Copy for Originals · Google Ads for law firms · Original research + scorecard
The law firm Google Ads agency scorecard is a 12-point check a firm owner can run in about 15 minutes, inside their own Google Ads account, without asking the agency’s permission. Every point comes from one of two places: Google’s published rules for agencies, or the problems law firm owners reported in 188 public forum threads.
Answer each question for your current agency. Yes means you checked and it is true. Not sure means you haven’t checked yet. No means you checked and it isn’t true. Three questions are marked must-have: a No on any of them is serious whatever the total.
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Answer the questions above.
Your score and the questions to send your agency will appear here. Nothing you click leaves this page.
The law firm Google Ads agency scorecard gives 2 points for Yes, 1 for Not sure and 0 for No, out of 24. Not sure scores 1 because it isn’t evidence either way; it’s a reminder to check.
| Result | Rule | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Red: fix ownership first | A No on any must-have (questions 1, 2 or 4) | Get admin access, your customer ID and Google’s exact cost before anything else. These are rights Google gives you, not favors. |
| Green: keep checking | 20 to 24 points, no must-have No | The basics are in place. Rerun the scorecard every quarter. |
| Yellow: have the conversation | 13 to 19 points, no must-have No | Send the agency the questions for your Not sure and No answers and give them 30 days. |
| Red: start looking | 12 points or fewer | Secure the account (questions 1 to 3) before you tell the agency anything. |
Every check in the law firm Google Ads agency scorecard, why it is there, and the exact place to verify it. “Owner threads” counts the 188 coded forum threads in which a law firm owner or lawyer raised the problem from their own experience.
| # | Check | Where to look | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership and access | |||
| 1 | Someone at your firm has Admin access to your Google Ads account. (must-have) | Google Ads → Admin → Access and security → Users. Your own email should show “Admin.” | Google Ads Help: only Admins can unlink managers or change access Owner threads: 3 first-hand cases: an agency running ads in its own account, an agency owning the domain and email, a hosted site the firm couldn’t change. Google Ads Community examples below. |
| 2 | You have your Google Ads customer ID, and the account is used only for your firm. (must-have) | The 10-digit ID is at the top right of Google Ads. If you can’t sign in, ask the agency for it. | Google third-party policy: customer ID on request; one account per client |
| 3 | The firm owns the other marketing assets: domain, website, Google Business Profile, Tag Manager and call tracking numbers. | Sign in to the domain registrar, Google Business Profile (Owner role), Tag Manager and the call tracking account with a firm login. | Same 3 first-hand cases; other owners advised owning the website and assets. |
| Money | |||
| 4 | Reports show the exact amount Google charged, separate from the agency’s fee, and the fee was disclosed in writing. (must-have) | Compare the report with your contract and invoices: the Google cost and the management fee should be separate lines. | Google third-party policy: exact Google cost, fee disclosed in writing Owner threads: 4 threads: unclear what the fee buys, or a fee set as a share of ad spend. |
| 5 | The spend in the agency’s report matches Google’s own billing. | Google Ads → Billing → Summary or Documents shows what Google charged. Match one month against the report. | Google advertiser guide: check investment against return monthly |
| 6 | You can leave within 90 days and keep the account, data and assets. | Read the term, notice period and any clause about who keeps the account, website and phone numbers on exit. | Google Ads Help: unlinking keeps campaign history Owner threads: 7 threads: locked into long contracts. |
| Measurement | |||
| 7 | Reports show calls, forms and signed cases from ads, not just clicks, impressions and rankings. | Look at last month’s report. Is there a number for calls from ads, real potential clients, and signed cases? | Google advertiser guide Owner threads: 63 threads: no cases or no return. 3: reports of clicks or website hits, not clients. |
| 8 | Every call from an ad is tracked, and the number of ad leads matches your intake log. | Pick one week. Count ad calls and forms in Google Ads (Goals → Conversions) and compare with your intake log for the same week. | Chicago study: 20 of 42 PI advertisers show no call tracking Owner threads: 9 threads: can’t tell which leads came from ads. |
| 9 | Google is optimizing to real leads, not page views or button clicks. | Google Ads → Goals → Conversions → Summary. Look at which actions are “Primary.” Page views or “click to call” taps as Primary are a warning sign. | Google Ads Help: bidding uses Primary conversion actions Owner threads: 1 thread: Google “telling me about button activity, not actual consults.” |
| Work and conduct | |||
| 10 | Change history shows real changes in the last 30 days, including junk search terms excluded. | Google Ads → Campaigns → Change history, last 30 days. Look for changes by the agency’s users, not only “Google Ads system.” | Google Ads Help: change history covers 2 years Owner threads: 8 threads: paid work not done. 57: junk leads. |
| 11 | You approve ads and landing pages before they run, and nobody guarantees rankings or results. | Ask to see the current ads. Look for “guaranteed,” “#1,” “specialist” or “expert” claims, and any promise of ad position. | Google advertiser guide: guaranteed positions are a red flag; ABA Rules 5.3, 7.1 Owner threads: 19 threads: overpromising. 6: tactic that may break bar rules. |
| 12 | A named person answers within two business days, and reports arrive when promised. | Look at the last three months: were reports on time, and did the same person answer? | Owner threads: 4 threads: late or missing reports. 2: stopped responding. 1: rotating account managers. |
Mostly about results, not process. In 188 r/LawFirm threads where a law firm owner or lawyer described their own experience with paid marketing (October 2023 to October 2026), the most common complaint was paying and getting no cases (63 threads), then junk leads (57). Complaints about how agencies work, such as vanity reports, late reports or work not done, were rarer but specific.
