Case Study: How We Scaled a Law Firm from 12 to 47 Cases Per Month with Paid Ads

In early 2025, a mid-sized personal injury law firm in the Southeast came to us with a familiar problem: they were spending money on Google Ads, getting some leads, but nowhere near enough signed cases to justify the investment. The managing partner had one directive — grow the caseload without hiring a second marketing agency or dumping budget into billboards.

They were running Google Ads in-house. A paralegal managed the account part-time. The campaigns had been live for over a year with minimal changes. And the numbers told the story.

Where Things Stood: The Baseline Metrics

Before we touched anything, we pulled 90 days of data to establish a clear picture.

Twelve signed cases from $8,000 in ad spend isn't catastrophic for personal injury, but it's not scalable either. The firm's target was 40+ cases per month. At the existing efficiency, hitting that number would require $22,000+/month in spend — and the conversion infrastructure couldn't handle it. More budget on a broken system just means more expensive waste.

The Audit: Three Problems Killing Performance

We spent two weeks auditing the account, call recordings, landing pages, and intake process before changing a single setting. Here's what we found.

1. One Campaign Dumping Ground

Every practice area — car accidents, slip and falls, workers' comp, wrongful death — was crammed into a single campaign with broad match keywords. The ad copy was generic ("Injured? Call us today"), and Google was allocating most of the budget to the cheapest clicks, which happened to be the lowest-intent searches.

The search terms report was ugly. Over 30% of spend was going to queries like "personal injury lawyer salary," "free legal advice car accident," and "how to sue someone without a lawyer." Money burned on people who would never become clients.

2. Homepage as the Landing Page

Every ad pointed to the firm's homepage. The homepage had navigation to 14 different pages, a blog sidebar, attorney bios, a "community involvement" section, and a contact form buried at the bottom. For someone who just searched "car accident lawyer near me" and clicked an ad, this was a dead end disguised as a website.

The homepage conversion rate was 3.2%. For context, a well-built legal landing page should convert at 8-15%.

3. No Conversion Tracking Beyond Form Fills

The only conversion action was a form submission. Phone calls — which account for 60-70% of personal injury leads — weren't tracked at all. This meant Google's algorithm was optimizing toward form fills from people who often just wanted free advice, not signed retainers. The smart bidding strategy was learning from garbage data.

Phase 1: Campaign Restructuring (Weeks 1-4)

We rebuilt the account from scratch. No tweaking, no optimizing around the edges. A clean start.

Separate Campaigns by Practice Area

We split everything into dedicated campaigns:

• Campaign 1: Car Accidents (highest volume, highest competition)
• Campaign 2: Truck Accidents (lower volume, higher case value)
• Campaign 3: Motorcycle Accidents
• Campaign 4: Slip and Fall / Premises Liability
• Campaign 5: Workers' Compensation

Each campaign had its own budget, its own ad copy, and its own landing page. This meant we could allocate spend based on case value, not just click volume. Truck accident cases average 3-5x the settlement of a standard car accident, so we could afford higher CPAs on those campaigns.

Negative Keyword Overhaul

We built a negative keyword list of 400+ terms across every campaign. The big categories:

• Career/Education: jobs, salary, school, degree, how to become
• DIY/Free: free, pro bono, without lawyer, template, form
• Informational: what is, how to, average settlement, statistics, reddit
• Unrelated: criminal, divorce, bankruptcy, immigration

This alone cut wasted spend by roughly 30% in the first month.

Match Type Tightening

We moved high-intent keywords to exact and phrase match only. Broad match was reserved for a small discovery campaign with tight CPA targets so we could mine for new keyword ideas without bleeding budget.

Ad Copy That Matches Intent

Instead of one generic ad, each campaign got ad copy specific to the case type:

• Car Accident Campaign: "Hurt in a Car Accident? $0 Unless We Win. 24/7 Free Case Review. Over $50M Recovered."
• Truck Accident Campaign: "Truck Accident Attorneys — We Handle the Trucking Companies' Insurance Teams. Free Consult."

Specific ad copy improved click-through rates by 40% across the board because the message matched what people actually searched for.

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Phase 2: Landing Page Overhaul (Weeks 3-6)

New campaigns sending traffic to the same homepage would have been pointless. We built dedicated landing pages for each practice area.

What Changed

Before (homepage):

• 14 navigation links competing for attention
• Generic "we're great lawyers" messaging
• Contact form at the bottom with 7 fields
• No social proof above the fold
• 4.8-second load time on mobile

After (dedicated landing pages):

• Zero navigation links — one path: convert
• Headline matching the exact search query ("Car Accident in [City]? Get a Free Case Review Now")
• 3-field form above the fold (name, phone, brief description)
• Click-to-call button sticky on mobile
• Case results ($1.2M car accident verdict, $780K truck accident settlement) displayed prominently
• Client video testimonials
• 1.9-second load time on mobile

The Impact

Landing page conversion rates jumped from 3.2% to 11.4% within the first 30 days of the new pages going live. That single change — same traffic, different destination — nearly quadrupled the number of leads from every dollar spent.

