Google charges $50–$500 per click for PI keywords. Know exactly how much you can spend per signed client before you start bidding.
Industry avg lead cost for this case type: $200–$600/lead
Your average settlement across cases of this type.
Standard PI is 33–40%. Complex cases often 40–45%.
Expert witnesses, medical records, filing fees, deposition costs.
Of 100 intake calls, how many sign a retainer?
Max Allowable CAC
per signed client, preserving your 40% margin
Paying more than this per lead means missing your 40% margin at your 8% intake conversion rate.
PI firms pay $100–$500+ per click. Track every intake call back to its exact source — campaign, keyword, and ad — so you can stop wasting money on clicks that never convert.
Track Your Ad Spend Free →Personal injury law firms operate in Google's most expensive keyword category. In cities like Los Angeles, Houston, and New York, competitive PI keywords routinely clear $100 per click. It's not uncommon to see "car accident attorney near me" hit $200–$500 in a competitive market. And every single click is a potential $200 gone, regardless of whether the person ever calls.
But here's the flip side: a single signed auto accident case can generate $8,000–$25,000 in attorney fees. A truck accident case can clear $80,000–$150,000. When the case values are that high, spending $1,000 or even $5,000 to acquire a client can still make perfect financial sense.
The mistake most PI firms make isn't overspending — it's spending without knowing their numbers. They don't track which campaigns produce signed retainers (vs. just phone calls), they don't know their intake conversion rate by channel, and they don't know whether their Google Ads are actually profitable when you account for cases that don't settle.
An intake conversion rate of 8% means that out of 100 leads who call your office, 8 sign a retainer. At $100/lead, that's $1,250 per signed client. If your average fee is $20,000, that's an ROI of roughly 1,500%.
Drop that intake rate to 3% without changing your lead cost, and your cost per signed client jumps to $3,333. Still potentially profitable — but far less efficient. The fastest way to improve PI marketing ROI isn't lowering your CPC, it's improving your intake process: response speed, call scripts, pre-qualification, and follow-up sequencing.
Firms that track attribution properly — knowing which keywords and campaigns produced signed clients, not just calls — can make data-driven decisions about where to bid higher and where to cut. That's a significant competitive advantage in a market where everyone else is guessing.
It varies enormously by market. National averages hover around $60–$100 per click for general PI terms, but in major metros like LA, NYC, or Chicago, competitive keywords like 'car accident lawyer' or 'personal injury attorney' hit $150–$500 per click. Truck accident and medical malpractice keywords are often higher.
Ideally both. Google Ads provides immediate, consistent lead flow — you pay to be at the top today. SEO builds long-term organic visibility that costs nothing per click once established. Most well-resourced PI firms run both, using Ads for immediate case acquisition and investing in SEO for lower long-term acquisition costs over 2–3 years.
The key is passing UTM parameters through your intake form and into your CRM. When a lead signs, you should be able to see the exact campaign, ad group, and keyword that brought them in. Many firms only track calls, not form submissions, which means they're missing data. Full-funnel attribution from click to signed retainer is the gold standard.
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