A Thousand Dollars for a Single Click
Someone in Baton Rouge searches “truck accident lawyer.” They click your ad. Google charges you $1,000. That person doesn’t fill out the form. They hit the back button.
That’s a real scenario. It happens every day.
Legal keywords are the most expensive in Google Ads. Not by a small margin. The average cost per click across all legal keywords is $8.58, which is 63% higher than the all-industry average of $5.27. And that average includes low-cost terms like “how to file a small claims case.” The keywords that actually bring in personal injury clients cost 10x to 100x more.
The industry knows this. Firms spent $2.5 billion on advertising in 2024, up 84% from 2020. A significant chunk goes to Google, particularly for personal injury Google Ads campaigns. Morgan and Morgan reportedly spent $25 million annually on PPC alone. They aren’t confused about the economics. They’ve done the math.
So let’s do the math.
The Most Expensive Keywords in Any Industry
DataForSEO keyword data reveals the most expensive legal keywords in Google Ads. The 2025 numbers show how far costs have climbed.
The top three categories:
| Keyword Category | Average CPC |
|---|---|
| Offshore accidents | $848.70 |
| Maritime law | $580.97 |
| Truck accidents | $413.81 |
Those are category averages. Individual keywords go much higher. “Baton Rouge truck accident lawyer” exceeds $1,000 per click. “Houston offshore accident lawyer” exceeds $1,000. “Lafayette truck accident lawyer” exceeds $1,000.
For context, the peak legal CPC in 2019 was $485. By 2025, multiple individual keywords exceed $1,000. That’s a 106% increase in six years. Not for the category average. For the ceiling.
Why these keywords specifically? Because the cases behind them are worth the most. Offshore accident settlements routinely exceed $1 million. Truck accident cases often settle in the $500,000 to $2 million range. Maritime cases carry Jones Act protections that make them extremely valuable. Google’s auction system reflects case value with almost perfect efficiency.
The Conversion Math That Makes It Work
Here’s where most articles about Google Ads for lawyers stop. They show you the scary CPC numbers and tell you to be careful with your budget. That’s incomplete.
The math actually works. Let’s walk through it.
Start with the benchmarks. Legal click-through rate sits at 5.97%, below the 6.66% all-industry average. Legal conversion rate is 5.09%, below the 7.52% average. Personal injury specifically converts at just 5.45%, one of the lowest legal subcategories. Part of this is the landing page problem that plagues law firm websites. Bankruptcy leads legal subcategories at 13.56%.
That $131.63 cost per lead is the highest of all 23 industries WordStream tracks. But a lead isn’t a signed case. Martindale-Nolo research shows firms need an average of 13.4 leads to sign one client. That puts the cost per signed case between $2,500 and $3,000 for most personal injury firms.
Now the payoff. A single personal injury case can generate $100,000 or more in fees. Even modest PI cases produce $30,000 to $50,000 in attorney fees. At a $3,000 acquisition cost, the return on ad spend is 10x to 30x.
That’s why the $1,000 click doesn’t scare sophisticated firms. They aren’t paying $1,000 for a click. They’re paying $3,000 for a case worth $100,000. The click is just one step in a funnel that, when it works, produces extraordinary returns.
Why the Numbers Keep Getting Worse
If the math works at $1,000 per click, it still works at $1,500. And if it works at $1,500, someone will bid $2,000. This is how Google’s auction system guarantees that CPCs will keep climbing for high-value keywords.
Three forces are accelerating the increase.
Consolidation. Large firms like Morgan and Morgan, backed by substantial PPC budgets, bid aggressively on high-value keywords across dozens of markets. Their national scale means they can tolerate higher CPCs because their conversion infrastructure is more efficient. A firm running a $25 million annual PPC budget can afford per-click costs that would bankrupt a smaller competitor.
Google AI Overviews. Google’s AI-generated answers now appear above paid results for many legal queries. Early estimates suggest AI Overviews reduce click-through rates by 20 to 40% for affected queries. Fewer clicks means fewer conversions from the same ad spend. When click volume drops and demand stays constant, CPCs rise to compensate.
