Running one campaign for 'personal injury', 'family law', and 'criminal defense' destroys your Quality Score. A searcher for 'divorce attorney' seeing a generic 'experienced lawyers' ad has no reason to click. Competitors with specific ads and landing pages pay 30% less per click for the same positions.
Legal services are jurisdiction-specific—a California personal injury lawyer can't help someone injured in Texas. Yet many firms target broad regions or don't use location bid modifiers. At $131.63 cost per lead, every out-of-jurisdiction consultation request is pure waste.
Legal topics attract massive informational search volume. 'How to file for divorce', 'personal injury settlement calculator', and 'do I need a lawyer' are all research queries, not hiring queries. Without negative keywords, you're paying for people who want free information, not legal representation.
Broad match keywords trigger your law firm ads for searches like "law firm jobs" and "law firm salary". Without negative keywords, you're paying for clicks that will never convert.
Fix: Add comprehensive negative keyword lists and switch high-value keywords to exact match.
Your homepage isn't optimized for conversions. Law Firms who click ads expecting specific services bounce when they land on a generic page.
Fix: Create dedicated landing pages for each service with clear CTAs and matching message.
You're paying the same CPC at 3 AM as you are during peak hours. But law firm searches convert differently throughout the day.
Fix: Analyze your conversion data by hour and day, then adjust bids accordingly.
Running the same ads for months means you're leaving performance on the table. Different messages resonate with different law firm customers.
Fix: Run at least 3 ad variations per ad group and let Google optimize.
These keywords waste budget without delivering customers:
Career researchers and law students, not potential clients.
Aspiring lawyers researching education, zero client intent.
Looking for free information, not willing to pay for representation.
Entertainment searches, no commercial intent whatsoever.
Students researching education, not people needing legal help.
Two powerful tools for law firms to improve your Google Ads performance