How a Law Firm Reduced Cost Per Qualified Intake by 59%

Personal injury and family law firm, $8k/mo ad spend

59%

Lower Cost Per Intake

2.3x

More Qualified Intakes

40% → 15%

Unqualified Rate Dropped

The Challenge

A personal injury and family law firm was spending $8,000 per month on Google Ads with all practice areas lumped into a single campaign. Their cost per intake was $450, and a staggering 40% of intakes were unqualified — people seeking free consultations, law school information, or practice areas the firm didn't handle. The partners were seriously considering turning off Google Ads entirely and going back to relying solely on referrals.

The Strategy

  • Practice area separation: Split the single campaign into dedicated campaigns for personal injury, family law, estate planning, and employment law
  • Qualifying landing pages: Built landing pages with case type selectors that pre-qualify visitors before they submit — filtering out non-matching cases
  • Call tracking with intake scoring: Implemented call tracking with automated intake scoring so the team could measure true qualified intake cost
  • Google Local Services Ads: Added Google LSA (Google Screened) campaigns for personal injury — generating high-intent leads at a fraction of search ad costs
  • Strategic negative keywords: Added extensive negatives for 'free,' 'pro bono,' 'law school,' 'attorney salary,' and dozens of irrelevant practice area terms
  • Bid strategy optimization: Moved from manual CPC to target CPA bidding once enough conversion data was collected

The Results

Cost Per Intake

$450 → $185

59% decrease in cost per qualified intake
Qualified Intakes

18 → 42/mo

2.3x more qualified intakes per month
Unqualified Rate

40% → 15%

Dramatically reduced unqualified intake rate
PI Case Quality

Significantly Improved

Higher-value PI cases with better qualification
Google LSA Impact

30% of Intakes at 40% Lower Cost

Local Services Ads became the most cost-effective intake channel
“We were about to turn off Google Ads completely. PowerFunnels rebuilt everything, and now Google Ads is our most reliable source of new cases. The intake quality improvement alone was worth the investment.”
Linda K. — Managing Partner

Want Results Like These?

Find out how to get more qualified intakes and reduce wasted ad spend for your law firm.