2,900 Searches, One Question
Every month, 2,900 people search “personal injury lawyer advertising.” They are law firm owners trying to figure out where to spend. They are marketing directors benchmarking their budgets. They are new firms deciding whether to enter the game.
What they find is mostly generic. Budget percentage recommendations (8-12% of revenue), lists of marketing channels, and advice to “invest in SEO.” What they don’t find is data on what firms actually spend, market by market, channel by channel, firm by firm.
This article provides that data.
The $3 Billion Category
Legal advertising in the United States is projected to exceed $3 billion annually in 2026. AdImpact’s tracking of 3,720 legal advertisers across 150 markets shows that legal services account for 6.11% of all local broadcast impressions. That makes it one of the most concentrated advertising verticals in local television.
The American Tort Reform Association has tracked legal advertising volumes since 2017. Their data shows that in 2023 alone, 16.4 million legal ads aired across the United States. That works out to 45,000 ads per day, or roughly one every two seconds.
Those numbers reflect the full scope of legal advertising. Personal injury represents the largest segment, followed by mass tort and pharmaceutical litigation. The trends in personal injury advertising show a category in rapid evolution.
How $150 Million Flows Each Month
We track advertising spend in 30 major designated market areas. The combined monthly total exceeds $150 million across channels and markets. Here is how the money distributes across channels.
| Channel | Average Share | What It Buys |
|---|---|---|
| Broadcast TV | 55-65% | Mass reach, brand recognition, 50+ demographics |
| Radio | 15-25% | Frequency, commuter audiences, drive time |
| CTV/Streaming | 15-25% | Household-level targeting, 90%+ completion rates |
| Cable | 8-15% | Niche audiences, lower CPMs |
Broadcast television still captures the majority. The firms that built the personal injury advertising industry, names like Morgan and Morgan, Thomas J. Henry, Jim Adler, and Morris Bart, built their brands on broadcast. Their budgets are structured around television buying cycles, station relationships, and frequency targets that predate streaming by decades.
Radio holds a surprisingly large share. In Houston (34%), Philadelphia (34%), and Dallas (34%), radio captures more than a third of legal ad spend. These are commuter markets where drive-time listening remains a primary media channel.
CTV is the fastest-growing segment. Its share varies dramatically by market, from 3% in Washington DC to 48% in Atlanta. The national average sits around 20%, but that average masks enormous variation. Our PI marketing budget allocation guide covers how firms should split spend across these channels.
The Market Leaders
In every DMA, a small number of firms dominate total advertising spend. Here are the top advertisers across our 10 largest markets.
| Market | Monthly Spend | #1 Advertiser | Their Share | Their Spend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | $22.5M | Jacoby & Meyers | 19.6% | $4.4M |
| New York | $14.5M | Morgan & Morgan | 13.3% | $1.9M |
| Atlanta | $12.9M | Morgan & Morgan | 17.4% | $2.2M |
| Chicago | $7.3M | Malman Law | 13.7% | $1.0M |
| Houston | $7.2M | Jim Adler | 16.8% | $1.2M |
| Dallas | $6.9M | Thomas J. Henry | 34.7% | $2.4M |
| Tampa | $5.5M | Morgan & Morgan | 24.0% | $1.3M |
| San Francisco | $4.7M | Sweet James | 16.9% | $787K |
| Philadelphia | $4.6M | Morgan & Morgan | 21.4% | $986K |
| Boston | $3.2M | Morgan & Morgan | 30.4% | $971K |
The numbers reveal a consistent pattern. In most markets, the top advertiser holds 13 to 25% of total spend. Dallas is the outlier at 34.7%, driven entirely by Thomas J. Henry’s $2.4 million monthly broadcast investment.
Morgan and Morgan leads in five of the top 10 markets. Their strategy is breadth over depth. Rather than dominating one market with overwhelming spend, they maintain meaningful presence across 22 of 210 tracked markets.
What Personal Injury Advertising Actually Costs
The search term “personal injury lawyer advertising” carries a $71 CPC in Google Ads. That single number tells you how competitive this space is. But the real costs extend far beyond paid search.
