Copy for Originals · Google Ads for law firms · Budget guidelines
A criminal defense law firm should budget at least 3 times its expected cost per lead each month for Google Ads. Below that, a month with no leads can’t be told apart from bad luck. This guide gives the minimum by cost per click and conversion rate, the published benchmark for criminal defense search ads, and what criminal defense firm owners reported spending.
Minimum monthly budget = 3 × cost per click ÷ conversion rate
At $40 a click and a 10% conversion rate, a lead costs $400 and the minimum budget is $1,200 a month. These are example figures; use your own.
Educational only, not legal advice. This guide covers Google Ads Search campaigns for criminal defense lead generation. Plan with your own cost per click, not an industry average.
A criminal defense law firm should budget at least 3 times its expected cost per lead each month, where cost per lead is cost per click divided by conversion rate. At $40 a click and a 10% conversion rate, a lead costs $400 and the minimum budget is $1,200 a month.
That is the PPC Gumball Rule checkpoint. A campaign that spends three times its expected cost per lead with no lead at all is only about 5% likely to be unlucky. With a smaller budget the firm can still get leads, but a month without any tells it nothing.
| Cost per click | 5% convert | 8% convert | 10% convert | 15% convert |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10 | $600 | $375 | $300 | $200 |
| $25 | $1,500 | $938 | $750 | $500 |
| $50 | $3,000 | $1,875 | $1,500 | $1,000 |
| $100 | $6,000 | $3,750 | $3,000 | $2,000 |
The conversion rate is the share of ad clicks that call or submit a form. Find your cost per click in Google Ads under Campaigns, in the Avg. CPC column. For a new account, use the “Top of page bid (high range)” in Keyword Planner for the keywords you will bid on.
The minimum gets you a verdict, not a caseload. To plan for a number of leads, budget leads wanted × cost per lead. The law firm Google Ads budget guidelines cover daily budgets, bid strategy and when to raise or cut spend.
LocaliQ’s legal benchmarks put the median criminal defense search ad at $12.30 a click, a 9.90% conversion rate and $101.49 a lead, from campaigns that ran between April 2022 and March 2023. Three times that cost per lead is about $304 a month, which is a floor and not a plan, because the keywords a firm most wants cost more than the median.
| Measure | Criminal Law | All attorneys and legal services |
|---|---|---|
| Click-through rate | 4.51% | 4.76% |
| Cost per click | $12.30 | $9.21 |
| Conversion rate | 9.90% | 7% |
| Cost per lead | $101.49 | $111.05 |
Read the benchmark with three cautions. LocaliQ says its averages “are technically median figures,” so half of campaigns paid more. The whole legal sample was 256 campaigns, with at least 10 in each practice area. And the data is from 2022 and 2023.
The figures also do not multiply out: $12.30 ÷ 9.90% is $124, not $101.49, because each is a separate median. Use your own cost per click and conversion rate in the table above.
Criminal defense owners on r/LawFirm reported Google Ads spend from $20 a day to about $80,000 a year. Two owners described returns several times their spend, and one described $80 leads that were mostly unusable calls.
| What the owner spent | What the owner reported |
|---|---|
| $20 a day on Google Ads, plus a self-run Google Business Profile | Five to ten leads a week since launch, mostly through the business profile |
| $100 a day on Google Ads | Some success with search ads; Local Services Ads hit and miss |
| About $80,000 a year on Google Ads | Ran alongside almost $600,000 of revenue; profitable before the firm added SEO |
| $7,500 a month on Local Services Ads and Google Ads together (solo) | Monthly returns between $27,000 and $50,000 |
| $6,000 to $8,000 a month on Local Services Ads (solo) | Leads at $250 to $300 each, about $1,000 per signed case, fees of $5,000 to $50,000 a case; called it the best business decision since going solo |
| Google Ads leads at $80 each | Mostly unusable calls from people seeking advice |
Each row is one owner describing their own firm in a public thread. They are reports, not typical results, and owners who post tend to be the ones with something to say. The rows are in the open data file of our agency pricing study.
It can be, if clicks are cheap enough. At $25 a click, $600 buys 24 clicks, and at a 10% conversion rate the chance of no leads at all from 24 clicks is about 8%, with 2.4 leads expected. At $50 a click the same budget buys 12 clicks and the chance of a month with no leads rises to about 28%.
The three-times minimum at $25 a click and 10% is $750 a month, so $600 is just under it. One owner in our thread data ran Google Ads at $20 a day, about $600 a month, next to a Google Business Profile he looked after himself, and reported five to ten leads a week, most of them through the profile.
The odds come from one line of arithmetic: the chance of zero leads is (1 − conversion rate) raised to the number of clicks. The PPC Troubleshooter runs it for any budget and cost per click.
A criminal defense firm can afford to pay for a lead the fee from an average case, times its margin, times the share of leads that sign, times the share of that profit it is willing to spend on ads. The answer comes from the firm’s own fees and sign rate, not from a benchmark.
One solo criminal defense owner reported fees of $5,000 to $50,000 a case and about $1,000 of Local Services Ads spend per signed case. At those figures a lead costing a few hundred dollars pays for itself if even one lead in ten signs.
The Target CPA & ROAS Calculator walks through the sum one question at a time and checks the sign rate against your records. To see which ads produce signed clients, see how a law firm tracks signed cases back to Google Ads clicks.
Enter your cost per click, expected conversion rate, and how many leads you want a month. The calculator works out cost per lead = cost per click ÷ conversion rate, the minimum monthly budget = 3 × cost per lead, and the budget for the leads you want = leads × cost per lead, raised to the minimum if it is lower.
Enter your numbers to see your budget.
Compare them by cost per signed case, because Local Services Ads charge per lead and Search ads charge per click. Criminal defense owners reported Local Services Ads leads at $100 to $300 each.
One was quoted $100 to $150 a lead by Google and paid $250 to $300 in practice. The same owner spent about $3,000 on the DUI category, signed one client from six hours of consultations, and turned that category off. Another said a $10,000 monthly spend had produced about $50,000 a month until call quality fell.
The Local Services Ads vs Google Ads guide for lawyers has a calculator that compares the two on your own numbers and explains which leads Google credits.
Change under way, checked October 13, 2026. Google is phasing out the separate Local Services Ads platform. Existing campaigns are being moved automatically into Google Ads as “Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals.” Google’s schedule puts professional services in late 2026 on one page and 2027 on another, and does not name lawyers. Firms still pay per valid lead, and the ads still show only on Google Search and Maps. See what changes for law firms.
External sources were read on October 13, 2026.