| Problem | Threads | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Paid and got no cases or no return | 63 | 34% |
| Junk leads: wrong practice area, can’t pay, out of area, directions calls | 57 | 30% |
| Market too expensive for the budget | 37 | 20% |
| Doing it themselves or in-house worked better | 45 | 24% |
| Overpromising | 19 | 10% |
| Generic work, not specific to the firm or practice | 10 | 5% |
| Reports show clicks, impressions or website hits, not clients | 3 | 2% |
| Paid work not done | 8 | 4% |
| Reports late, missing or impossible to check | 4 | 2% |
| Locked into a long contract | 7 | 4% |
| The firm’s own intake was the bottleneck | 12 | 6% |
| Suspected click fraud | 3 | 2% |
| Agency stopped responding | 2 | 1% |
| Rotating account managers | 1 | 1% |
| Can’t tell which leads came from which source | 9 | 5% |
| Agency controlled the account, website or domain | 3 | 2% |
| Unclear what the fee buys, or fee as a share of spend | 4 | 2% |
| Leads shared with other firms | 3 | 2% |
| A vendor tactic that may break bar rules | 6 | 3% |
Three owner accounts show why the scorecard asks you to check rather than trust:
Agencies are not named here. The point is the checks, which work on any agency.
Not without checking. An agency or vendor voice appeared in 262 of the 312 r/LawFirm threads we read. In 155 of 312, the post or replies contained vendor promotion: open pitches that moderators later removed as spam, clusters of “client” praise for one agency, owner-sounding replies naming a vendor, or vendors doing product market research. Some agency names were promoted the same way in several threads. Owner advice in the same threads was consistent: ask for references from law firms the agency has served for more than a year, talk to those firms yourself, and prefer a referral from another lawyer over a forum recommendation.
When owners praised a vendor, they mostly pointed to results (“phone rings non stop”). The specific habits they credited were:
Your firm owns its account data, but the agency may hold the “owner” role. Google says that if an agency’s manager account creates a client account, the agency automatically becomes its owner, and a client account can have only one owner. If the agency links an account the firm already had, it does not get ownership by default. Either way, Google says ownership does not take data or administrative rights away from the client account, and users of the client account “can always unlink a manager with ownership.”
To check, open Google Ads, go to Admin → Access and security, and look at two tabs. Users lists every person and their access level; someone at your firm should be listed as Admin. Managers lists linked agency accounts and whether one has ownership. Only an Admin can unlink a manager or see each user’s last sign-in.
If nobody at your firm has any access, Google’s route is to ask an existing Admin first. Its access request form is meant for accounts with no active admins, and Google grants access after checking proof of ownership. We found no Google page for an agency that refuses access.
Compare the agency’s report with Google’s own billing. In Google Ads, Billing → Summary and Billing → Documents show what Google charged. Google’s agency policy says that when agencies report costs they must report “the exact amount charged by Google,” without their own fees. Any separate management fee must be disclosed in writing before your first purchase and shown on every invoice.
If the agency pays Google on one combined invoice for many clients, Google’s invoice goes to the agency, not to you. That is allowed, but then the agency’s report is your only view of spend, so ask for read access and check the account-level cost yourself.
At a minimum, Google says you are entitled to your Google Ads clicks, impressions and total cost. That is the floor Google sets. A report that helps a law firm also shows:
If the report only covers clicks, impressions, click-through rate and rankings, ask for items 2 to 5.
