Google Ads for law firms: what a click costs, what you can say and the budget you need (with measured CPCs)

With Google Ads for law firms, a click costs £35.90 on "divorce solicitor london", £16.50 on "employment solicitor london" and £6.78 on "will writing solicitor" (DataForSEO, Google Ads UK, September 2026). At a 5% conversion rate, one enquiry every twenty clicks, a first consultation on a London divorce costs around £720 and one for a will around £135: the practice area sets the bill far more than the town.

So you just pick the right practice area and switch the campaign on?

Not quite.

Google Ads for a law firm works on three conditions: you buy "practice area plus town" searches within a defined radius, you send the click to a page about that practice area with the phone number in view, and you count the call or the form as the conversion. Not the visit.

And yet in law firm accounts we keep finding the same things:

• "solicitor" in broad match, burning the budget in an afternoon;
• "best solicitor" in the headline, which Google accepts and the ASA might not;
• a visit to the contact page counted as a conversion.

The SRA Code, the CAP Code and Google's remarketing policies all put up fences, but none of them stops you running campaigns.

An honest disclaimer: "google ads for law firms" has about 30 searches a month in the UK. This article exists for the firms that ask us, not for a mass search.

So why listen to us?

Because we have already fixed the mistakes that ruin a legal account in other local sectors. For Contesini Consulenze, two local offices in the province of Mantua with no advertising history, we brought in 299 enquiries at €7.20 each, and 68% of them were workable.

In this guide:

• what a click costs on 20 legal keywords;
• what you can say in an ad under the SRA and CAP Codes;
• how to structure the account, with the day-one negatives;
• how much budget you need, with the maths done;
• the mistakes we find in law firm accounts.

The organic side is in the companion article on law firm SEO.

Let's start with the costs.

How much a click costs in the legal sector (from about £5 to almost £50, and the practice area decides)

In the legal sector the cost per click runs from about £5 to almost £50. Personal injury, divorce and crime sit at the top, wills, lasting powers of attorney and landlord work at the bottom, and generic keywords with a town sit in between.

Keyword	Searches/month	Average CPC	Top of page bid (high)	Competition
solicitors near me	33,100	£3.79	£5.37	medium
no win no fee solicitors	12,100	£46.05	£43.22	high
conveyancing solicitor	9,900	£17.14	£16.26	medium
employment lawyer	8,100	£12.79	£13.43	low
family solicitor	5,400	£18.49	£19.12	high
probate solicitor	2,900	£17.64	£19.13	medium
divorce solicitor	2,900	£20.59	£26.39	high
wills solicitor	2,400	£8.59	£8.84	medium
personal injury solicitor	2,400	£49.65	£49.90	medium
divorce lawyers london	1,900	£31.40	£49.03	high
criminal solicitor	1,600	£20.63	£23.34	medium
employment lawyer london	1,600	£14.05	£17.22	high
will writing solicitor	1,300	£6.78	£7.13	medium
family solicitor manchester	880	£17.16	£18.68	high
lasting power of attorney solicitor	720	£5.01	£6.22	medium
criminal solicitor london	590	£23.69	£35.67	high
divorce solicitor london	480	£35.90	£39.48	medium
landlord solicitor	390	£7.67	£7.45	high
best divorce solicitor london	320	£29.51	£91.13	high
employment solicitor london	140	£16.50	£19.05	high

Three things to read in this table.

One: "best divorce solicitor london" has a high top-of-page bid of £91.13 against an average CPC of £29.51.

How is that possible?

Someone occasionally bids very high, then disappears: our snapshot of the "divorce solicitor london" SERP (the Google results page) showed no ads at all.

Two: "no win no fee solicitors" has 12,100 searches at £46.05 a click. It is priced by the personal injury market, and a general practice firm has no business competing there.

Three: "solicitors near me" has 33,100 searches with no town in it. You buy it with location targeting, not with the keyword.

One limit of the data: for many legal keywords the September 2025 figure is two to four times every other month ("wills solicitor" has 6,600 that month against 1,000-2,900 in the rest of the year). We would not plan a budget on that peak. Campaigns show you the real cost only once they are running.

Recommended reading: Google Ads statistics 2026 to compare CPCs and conversion rates.

What a solicitor can say in an ad (and the four things you can't)

A solicitor can advertise on Google: paragraph 8.8 of the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors only requires that "any publicity in relation to your practice is accurate and not misleading, including that relating to your charges". The ASA's CAP Code, which covers paid search ads and firms' own websites, adds the rules on substantiation and comparisons, and together they become rules a Google ad has to follow to the letter.

• Show the SRA number and the SRA digital badge on your website (SRA Transparency Rules). A 30-character headline has no room for them: put "authorised and regulated by the SRA" in the description or on the landing page, but it has to be somewhere.
• No "best solicitor", "most experienced", "number one in Manchester" unless you hold the evidence (CAP Code rule 3.7 on substantiation). Google would accept them, the ASA might not.
• No promises of outcome: "win your case" or "guaranteed compensation" are the opposite of accurate and not misleading.
• No client names or case details without the client's consent (paragraph 6.3 on confidentiality), testimonials on the landing page included. And if the ad mentions a fixed fee or a free first consultation, the landing page has to say exactly what it covers, VAT included.