We also added call tracking with 60-second duration thresholds and offline conversion imports. Now Google's algorithm had real signal to optimize toward: calls that lasted long enough to indicate a genuine potential client, not someone asking for directions or confirming office hours.

Phase 3: Scaling (Months 2-6)

With the foundation in place, we could scale with confidence. Here's how we did it methodically.

Month 2: Prove the Unit Economics

We kept spend at $8,000 to validate the rebuilt system. Results in month 2:

• 38 qualified leads (up from 22)
• 19 signed cases (up from 12)
• Cost per signed case: $421 (down from $667)

The system worked. More importantly, we had clean conversion data flowing back to Google for smart bidding optimization.

Month 3: First Budget Increase

We bumped spend to $12,000, focused on the two highest-value campaigns: car accidents and truck accidents.

• 56 qualified leads
• 28 signed cases
• Cost per signed case: $429

Cost per case held steady despite the 50% budget increase. That's the sign of a scalable system — you aren't just buying the cheapest leads first and running into diminishing returns when you push harder.

Month 4: Expand Practice Areas

With car and truck campaigns humming, we activated the motorcycle and premises liability campaigns with dedicated budgets.

• Total spend: $14,500
• 68 qualified leads
• 34 signed cases
• Cost per signed case: $426

Months 5-6: Full Scale

We pushed to $18,000/month and introduced retargeting campaigns for people who visited landing pages but didn't convert. We also launched a "second touch" campaign on Google Display targeting people who had searched for relevant terms in the past 14 days.

The retargeting campaigns had a low CPA ($85 per signed case) because these were already warm prospects who just needed another nudge.

The Results: Before vs. After

Here's the full comparison after six months of management.

The firm went from 12 signed cases to 47 per month. Ad spend went from $8,000 to $18,000 — a 125% increase — but case volume went up 292%. They spent 2.25x more and got nearly 4x the cases.

At an average personal injury case value of $15,000-$25,000 in fees, those additional 35 cases per month represent $525,000-$875,000 in additional monthly revenue on $10,000 in incremental ad spend.

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Key Takeaways and Lessons Learned

1. Fix the Foundation Before Scaling

The biggest mistake law firms make with paid ads is throwing more budget at a broken system. If your landing page converts at 3% and your keywords are half-wasted, doubling your spend just doubles your waste. We spent four weeks fixing the foundation before increasing budget by a single dollar.

2. Practice Area Segmentation Is Non-Negotiable

A car accident case and a truck accident case have different search intent, different ad messaging, different landing page content, and different case values. Treating them as one campaign means optimizing for nothing. Separate campaigns let you control budget allocation, write relevant ad copy, and measure what actually works.

3. Track What Matters: Signed Cases, Not Form Fills

If you're optimizing toward form submissions, you're optimizing toward spam, tire-kickers, and people who want free advice. Set up call tracking with duration thresholds, implement offline conversion tracking, and feed signed case data back to Google. Let the algorithm learn what a real client looks like.

4. Landing Pages Are the Multiplier

Campaign restructuring improved our lead quality. Landing pages multiplied our lead volume. Going from 3.2% to 12.1% conversion rate meant every dollar of ad spend produced nearly 4x the leads. At $38-$42 per click, that's the difference between a profitable campaign and a money pit.

5. Scale Gradually and Validate at Each Stage

We didn't jump from $8,000 to $18,000 overnight. Each budget increase was validated by stable unit economics (cost per signed case) before the next increase. If cost per case had spiked at $12,000 in spend, we would have paused and optimized before pushing further.

6. Retargeting Is the Cheapest Source of Cases

Not everyone converts on the first visit. Retargeting campaigns targeting landing page visitors who didn't convert produced signed cases at $85 each — a fraction of the cost of cold search traffic. If you aren't running retargeting, you're leaving your cheapest cases on the table.

What This Means for Your Firm

This case study isn't unique. The problems we found — messy campaign structure, homepage as landing page, no call tracking — exist in the majority of law firm Google Ads accounts we audit. The playbook works because it addresses the structural issues that most firms ignore while chasing the next keyword hack or bidding trick.

Paid ads can be the most reliable, scalable growth channel for a law firm. But only if the system is built correctly. Structure first. Tracking second. Landing pages third. Budget last.

Ready to scale your firm's caseload with paid ads? We've helped dozens of law firms build profitable PPC for lawyers campaigns using this exact framework. Schedule your free consultation →