Every managing partner eventually asks the same thing. What’s the return on this marketing spend?
Law firm marketing ROI (return on investment) varies wildly by channel. SEO compounds. PPC (pay-per-click) converts fast but costs more every year. CTV (connected TV) is underpriced. Broadcast builds brands but burns cash.
This piece does that math. Channel by channel, with real benchmarks and real conversion rates from the legal vertical. Not hypotheticals. Numbers. The CTV ROI calculation guide covers the streaming math in detail.
The Only Metric That Matters
Cost per lead is the metric most agencies report. It’s also the wrong metric.
A $200 lead that doesn’t convert is worth zero. A $800 lead that becomes a $150,000 case is worth everything. The number that actually determines whether your legal marketing ROI works is cost per signed case.
Here’s how it breaks down for personal injury. Clio’s Legal Trends data shows the average PI (personal injury) firm converts roughly one in 13 to 15 leads into a signed client. Your cost per signed case is 13 to 15 times your cost per lead. A $200 CPL (cost per lead) becomes a $2,600 to $3,000 cost per signed case.
Now compare that to the average PI case value. Even modest PI cases commonly generate $30,000 to $50,000 in attorney fees. Complex cases (truck accidents, medical malpractice, and wrongful death) can exceed $100,000.
At $3,000 cost per signed case and $50,000 in fees, you’re looking at a 16:1 return. That math works. The question isn’t whether marketing produces ROI. It’s which channels produce the best ratio.
SEO: The Compound Machine
First Page Sage estimates most law firms need 12 to 18 months to break even on their SEO investment. But once it kicks in, nothing else compounds like it.
First Page Sage’s 2026 data puts the average law firm SEO lead at $456. That’s expensive compared to some industries, but cheap compared to PPC leads at $650 or more. And the cost per lead keeps dropping as pages age, backlinks accumulate, and domain authority builds.
BrightEdge data shows organic search drives roughly 53% of all law firm website traffic. More than half. No other channel comes close to that volume.
The 3-year ROI tells the full story.
| Practice Area | 3-Year SEO ROI |
|---|---|
| Business law | 642% |
| Personal injury | 526% |
| Criminal defense | 468% |
| Family law | 412% |
Criminal defense and family law produce lower ROI because case values are smaller. PI hits the sweet spot: high case values combined with high search volume. Business law leads because the lifetime value of a corporate client dwarfs a single PI case.
The catch? SEO requires patience and sustained investment. Most firms quit before month 14. The ones that don’t build an asset that generates leads at near-zero marginal cost for years.
PPC: Expensive, Immediate, Measurable
Google Ads for lawyers is the most expensive PPC category in existence. Legal CPCs average $8.58, 63% above the all-industry average. Truck accident keywords exceed $1,000 per click. The legal cost per lead is $131.63, the highest of all 23 industries WordStream tracks.
Most legal marketers running PPC say it’s hard to get a good return.
So why do firms keep spending? Because the math still works at scale.
A PI firm running Google Ads typically pays $2,500 to $3,000 per signed case. That case generates $50,000 to $100,000 or more in fees. The return runs 15:1 to 30:1.
The problem isn’t the economics. It’s the cash flow. You pay $3,000 now and collect fees 12 to 24 months later.
Here’s the channel breakdown for PPC:
| Metric | Legal Average |
|---|---|
| Average CPC | $8.58 |
| Click-through rate | 5.97% |
| Conversion rate | 5.09% |
| Cost per lead | $131.63 |
| Leads to sign one case | 13-15 |
| Cost per signed case | $2,500-$3,000 |
The real problem with PPC isn’t ROI. It’s trajectory. ATRA’s data shows legal ad volume dropped 50% between 2020 and 2024 while spending rose 84%. Google AI Overviews compress organic click-through rates, pushing more firms into paid. The cost curve keeps climbing.
PPC should be part of the mix. It shouldn’t be the whole mix. Not anymore.
CTV: The Underpriced Channel
Connected TV advertising is where the math gets interesting.
CTV generates 4.5 times better ROI than linear television. INCRMNTAL’s 2025 study found CTV produced 10x more conversions than linear TV. It used just 60% of the media budget. Innovid’s benchmarks show completion rates between 90% and 98%. A 30-second CTV spot hits roughly 96% because the ads aren’t skippable.
The economics work differently than PPC. CTV doesn’t charge per click. It charges per thousand impressions (CPM). Programmatic legal placements typically run $20 to $40 CPM. No auction system driving up costs with each competitor’s bid.
Here’s what $50,000 per month buys in CTV across different markets:
| Market | CTV Adoption | $50K Share of Legal CTV |
|---|---|---|
| Washington DC | 3% | 64% of all legal CTV |
| Dallas | 10% | 7.2% |
| Boston | 9% | 5.8% |
| Atlanta | 48% | 0.8% |
In low-adoption markets, a moderate CTV budget captures a disproportionate share of streaming inventory. In Dallas, $50K per month makes you a top-five CTV legal advertiser. In DC, you’d dominate the channel entirely.