So what's left to say?

More than it looks: practice area, town, year of admission, terms of the first consultation, opening hours, languages, office.

An example: "Employment solicitor in Manchester. X Solicitors, authorised and regulated by the SRA. First consultation in person or by video".

It is informative, it complies, and it answers the question People Also Ask raises on every legal SERP: how much does it cost and how do I start.

What about bidding on other firms' names?

The "conquesting" (buying a competitor's name as a keyword) that dental chains do is something we advise law firms against: it adds little, and a competitor's name in the ad text invites a trade mark complaint to Google and a question about misleading comparison.

Which campaign to open first (and why not the one Google suggests)

A law firm's first campaign is a Search campaign, on a radius around the office or on the town and the areas your clients come from, and nothing else. Not Performance Max, not Display, not the "Smart" campaign Google suggests when you open the account.

Why not Performance Max, if Google pushes it so hard?

Because Performance Max needs conversions to learn. And a firm starts from zero.

Switch it on on day one and it optimises for phone clicks and page views… then reports that everything is fine.

For Contesini Consulenze, in another local sector, we added it only after Search had collected real conversions. First the mobile landing page and the tracking with Tag Manager and GA4, then the traffic.

Result: 299 enquiries in seven months at €7.20 each, 68% of them workable.

In legal services CPCs are higher and enquiries fewer. So the Search phase lasts longer.

What about Local Services Ads?

They are the "Google Screened" ads that dominate lawyer searches in the United States and are paid per lead.

Google's documentation lists legal categories for the US but does not confirm them for the UK, and we saw none on the London SERPs we captured. Check category and location in Google's eligibility tool before counting on it.

Recommended reading: when Google Ads makes sense.

How to structure a law firm's account (one campaign per practice area, not one for the firm)

A law firm's Google Ads account is built with one campaign per practice area, because each area has a different CPC, value per matter and landing page, and the budget has to be set area by area.

• Family (separation, divorce, arrangements for children): CPC £11-36 with a town, high value per matter, searches peaking in October, January and March ("divorce lawyers london" has 2,400 searches in those months and 1,000 in July and August 2026).
• Employment (dismissal, disciplinaries, settlement agreements): CPC £13-17, clear seasonality ("employment lawyer london" goes from 1,000 searches in December 2025 to 1,900 in October 2025 and March 2026).
• Crime: CPC around £21-24 with or without a town, high urgency, almost only calls.
• Wills, lasting powers of attorney, landlord work: CPC £5-9, fewer searches, but the lowest cost per enquiry in the whole account.

Inside each campaign, ad groups by intent:

1. "solicitor plus practice area plus town";
2. "practice area plus problem" ("unfair dismissal solicitor");
3. "solicitors near me", with location targeting only.

Phrase match to start, broad match only after a month of clean search terms.

Then ad scheduling, for the hours when someone answers the phone: a £35.90 click at 11pm on a Saturday ends up on voicemail.

The negatives that save the budget (starting with "free")

Negative keywords are the terms that keep your ads away from the wrong searches, and in legal services the first one to add is "free". The related searches on the two SERPs we captured already name them: "divorce solicitors free advice", "employment lawyer london no win no fee", "employment lawyer london jobs", plus the People Also Ask question "Where can I get free advice from an employment lawyer in the UK?".

Part of the people searching for a solicitor are trying not to pay one.

The list to add on day one: free, free advice, pro bono, legal aid (unless you do legal aid work), citizens advice, acas, union, salary, jobs, vacancies, training contract, how to become, sqe, course, degree, university, paralegal, apprenticeship, reddit, wikipedia.

Then, every week, the search terms report.

What's in there?

Informational queries. Lots of them.

"Employment tribunal" gets 22,200 searches a month, "constructive dismissal" 14,800. They cost £2-5 a click and don't call anyone.

They are blog keywords, not ad keywords: you'll find them in the article on law firm SEO.

A landing page that complies and converts (one per practice area, not the homepage)

A law firm's landing page is one page per practice area, not the homepage, with a clickable phone number on the first screen.

What it needs, in the order the person reads it

1. practice area and town in the title;
2. a clickable phone number on the first screen;
3. who the solicitor is: name, year of admission, SRA number, practice areas;
4. how the first consultation works and on what terms;
5. FAQs taken from People Also Ask ("How much does an employment lawyer cost in the UK?"), with prices published where the SRA Transparency Rules require them, as for employment tribunal claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal;
6. a form with a practice area field and space to describe the matter.

Form or phone? (it depends on the practice area)

Both, weighted differently.

Crime and urgent matters are calls. Wills and employment accept the form, because the person has documents to describe and often searches in the evening.