Broadcast television. A 30-second spot in a major DMA costs $500 to $5,000 per airing depending on daypart, station, and market size. The top firms in our data run hundreds of spots monthly. Thomas J. Henry’s $1.9 million monthly television spend in Dallas translates to roughly 400 to 800 individual airings.
CTV/Streaming. Connected TV advertising typically costs $20 to $40 CPM for programmatic buys, with premium inventory running $40 to $60+. Most platforms recommend $5,000 to $25,000 monthly for meaningful scale in a single DMA. For competitive PI firms, $15,000 to $25,000 per month is the baseline for a visible CTV presence.
Radio. Legal radio spots in major markets cost $100 to $1,000 per spot depending on the station and daypart. Firms like Jim Adler in Houston and Mullen and Mullen in Dallas run radio-heavy strategies with dozens of daily spots.
The effective cost comparison. Broadcast at $15 CPM reaches broad demographics, but only 20% of impressions reach potential clients. That creates an effective CPM of $75 per relevant impression. CTV at $35 CPM with 60% of impressions reaching targeted households creates an effective CPM of $58 per relevant impression. The higher sticker price delivers a lower cost per qualified impression.
The CTV Opportunity Nobody Is Talking About
CTV advertising spend in the legal category grew 241% between Q1 2023 and Q4 2025. Legal services CTV impressions hit 3.53% of all local CTV impressions in Q4 2025, the highest quarter recorded.
Yet across 210 tracked markets, the average CTV allocation remains under 25%. In several of the largest markets, it sits in single digits. New York (11%), Dallas (10%), Boston (9%), Washington DC (3%).
The gap between CTV viewing share and CTV advertising share represents the single largest inefficiency in personal injury advertising today. Streaming now accounts for 44.8% of total TV viewing nationally. Legal advertisers allocate roughly 20% of their budgets to the channel that captures 45% of viewing.
That gap will close. The question is whether your firm closes it before your competitors do.
What the Firms Getting It Right Look Like
Our data identifies three profiles among the most strategically positioned advertisers.
The CTV leaders. Dozier Law Firm in Atlanta runs 81.3% streaming. Dennis Law Firm runs 74.6%. Thompson Law runs 68.7% in Atlanta and 38.3% in Dallas. These firms committed to streaming early and are building audience in the channel with the steepest growth curve.
Balanced allocators. Firms like Montlick (54.5% streaming), Gary Martin Hays (50.8%), and Kenneth Nugent (60.0%) split budgets roughly evenly between traditional and streaming. They maintain broadcast presence for reach while building CTV for growth.
Market exploiters. Firms entering low-CTV markets like Dallas (10%), Boston (9%), or Washington DC (3%) face almost no streaming competition from the established broadcast leaders. Thompson Law in Dallas spends $177,000 monthly on CTV in a market where the dominant firm (Thomas J. Henry, $2.4M) allocates just 8.5% to streaming.
The common thread across all three profiles is intentionality. These firms chose their streaming allocation based on market data, not agency defaults.
What This Means for Your Advertising Budget
Personal injury lawyer advertising is a $3 billion annual category with deeply entrenched spending patterns. The firms that built this industry did so on broadcast television and radio. Their budgets, relationships, and strategies are optimized for traditional media.
That creates a structural opening. Every market we track has underserved CTV inventory relative to the audience available on streaming platforms. The firms that allocate 20 to 40% of their budgets to CTV in low-adoption markets will reach households their broadcast-heavy competitors aren’t reaching, at effective CPMs that are often lower than traditional television.
The 2,900 people searching this term every month are looking for an edge. The edge is in the data, and the data points to streaming. But don’t forget what happens after the impression. Your website has to convert the traffic that CTV, broadcast, and paid search deliver.
References
- AdImpact. "Legal Advertising Trends Report, Q1 2026." 2026.
- ATRA. "Legal Services Advertising Report, 2020-2024." 2025.
- First Page Sage. "Average Personal Injury Cost Per Lead (CPL): 2026 Report." 2026.
- IAB. "2025 Digital Video Ad Spend and Strategy Report." 2025.
- eMarketer. "US TV and Connected TV Ad Spending Forecasts, H2 2025." 2025.