Law Firm PPC and Google Ads
Exact match discipline, spend visible to the dollar, and accounts that stay in your name.
In short
What paid search does for a law firm
Paid advertising buys your firm a position in front of people searching right now, while the work that compounds is still compounding. Search visibility and AI citation build an asset that keeps producing inquiries without a cost attached to every click, but they take time to establish. Paid search covers that gap from the first day a campaign runs, and it keeps covering the searches that are too competitive to win organically in the near term.
The mistake we see most often is treating these as competing channels and letting whoever runs the ads work in isolation from whoever runs the search. They answer the same query from the same prospect. The keyword research that informs a campaign is the same research that should shape practice area pages. The searches that convert in paid are the clearest possible signal of what to target organically. Run separately, each one relearns what the other already knows.
We run paid as part of the same engagement rather than as a separate retainer with separate reporting. If you want the organic side of that picture, it sits on the Google SEO and AI search visibility pages. If you want the whole system in one place, the law firm marketing page sets it out.
Channels
What we run
Google Search campaigns
Built on exact match first, so the firm pays for the searches it actually wants rather than whatever the platform decides is close enough. Match types widen only once the data says a term earns its place.
Local Services Ads
Setup, verification, and ongoing management of the pay per lead placement that sits above the paid search results for many legal queries. It is a different system from Google Ads and is managed as one.
Meta lead generation
Run selectively, for offers where the audience can be defined tightly enough to justify it. Most firms do not need this. When it fits a specific practice area or offer, we run it and say why.
Landing pages on this architecture
Campaign pages built on the same static architecture as the rest of your site, so they load fast and stay consistent with the brand rather than sitting on a rented page builder somewhere else.
Call and form tracking wired to source
Every inquiry is attributed back to the campaign, the ad group, and the search that produced it. Without that wiring, paid reporting is a spend total and a guess about what it bought.
Ownership
You own everything
This is the part that matters most, and it is where we differ from how a lot of paid management is sold. Every account is created in your name. The Google Ads account, the Local Services Ads account, any Meta assets, the tracking pixels, the conversion actions, and the analytics property are all yours. We are granted access to them. We do not hold them.
That sounds like a technicality until an engagement ends. When an agency owns the account, leaving means starting again: the campaign history, the negative keyword lists built from months of search terms, the conversion data that makes automated bidding work at all, the quality signals attached to the account. All of it stays behind. Firms discover this at the worst possible moment, and it is the single most effective way to make a client stay who no longer wants to.
The engagement is month to month. There is no minimum term and no notice period designed to make leaving expensive. If the work is not producing, you should be able to stop, and you should be able to take everything with you when you do. Spend is visible to the dollar in your own account whenever you want to look at it, not summarised into a number that arrives once a month.
We think this is simply how it should work. We also recognise it removes the leverage that keeps some accounts locked in, which is presumably why it is not the default.
The Difference
Two ways to run a paid account.
How most agencies run ads
Broad match keywords, because they spend the budget quickly and produce impressive-looking volume. Reporting bundled into a dashboard that shows results without showing what was spent to get them. And accounts held in the agency's name, so the history and the data stay behind if the relationship ends.
How we run them
Exact match first, widening only when the search terms report justifies it. Spend visible to the dollar in an account you can open yourself at any time. Accounts, pixels, and conversion data in your name from the first day. Month to month, because the work should be the reason you stay.
What's Included
What a paid engagement covers.
Account structure built around practice areas and case types rather than one catch-all campaign
Exact match keyword build with a negative keyword list maintained from the search terms report
Local Services Ads setup, verification support, and ongoing lead review
Ad copy written for legal intent and reviewed against advertising rules for attorneys
Campaign landing pages built on this site's architecture
Call tracking and form tracking attributed to campaign, ad group, and search term
Conversion tracking configured in your own analytics property
Search term review and negative keyword maintenance on an ongoing cycle
Monthly reporting that shows spend, inquiries, and the searches that produced them
Direct access to the principal running the account, not a support queue
Every engagement is run by the principal who scoped it. There are no account managers and no handoffs.
Why Nexus
What you are actually buying.
Fluent in this market
We work almost entirely with law firms and premium practices, so we already know the vocabulary, the buying cycle, and the compliance limits before the first call.
Principal-led throughout
The person who scopes your engagement is the person who runs it. No account managers, no handoffs to juniors, and no game of telephone between you and the work.
Measured in inquiries
We report on whether you are being found and whether the phone rings, not on how many tasks were completed. Activity is easy to produce. Visibility and inquiries are the point.
Built to last
Sites are built on modern static architecture, so they load fast, stay secure, and keep working without a stack of plugins quietly breaking behind the scenes.
Three Questions
Is paid the right next move?
Do you have capacity to take more matters right now?
Can you tell which of your current inquiries came from which source?
If you left your current agency tomorrow, would you keep the ad account and its history?
If any answer is no, that is worth a conversation. Get in touch and we will tell you what we would look at first.
FAQ
Common questions about law firm PPC
Paid search can put your firm in front of people searching today, which is its main advantage: it does not need to wait for authority to build. Search visibility works the other way round, taking longer to establish and then continuing to produce inquiries without a cost attached to each click. We do not promise a specific volume or timeline for paid, because it depends on your market, your practice area, and what you are willing to spend. For how organic timelines work, the Google SEO page sets out what to expect.
Local Services Ads are a separate Google placement that appears above the standard paid search results for many legal queries. They work on a pay per lead basis rather than pay per click, and they require verification of the firm and its attorneys before they run. Because the mechanics and the reporting are different from Google Ads, we manage them as their own channel rather than folding them into the same campaign structure.
Often both, because they occupy different positions on the page and behave differently. Local Services Ads tend to suit firms that can respond quickly to inbound leads and want the placement at the very top of the results. Google Ads gives far more control over which exact searches trigger an ad and what the prospect sees when they land. Which one gets the larger share of budget depends on how each performs for your practice areas once there is real data.
Not always, and we will say so. Paid search suits a firm that has capacity to take more matters now and a practice area where the searches carry commercial intent. If the constraint is intake rather than volume, or if the practice area is one where prospects arrive through referral rather than search, the money is usually better spent elsewhere. That is a conversation worth having before an account is opened, not after.
You do. The Google Ads account, the Local Services Ads account, any Meta assets, the pixels, and the conversion data are all created in your name and stay in your name. If the engagement ends, nothing needs to be handed back because nothing was ever held. You keep the account history, the negative keyword lists, and the conversion data that took months to accumulate.
You set the budget and you can see exactly where it goes. We recommend where to allocate it across campaigns and practice areas, explain the reasoning, and change it when the data says something different. Because the account is yours, the spend is visible to the dollar in your own account at any time rather than arriving summarised in a monthly report.
Want to see where paid fits?
Schedule a strategy call and we will look at your practice areas, your capacity, and whether paid is the right place to put the next dollar. If it is not, we will tell you that.