CTV’s weakness is attribution. Unlike PPC, you can’t draw a straight line from ad impression to phone call. But multi-touch attribution models show CTV’s contribution to the funnel clearly. Firms that add CTV to their mix often see branded search volume climb within 90 days. And branded searches convert at multiples of the generic term rate.
The return isn’t instant like PPC. But it’s cheaper than broadcast, more targeted than radio, and growing while every other traditional channel shrinks.
Broadcast TV: The Legacy Play
Broadcast television still commands the majority of legal ad spend. Across 210 tracked markets, broadcast takes 55% to 65% of every legal advertising dollar. There’s a reason for that.
Television builds trust. MarketingSherpa found 80% of consumers trust television advertising when making purchasing decisions. For personal injury, trust is everything. You’re asking someone to hand over their medical records and legal rights. They need to know your name before they search.
But broadcast has a measurement problem. You can’t track impressions to conversions the way you can with digital. A 30-second spot during the 6 PM news reaches everyone watching that program, whether they need a lawyer or not. CPMs are lower than CTV ($8 to $15 for local broadcast), but the waste is enormous.
The biggest broadcast spenders, tracked across 210 markets, can afford the waste. Scale creates efficiency. When you spend $2 million per month on broadcast, you’re not buying ads. You’re buying name recognition for an entire metro area.
For mid-size firms, broadcast ROI gets harder to justify. The minimum viable buy in most top-30 markets runs $100K to $200K per month. And you’re competing against firms spending ten times that.
The Blended Cost Per Case
The smartest firms don’t pick one channel. They build a mix and track the blended cost per signed case across everything.
Here’s a modeled mix for a PI firm at $150K per month:
| Channel | Monthly Spend | Cost per Case | Cases/Month |
|---|---|---|---|
| PPC | $45K (30%) | $3,000 | 15 |
| SEO | $30K (20%) | $1,800 | 17 |
| CTV | $37.5K (25%) | $2,200 | 17 |
| Broadcast | $30K (20%) | $4,500 | 7 |
| LSA (Local Services Ads) | $7.5K (5%) | $1,200 | 6 |
Total: $150K per month generating roughly 62 signed cases. Blended cost per case: $2,419. At $45,000 average case fees, that’s an 18:1 return.
These are modeled figures. Real numbers shift by market, by firm, and by practice area. But the pattern holds. SEO and LSAs produce the cheapest cases. CTV produces more volume per dollar than broadcast. PPC fills in gaps with immediate demand capture. Broadcast builds the brand that makes every other channel work better.
High-Growth Firms Spend Differently
Data from Practice Proof shows that high-growth law firms allocate 16.5% of revenue to marketing. No-growth firms spend 5%.
That’s not a coincidence. The firms that invest aggressively in marketing grow. The firms that treat marketing as a fixed cost stagnate. The gap is 3.3x.
But it’s not just how much you spend. It’s how you track it.
Practice Proof found most law firms say their website drives the highest ROI. But few can break it down by channel. They don’t know what their website costs per case versus Google Ads versus CTV. They know marketing works. They just don’t know which parts work best.
Attribution infrastructure is the multiplier. When you can track every channel to signed cases, you can shift budget from $4,500-per-case broadcast to $1,800-per-case SEO. You can scale CTV in markets where it runs 4.5x better than linear. You can cut PPC spend on keywords where the cost per case exceeds your threshold.
Without attribution, you’re guessing. And guessing at $150K per month is expensive.
The Answer
Law firm marketing ROI isn’t a single number. It’s a function of channel mix, market position, attribution capability, and patience.
But the data points in one direction. SEO compounds. CTV is underpriced. PPC is necessary but getting more expensive every year. Broadcast builds brands but burns cash for mid-size firms. And the firms that track cost per signed case outperform everyone else. Not impressions. Not leads. Not clicks. Signed cases.
The 526% 3-year SEO ROI isn’t hypothetical. The 4.5x CTV advantage over linear isn’t theoretical. The $3,000 cost per signed PI case from PPC isn’t a guess. These are the benchmarks. Build your budget around them.
References
- First Page Sage. "Average Personal Injury Cost Per Lead (CPL): 2026 Report." 2026.
- WordStream. "Google Ads Benchmarks 2025." 2025.
- Practice Proof. "2025 Key Law Firm Marketing Benchmark Metrics." 2025.
- ATRA. "Legal Services Advertising Report, 2020-2024." 2025.
- INCRMNTAL. "CTV Delivers 10x More Conversions Than Linear TV." 2025.
- National Law Review. "How to Sign 300 Cases Per Month with PPC Advertising." 2025.
- MarketingSherpa. "Which Advertising Channels Consumers Trust Most When Purchasing." 2017.
- Innovid. "CTV Takes Center Stage: Global Benchmarks Report." 2024.
- BrightEdge. "Organic Channel Share of Traffic Report." 2025.
- Clio. "Legal Trends Report." 2025.