Google Ads for personal injury lawyers
Profitable campaigns at $150-300/click. Every wasted click eliminated, every bid optimized daily.
The challenge
The most expensive keywords in all of Google Ads
"Personal injury lawyer" costs $150-300/click. "Car accident lawyer near me" runs $200+. One wasted click at these prices costs more than most businesses spend in a day. A single bad hour can burn through $1,000+ with nothing to show for it.
Extreme competition from firms with massive budgets
National PI firms spend $50,000-200,000+/mo on Google Ads. They bid aggressively on every keyword in every market. Competing head-on for generic terms is a losing strategy unless you have a similar budget. You need to be surgical, not broad.
Most clicks aren't potential clients
People searching "what to do after a car accident," "accident report lookup," and "personal injury settlement calculator" all trigger your ads. At $150-300/click, a single irrelevant search costs more than most industries pay per lead. Negative keyword management isn't optional — it's survival.
Mass tort vs. individual cases need different approaches
Car accident, slip and fall, medical malpractice, and product liability cases have different keyword sets, different competition levels, and wildly different case values. A campaign that works for car accidents will fail for medical malpractice. Each case type needs its own strategy.
How Fullrun helps
Personal injury is the highest-stakes vertical in Google Ads. At $200/click average and 3-5% conversion rate, you're paying $4,000-6,667 per lead. Average PI case value is $50,000-500,000+. At a 33% contingency fee, one signed case ($16,500-165,000) pays for months of ad spend. But one bad week of wasted clicks can cost $5,000+ with nothing to show for it.
Ruthless negative keyword management is the single most important lever. Every wasted click at $150+ is money that could have gone toward a real case. Fullrun blocks accident report lookups, settlement calculators, legal research, and career searches. The AI reviews search terms daily and adds negatives before they drain budget.
Separate campaigns run for each injury type — car accident, slip and fall, medical malpractice, wrongful death. Each gets its own keyword set, ad copy, and landing page matched to that specific case type. Bid scheduling targets peak hours when accident victims are most likely to search. Device bid adjustments account for the fact that most accident-related searches happen on mobile.
Frequently asked questions
- How much should a PI firm spend on Google Ads?
- $5,000-20,000+/mo minimum to be competitive. At $150-300/click, $5,000 gets you roughly 17-33 clicks. That's not a lot of volume, but at 3-5% conversion rate, that's 1-2 leads — and one signed case can be worth $16,500-165,000+ in attorney fees. Firms serious about growth budget $10,000-20,000+ monthly.
- What does a signed PI case cost from Google Ads?
- $5,000-15,000 per signed case is typical. At $200/click average and 3-5% conversion rate, you're paying $4,000-6,667 per lead. Not every lead becomes a signed case. Factor in lead-to-client conversion and you're looking at $5,000-15,000 per signed case. With average case values of $50,000-500,000+ and 33% contingency fees, the ROI is still strong.
- How does Fullrun handle different injury types?
- Separate campaigns per case type: car accident, slip and fall, medical malpractice, wrongful death, workers' comp. Each campaign has its own keyword set, ad copy, and landing page matched to that specific injury type. The AI optimizes bids per campaign based on which case types actually generate signed clients.
- Why does daily optimization matter so much for PI?
- At $150-300/click, every wasted click costs more than most businesses pay per lead. A keyword that stopped converting yesterday needs to be paused today, not next week. Bid adjustments by time of day, device, and location can save thousands per month. The difference between daily optimization and weekly check-ins at these CPCs is tens of thousands of dollars per year.
- How long until I see results?
- First leads within 1-2 weeks. But at these CPCs, the optimization period matters more than any other vertical. The AI needs 3-4 weeks to identify which keywords, times, and locations convert to signed cases. Expect cost per signed case to drop 25-40% between month one and month three as the system eliminates waste.