Legal is among the most expensive categories in paid search, which means the difference between competent and careless management is measured in tens of thousands of dollars a quarter rather than in percentage points. The mechanics are not exotic: match types, negatives, geography, schedule, landing pages, tracking. What separates good management is discipline applied continuously and an honest link between spend and signed cases rather than between spend and form fills. This guide covers what the work involves, why intake decides the return more than the account does, how fees are structured, and how to check a manager against evidence you can verify.
What the work involves week to week
The account itself is a set of ongoing decisions. Keyword selection and match types, where broad matching without tight negatives is the fastest way to spend a legal budget on irrelevant traffic: Google's documentation on keyword matching options explains how each type expands, and a manager should be able to explain their choice per campaign. Negative keyword lists, which in legal must exclude job seekers, students, free advice, do-it-yourself queries and case types you do not take. Geography, restricted to where you are admitted and will actually travel. Ad schedule, aligned to when your intake is staffed. Landing pages built per practice area rather than pointing everything at the homepage. And conversion tracking wired to calls, forms and chats, with call tracking that records duration so a thirty-second wrong number does not count as a case. Ad copy must also satisfy platform policy and your state's advertising rules, since Google's ads policies prohibit misrepresentation independently of anything the bar requires.
Intake decides the return, not the account
A well-run legal account delivers calls. Whether those calls become cases is decided by who answers, how fast, and what they are empowered to do. Firms routinely spend heavily on clicks while sending evening and weekend calls to voicemail, which in personal injury and criminal defence is where a large share of urgent enquiries arrive. Before increasing spend, listen to a week of recorded calls: count how many rang out, how many reached a person who could book a consultation, and how many were lost to a promise of a callback. Almost every firm that does this finds its cheapest available improvement sitting in intake rather than in the account. A PPC manager who asks to hear call recordings in the first month is doing the job properly, and one who reports only cost per lead is reporting the half of the funnel they control.
How fees are structured, and which structure to prefer
There are three common models. A flat monthly management fee, which is predictable and does not reward growing your budget. A share of ad spend, which is standard but gives the manager a direct interest in recommending more spend, so it should come with a stated cap and a performance review. And performance pricing per lead or per signed case, which shifts risk but demands a very precise definition of what counts, since disputes here are common and expensive. Whichever you choose, insist that management fees and ad spend are separate lines on the invoice and that the ad account is owned by your firm with the agency granted access. If a manager will not run the campaign in your own account, you are renting a history you can never take with you, and that history is the most valuable asset the account accumulates.
How to vet a manager
Ask for read access to a live legal account, redacted if necessary, and look at four things: the negative keyword list, the search terms report, the geographic settings and the conversion actions. A thin negative list or conversions counting every form submission tells you more than any case study. Ask what they would pause in your account in week one and why. Ask for two legal clients with a comparable practice area and check whether the landing pages match the ads. Ask how they handle click fraud and competitor clicks, which are real in this category. Ask for pricing or a disclosed minimum with the fee model stated plainly. Finally, agree a reporting format that shows cost per signed case, not just cost per lead, and require the signed case count to come from your own case management system. This is the same evidence-first approach you would use to choose any legal search partner, and it is the only one that survives contact with a large budget.
Questions people ask about law firm ppc management
How much should a firm budget to start?
Enough to gather data in your market within a month, which in legal is more than most firms expect because click costs are high. Ask each candidate what daily budget is needed for a statistically meaningful read on your specific practice areas and geography, and treat a manager who cannot answer that with numbers from comparable accounts as unprepared.
PPC or SEO first for a law firm?
Paid search buys immediate visibility and, more usefully, tells you within weeks which queries produce signed cases, which is exactly the information that should direct your organic content. Organic costs less per case over time but takes months. Most firms run paid to fund and aim the organic programme rather than choosing one.
What are realistic conversion expectations?
Vary too much by practice area, geography and intake quality for a single number to be honest. What you can hold constant is measurement: track cost per call, per qualified consultation and per signed case from the first week, and compare against your own trajectory rather than an industry benchmark someone quotes without a source.
Can we manage it ourselves?
Possible, but legal is an unforgiving place to learn. The common self-managed failures are broad match without negatives, tracking that counts spam form fills, and geography set to the whole state. If you do run it internally, buy a one-off audit from a specialist every quarter, which costs far less than the spend a drifting account wastes.