An employment law firm cut its cost per lead from $200 to $70 with the same budget
A firm in the southern US spending $3,000 a month on Google Ads. Over seven months in 2026, leads almost tripled and the firm signed 13 cases.
- Cost per lead from $200 to $70
- About 43 leads a month
- 13 signed cases
- 5.0 on Google · 13 reviews
An employment law firm was paying about $200 per lead for around 15 leads a month, on conversions that weren’t real. After fixing the tracking, cutting the waste and building one landing page per ad group, the same $3,000 budget brought about 43 leads a month at $70 each, and the firm signed 13 cases in six months.
The account was paying for leads that weren’t real
When I took over, the account cost about $200 per lead and brought in around 15 leads a month. It counted conversions that never happened, so Google kept optimizing toward them. Part of the budget went to Display, search partners and broad top-of-funnel keywords, and every click landed on the same generic page.
Legal clicks are among the most expensive on Google, so every wasted one costs more here than it would almost anywhere else.
What I changed
- Fixed the tracking so only real leads counted: phone calls and form submissions
- Cut Display, search partners and every keyword that didn’t bring cases
- Moved the budget to the searches that did
- Built eight landing pages, one for each ad group, so each search met a page about that exact problem
- Kept every ad inside attorney advertising rules, so nothing was disapproved or put the firm’s license at risk
The results
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per lead | About $200 | $70 by month three, falling from month one |
| Leads per month, same $3,000 budget | About 15 | About 43 (27 calls, 16 forms) |
| Signed cases | Not tracked | 13 in six months |
An average case is worth around $50,000 to the firm. Thirteen signed cases represent roughly $650,000, against about $21,000 in ad spend over seven months. The firm’s intake team deserves real credit for those signatures; my part was to stop the waste and send them better leads.
Legal is expensive to get wrong on Google Ads
Legal clicks are among the most expensive on Google, so every wasted click costs more than in most industries. Ads also have to follow attorney advertising rules. A disapproved ad pauses traffic, and a careless claim can create a problem for the firm itself.
Services used
- Service: B2B Google Ads management
- Also used: landing pages built for each campaign
My client work is under NDA, so the firm stays anonymous. The numbers are the ones measured in the account.
Lucas Nobre
I'm Lucas Nobre, a freelance marketing and CRM specialist based in Fortaleza, Brazil. I started as a software developer at HP, which is why I test everything before it goes live.
Since 2021 I've built 150+ GoHighLevel sub-accounts and 100+ websites across 20+ industries, for clients in the US and 6+ other countries. Certified by CXL and the Interaction Design Foundation. My client work is under NDA, so names stay private.
Paying too much per lead?
Tell me what you spend a month and what a lead costs you today. I’ll reply with what I’d check first.
Email me