afterwards.

The ones your firm settles well, in the markets you can serve properly. Cost per lead varies enormously: $312 on slip and fall against $512 on medical malpractice across 49 firms, and regional gaps are just as wide at $468 in the Northeast versus $314 in the Midwest. Chasing the highest-value claim type you rarely win is the most common expensive mistake in this category.

Where the data supports it, yes. Smart bidding works well once the account is fed real signed cases rather than raw sign-ups, and badly when it is optimising toward whatever is easiest to collect. That is why tracking goes in before the rebuild. On low-volume claim types we often stay manual for longer, because an algorithm learning from four conversions a month is guessing with your money.

You hear it from us first, with the numbers and a recommendation. Sometimes that means pausing a claim type, sometimes narrowing to fewer cities, sometimes telling you the money is better spent on organic search this quarter. We would rather protect the relationship than protect a line item. Firms stay with us for years because that call gets made early instead of at the annual review.

Yes, and we will start by telling you what is already good. Plenty of in-house accounts have solid fundamentals and one structural problem — usually match types, tracking or a single overloaded landing page — holding the whole thing back. If a short audit and a handover plan serves you better than a retainer, we will say so.

Weekly, a short note on what changed and why. Monthly, a session showing spend, enquiries, quality and signed matters by claim type and market, against your target cost per matter. Every number links back to a source you can open yourself in your own accounts. No screenshots of a dashboard you cannot log into.

When they earn their place. Retargeting and paid social can be effective for long-cycle claim types where research takes weeks, and our paid social team handles that. For most injury firms, though, search and Local Service Ads should be working properly before a dollar goes anywhere else, and we will tell you when that point arrives.

Car accident, truck accident and motorcycle keywords in your own city, plus the 'near me' variants that keep growing as searching moves to phones. Broad legal keywords with big national volume mostly waste money for a local law firm. We also watch competition on each keyword over time, because in personal injury PPC the auction shifts every time a large firm enters or leaves your market, and a keyword that paid last year can stop paying quietly.

Mostly through the keyword and the geography, because intent in this category lives in the query itself: someone typing about accidents at 11pm has already told you what they need. On top of that we use location targeting tight enough to match where your attorneys practise, day-part adjustments for the hours your intake team is strongest, and audience signals for the longer research cycles like malpractice. What we do not do is spray a broad audience and hope the algorithm sorts it out at $200 a click.

Obvious waste comes out in week one. Structural performance gains follow the rebuild, so most law firms see cost per signed matter move in the second month and settle by the fourth. Personal injury has a lag between the enquiry and the signed retainer, so give any change six to eight weeks before judging it. We will flag early indicators in the meantime rather than leaving you waiting in silence.

Usually within two weeks of access. The audit and tracking build fill the first fortnight, and we make obvious savings immediately rather than waiting for the full rebuild. If you are mid-campaign with an existing provider, nothing has to be switched off on day one — we can run the audit first so the transition is evidence-led.