Most attorneys know what they spend. Almost none know what a signed case costs them to generate. Those are two very different numbers and only one of them tells you whether your marketing is working.
A PI attorney called me last month. She was spending $14,000 per month on marketing. Her agency was reporting 3,200 impressions, a 4.2 percent click-through rate, and 22 form submissions. She asked me what was wrong. I asked her how many cases she signed. She went quiet. She had never been given that number.
Every marketing agency in the legal space reports on impressions, clicks, and form submissions. Almost none of them report on cost per signed case. This is not an accident.
They cannot control how fast you call leads back. They cannot control what your intake coordinator says on the phone. They cannot control whether your consultation converts. So they report on the things they can influence and stay quiet about the things they cannot.
The problem is that the number they stay quiet about is the only number that matters to your business.
Here is how to calculate it. Take everything you spent on marketing last month, the agency fee, the ad spend, the tools, all of it. Divide it by the number of cases you signed that originated from a marketing touchpoint. That is your cost per signed case.
If you cannot calculate that number right now, your marketing has a measurement problem before it has a spending problem. Fix the measurement first.
The calculation that changes everything: Total monthly marketing spend divided by cases signed from marketing equals cost per signed case. A firm spending $12,000 per month and signing 4 cases has a cost per signed case of $3,000. For a PI case worth $60,000 in attorney fees, that is a 20x return before expenses. Know your number.
Here is the complete breakdown of every cost you will encounter in a properly built PI marketing system.
| Cost item | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| System build fee (one-time) | $10,000 to $25,000 | Quiz funnel, AI agent, GBP, ad campaigns, dashboard. Paid once. |
| Monthly management fee | $2,500 to $5,000 | Ongoing optimisation, reporting, ad management. Starts after build. |
| Google Ads spend | $1,500 to $10,000 | Goes directly from your card to Google. Never marked up. |
| Facebook Ads spend | $500 to $3,000 | Goes directly from your card to Meta. Never marked up. |
| AI intake agent calls | $0.40 per minute | 200 calls at 3 minutes each is roughly $240 per month. |
| Typical total month 2 onwards | $5,000 to $15,000 | Management plus ad spend plus AI calls. No hidden fees. |
Personal injury is one of the most expensive advertising categories on Google. Here is why. A single signed case can generate $30,000 to $500,000 in attorney fees. Every firm in your market knows this. So they bid aggressively and the cost per click reflects the competition.
In major markets like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, competitive PI keywords like "car accident attorney" regularly cost $200 to $300 per click. In mid-size markets the same keyword might cost $60 to $120. In smaller markets or for more specific terms like "truck accident attorney" in a regional city, costs drop to $30 to $80.
These numbers matter because they explain the conversion rate problem. If you are paying $150 per click and your homepage converts at 2 percent, you are paying $7,500 in ad spend to generate one lead. That lead then has to become a consultation, which has to become a signed case. At each stage cases leak. The math only works if you maximise conversion at every step.
Replace the homepage with a quiz funnel and the conversion rate moves from 2 percent to 6 to 12 percent. On a $5,000 monthly ad budget paying $150 per click, that means 33 clicks at 2 percent produces 0.66 leads per day. At 8 percent conversion it produces 2.64 leads per day. Four times more leads from the same spend. The ad cost did not change. The funnel did.
Every dollar spent sending paid traffic to a generic homepage is a dollar working at 2 percent efficiency. It is not that the homepage is bad. It is that it was never built for cold paid traffic. Cold traffic needs a quiz funnel. Homepages are for people who already know you. Sending paid traffic to a homepage is the most common and most expensive mistake in PI marketing.
Some agencies bundle ad spend into their fee and charge a percentage of total spend. You have no way to verify how much actually reached the platforms versus how much the agency kept. The correct structure has your ad spend going directly from your card to Google and Meta. The agency gets a flat management fee. You get the billing receipts. If your current agency does not operate this way, you do not know what you are actually paying for ads.
An agency that reports impressions and engagement is reporting on their own effort, not on your results. A campaign that generates 10,000 impressions and zero signed cases is a failure regardless of what the engagement metrics say. Redirect every reporting conversation to one question: what did a signed case cost us to generate this month versus last month?
Marketing spend should be proportional to the value of a case in your market and your current capacity to handle new cases. Here is a realistic framework by firm size.
A solo practitioner or small firm handling 5 to 10 new cases per month should start with a $3,000 to $5,000 total monthly marketing budget. That covers the management fee and a modest ad spend. The priority at this size is a converting funnel and a reliable intake system, not volume. One additional case per month from a well-built system at this budget level pays for the entire marketing cost.
A mid-size firm handling 15 to 30 new cases per month can support a $7,000 to $12,000 monthly marketing budget. At this level Google Ads and Facebook Ads run simultaneously, the AI intake agent handles consistent lead volume, and the GBP is actively generating map pack traffic as a second channel.
A larger firm or multi-attorney practice handling 30 or more new cases per month typically invests $12,000 to $25,000 per month in marketing. At this level every channel is running, the quiz funnel is split-tested, the AI agent handles hundreds of calls per month, and the reporting dashboard is the primary management tool for marketing decisions.
The universal rule across every firm size is that your cost per signed case should be no more than 5 to 10 percent of your average attorney fee. If a typical case generates $50,000 in fees and your cost per signed case is $8,000, you are at 16 percent and the math is not working in your favour.
To see the complete pricing structure for a done-for-you system, visit the transparent pricing page. To calculate what your current cost per signed case is and where it should be, book a free 15-minute case analysis.
For the complete PI marketing system that determines what your spend produces, see Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing: The Complete Guide. For the AI intake system that converts ad spend into consultations, see How to Automate Lead Follow-Up for Law Firms Using AI.
We calculate your current cost per signed case, show you what it would look like with a converting funnel, and tell you in dollar terms exactly what fixing the gap is worth every month.
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