The Google Partner badge tells you the agency is active and certified, not that it gets results for law firms. Google awards it on three things measured across the agency’s whole manager account: an optimization score of at least 70%, at least $10,000 in ad spend over 90 days across all clients, and at least half of its strategists certified. Premier Partner adds a top-3%-in-the-country ranking based on client spend growth, new clients and retention. None of these measure leads, signed cases or cost per case for any one client.
Optimization score rises when an account adopts Google’s recommendations, so the badge rewards agencies that accept them. Some recommendations raise spend. Ask which recommendations were applied to your account and why. You can verify any agency’s status in the public Google Partners Directory.
Do it in this order, before you give notice:
Under the ABA Model Rules, yes, at least in part. Rule 5.3 makes a lawyer responsible for reasonable efforts to ensure that nonlawyers the lawyer retains, including outside vendors, act in line with the lawyer’s professional obligations. ABA Formal Opinion 501 (2022) applies this to marketing firms hired by a lawyer. Rule 7.1 bars false or misleading communications about a lawyer’s services, and Rule 7.2 comment [3] allows paying for advertising, including vendors who run it. This is why question 11 asks whether you approve ads before they run. Your state’s version of these rules is the one that applies; check it with counsel.
Two patterns in the owner threads point to cases where an agency is not the fix.
The budget doesn’t fit the market. In 37 of 188 threads owners said their market was too expensive, citing personal injury clicks of $200 or more. An agency cannot make a budget work that is below what the market needs. Our personal injury budget guide sets the minimum monthly budget at 3 × expected cost per lead.
Doing it yourself worked. In 45 of 188 threads owners said doing it themselves or in-house worked better, mostly for content and SEO: rewriting their own pages, posting their own videos, or hiring an in-house marketer to run and police outside vendors.
Our view: a firm with one practice area, a modest budget and someone who can spend a couple of hours a week can run a single Google Ads campaign or Local Services Ads itself. Paying for management makes more sense when the account is large enough that the fee is a small share of spend, and the agency reports cost per signed case. What owners report paying is in how much legal marketing agencies charge.
Google publishes its own list of agency red flags: not sharing cost and performance data, guaranteeing an ad position, not giving the client a separate Google Ads account, claiming to be from Google, claiming ads improve organic rankings, and not spending the agreed budget. Law firm owners on r/LawFirm added reports of clicks and website visits instead of clients, paid work not done, generic work and long contracts.
Ask who will own the Google Ads account, website and call tracking numbers; whether reports show Google’s exact cost separate from the fee; whether they report signed cases and cost per signed case; who does the work day to day; how you can leave; and for references from law firms they have served for more than a year. The scorecard’s copy button turns any open checks into questions to send.
A Google Partner badge shows an agency meets Google’s spend, certification and optimization score thresholds across all its clients. It doesn’t measure results for law firms, so judge an agency on the 12 checks, not the badge.
Google and ABA sources. Every Google Help and policy page and every ABA rule cited was read on October 6, 2026. Criteria 1, 2, 4, 5 and 9 rest on Google’s published rules and help pages.
Owner threads. We collected r/LawFirm posts through the Arctic Shift Reddit archive and kept 312 threads with at least three comments that discussed hiring, judging or paying a marketing vendor, or the quality of paid leads. Each thread was coded once against a written codebook of 20 problem types, counting a problem only when a law firm owner, lawyer or firm staff member raised it from their own experience. Agencies, vendors and people pitching services were not counted. 188 threads had at least one owner voice on the topic. Coding was done with AI assistance; every phrase used was checked against the thread text. Usernames were not recorded.
Searches. We read the Google results for 18 searches law firm owners use when judging an agency (October 6, 2026, English, US settings, from outside the US) to see which questions are already answered well.
Limits. One forum over three years, and people post when something goes wrong, so complaints are over-represented. Thread counts show which problems exist and how often owners raise them, not how common they are among all firms. First-hand ownership disputes were rare in the forum (3 threads); the ownership checks rest mainly on Google’s rules and the Google Ads Community threads listed in the sources. The coded thread data is open (CC BY 4.0).
All Google and ABA pages were read on October 6, 2026. Google Help pages show no last-updated date; if one has changed, the page wins over this summary.
Change log: version 1, October 6, 2026, first publication (54 threads from 2026). Version 2, same day: sample grown to 312 r/LawFirm threads from October 2023 to October 2026 and recoded with a stricter codebook (first-hand owner accounts only; consultants and promotional accounts excluded), so some shares fell; first-hand account-control cases added to checks 1 and 3; FAQs for red flags and hiring questions.