Volume decline despite spend growth. Legal digital ad spending grew 84% between 2020 and 2024. But ad volume actually dropped 50% over the same period. Firms are spending dramatically more for dramatically fewer impressions. Higher CPMs, higher CPCs, lower volume. The trend line isn’t ambiguous.
The LSA Alternative (and Its Limits)
Google Local Services Ads offer a different model. Instead of paying per click, firms pay per lead, typically $25 to $150 for legal services. Compared to traditional PPC at $2,000 to $15,000 per converted lead, LSAs look like a bargain.
They are, within their limits.
LSAs appear at the very top of search results, above even paid ads. They carry a “Google Screened” badge that builds trust. The pay-per-lead model eliminates wasted clicks.
But LSAs have constraints. You can’t control your ad copy. Geographic targeting is limited. Competition for the three visible LSA slots is intense in major markets. And Google, not the firm, decides which leads count as valid.
For small and mid-size firms, LSAs can be the most cost-effective entry point into paid search. For firms chasing high-value truck accident and offshore cases, LSAs don’t offer enough control or volume to serve as a primary channel.
The Real Cost of Dependence
The deeper issue isn’t what Google Ads cost today. It’s the trajectory.
Consider what’s happened since 2019. Peak CPC went from $485 to over $1,000. Google introduced AI Overviews that reduce organic and paid click-through rates. Ad volume dropped 50% while spending rose 84%. Every year, law firms pay more for less.
Google has no incentive to reverse this. Their auction system is designed to extract maximum value from advertisers, and legal advertisers have the highest willingness to pay of any industry. The legal vertical is Google’s most profitable per-click category. Every product change, from AI Overviews to reduced organic real estate, pushes more firms toward paid results and drives the auction higher.
This isn’t speculation. It’s the structural incentive of the platform.
Where the Smart Money Is Moving
The firms that understand this trajectory aren’t abandoning Google Ads. They’re reducing their dependence on them.
That means diversifying into channels where they aren’t bidding against every other firm for the same click. Three strategies are emerging from the data.
CTV and streaming. Connected TV advertising costs $20 to $40 CPM for programmatic placements. In low-adoption markets, $50,000 per month can capture a meaningful share of all legal CTV impressions. There’s no auction system driving up costs with each competitor’s bid. The CTV vs Google Ads comparison for PI firms shows why the economics are fundamentally different from paid search. Right now, most markets are underserved.
Owned media. Content that ranks organically through SEO doesn’t cost $1,000 per visit. It costs time and production to create, but the marginal cost of the 10,000th visitor is zero. Firms building content libraries around their practice areas create an asset that compounds over time rather than a line item that resets each month.
Attribution-driven media mix. The most sophisticated firms aren’t asking “should we run Google Ads?” They’re asking “what’s our blended cost per signed case across all channels?” When PPC delivers a $3,000 cost per case and CTV delivers $1,800, the allocation decision becomes clear. But you can’t make that comparison without attribution infrastructure that tracks every channel to the same outcome.
The Question Behind the Question
Every managing partner searching “Google Ads for lawyers” is really asking something simpler. Is this worth it?
At current economics, for high-value practice areas, yes. A $3,000 cost to acquire a $100,000 case is still an excellent return. The math works.
But “the math works today” isn’t a strategy. It’s a snapshot. The trend is unmistakable. CPCs have more than doubled in six years. AI Overviews are compressing the click pool. Volume is declining while costs rise.
The firms that will thrive in the next five years aren’t the ones spending the most on Google Ads. They’re the ones building media strategies that don’t depend on a single platform’s auction. They’re diversifying into CTV, building owned content, and tracking attribution across every channel.
Google Ads should be part of the mix. It shouldn’t be the whole mix. Not anymore. And whatever traffic you do buy, make sure your website actually converts it.
References
- WordStream. "Google Ads Benchmarks 2025." 2025.
- DataForSEO. "Keyword Data API: Legal Industry CPC Analysis." 2026.
- American Tort Reform Association. "Legal Services Advertising in the United States, 2020-2024." 2025.
- Attorney at Law Magazine. "Why Law Firm Marketing Costs Are Skyrocketing in 2025." 2025.
- National Law Review. "How to Sign 300 Cases Per Month with PPC Advertising." 2025.