Aren't three required fields too many?

No. A form with three required fields (practice area, town, description) filters better than one with two.

We won't give you a percentage split between calls and forms: we don't have a large enough legal sample. Measure it on your own account, with two separate conversions.

Recommended reading: how to build a landing page that ranks and converts.

What to count as a conversion (four events, nothing else)

In a legal account there are four conversions to count: the call from the ad (call asset, with a minimum duration of 60 seconds to exclude wrong numbers), the click on the number on the landing page, the form submission, and the appointment request if there is a booking calendar. Not page views, not scrolling, not the click on "about us".

Sounds obvious, right?

It isn't.

At Valore Solare, in another sector, the account we inherited counted 15,267 "conversions" in one month against 5,467 clicks.

More conversions than clicks.

They were technical events, and automated bidding was optimising for them.

At Sunscape there were 1,487 conversions at €0.61 each. Technical events again, not enquiries.

With CPCs of £15-35, a month of automated bidding on the wrong conversion costs more than rebuilding the tracking.

Remarketing: here Google sets the limit

Google's personalised advertising policy bans building audiences on personal hardships, and the examples it lists include relationship hardships such as divorce and separation, and problems with the law.

In plain words: a "visited the divorce page" list cannot be used to follow the person around.

Check the current wording on the policy page before switching on any audience.

Recommended reading: how to do remarketing, for sectors where it is allowed.

How much budget you need, with the maths (£1,800-3,000 a month for London family or crime)

The sensible minimum for a family or crime campaign in London is £60-100 a day, £1,800-3,000 a month, for at least three months; for wills or landlord work, or in a smaller city, £20-30 a day is enough. Below that, enquiries are too few to tell a campaign that works from a lucky one.

One keyword on its own isn't enough

"divorce solicitor london" has 480 searches a month.

With a 5% CTR (the share of people who see the ad and click it) that is 24 clicks. At £35.90, £862.

And with one conversion every twenty clicks…

Just over one enquiry a month. On its own it is not enough to judge anything.

One campaign per practice area is

A London family campaign covering "divorce solicitor london", "divorce lawyers london", "family solicitor london", "divorce solicitor near me" and phrase variants reaches, on our estimate, 100-150 clicks a month: £2,000-3,500, with an average CPC lower than the lead keyword.

At a 5% conversion rate that is 5-7 enquiries a month at roughly £400-500 each.

And with the same budget on wills?

At £5-9 a click, three to four times as many enquiries at about a quarter of the cost. On matters worth less, though.

Is £400-500 per enquiry a lot?

At Macropix, industrial B2B, the cost per enquiry was €39.44 in 2025, after eight years of work on the account. In London family law, an enquiry under £300 is a very good result.

Recommended reading: Google Ads for SMEs, with the method to calculate budget from CPC and conversion rate.

The mistakes we find in law firm accounts (six of them, and they all cost money)

The most expensive mistakes in law firm Google Ads accounts are six, and the first is "solicitor" in broad match: 74,000 searches a month, most of them people looking up a word, a job or a firm they already know.

• "Solicitor" in broad match: the budget is gone in an afternoon.
• UK-wide targeting for a firm with one office: calls come in from 200 miles away and end in "I'll call you back".
• A landing page that is the homepage, with twelve practice areas on one page and the phone number in the footer.
• No ad scheduling: ads running at night and at weekends, when voicemail answers.
• The conversion set on visits to the contact page, with automated bidding chasing it.
• "Best solicitor" in the headline because "the keyword has volume": the volume is there (320 searches for "best divorce solicitor london"), the evidence the CAP Code asks for usually isn't.

And the good news?

Here it is.

In both London SERPs we captured, on keywords costing £14-36 a click, the desktop snapshot showed no ads at all.

One snapshot is not a market survey, but it says ad presence in legal search is patchy: a good condition for a firm that comes in with a well-built account and a steady budget.

Frequently asked questions

Where to start (the first campaign, in three weeks)

Not "solicitor" in broad match, but "practice area plus town" in phrase match.

Not the visit, but the 60-second call and the form.

Not £500 spread over everything, but one practice area at a steady daily budget for three months.

Now, two concrete steps.

One: pick the practice area with the highest value per matter among those you really bill, and write its landing page with the solicitor's name, SRA number, terms of the first consultation and the phone number at the top.

Two: open a phrase-match Search campaign on 10-15 "solicitor plus practice area plus town" and "practice area plus problem" keywords, with the negatives list above, £40 a day (more for family or crime in London), office hours only. Track calls and forms as two separate conversions.

After three months, if the maths holds, you have 12-20 enquiries and a real cost per enquiry. That is the number to decide whether to extend to other practice areas, move part of the budget to SEO or stop.

The method works for firms across the UK, with smaller budgets outside London, and with a few adjustments for other regulated professions (Google Ads for professional practices).

If you want us to look at your account or the SERPs in your town, book a strategy consultation. Account management is on the Google Ads service page.

See you next time!