PPC for law firms: Google Ads guide for UK solicitors

PPC for law firms works when each practice area has its own campaign, keywords and landing page, calls and forms are tracked, and the budget is set from what an enquiry is worth.

PPC for law firms means paying Google to show your ad when someone searches for legal help, and paying each time they click. For a UK firm it earns its keep when each practice area runs as its own campaign with its own budget, keywords and negatives, sends clicks to a page about that exact service, and counts calls as well as forms. Set the budget backwards from what the firm can afford per enquiry, not from a monthly figure that feels comfortable.

Which Google Ads rules apply to UK law firms

Many Google Ads guides for lawyers are written for the US and talk about state bar rules. Those do not apply here. The SRA regulates solicitors in England and Wales, and Google's country-specific policies follow where your ads are targeted.

No legal services certification in the UK (as of September 2026)

I checked Google's advertising policies with the United Kingdom selected in September 2026. The other restricted businesses policy has no section for legal services, and I found no certification a UK firm must hold before running search ads for family, conveyancing, probate, employment or personal injury work. Four things do apply.

Advertiser verification. Google says all advertisers will eventually have to complete it (Advertising Policies Help). A UK organisation needs a registration document, such as a certificate of incorporation or VAT registration certificate, and photo ID from an authorised representative who is an admin on the account or payments profile (UK document requirements). Decide early who at the firm will do it.
Financial claims. Google's UK financial services verification page says anyone promoting claims management services related to financial products, such as scam redress, must be a claims management-licensed financial services provider, a government entity, a non-profit or a legal service provider, or act on behalf of one.
Immigration. Google limits ads promoting the direct acquisition of government documents, including visas and passports, to certified governments and authorised providers (other restricted businesses policy). Write immigration ads about advice and representation, not about getting the visa.
Local law. Google requires advertisers to comply with the local laws and regulations of any area their ads target (legal requirements). For a solicitor, that brings in the SRA.

What the SRA rules mean for your ads

Paragraph 8.8 of the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors requires publicity, including about charges, to be accurate and not misleading.
The SRA's warning notice on marketing to the public (December 2024) says marketing that highlights "no win, no fee" should clearly explain what that means, and should not make misleading statements about prospects of success or the level of any award.
The SRA Transparency Rules require price and service information for set services, including residential conveyancing, uncontested estate administration, non-asylum immigration applications and unfair or wrongful dismissal tribunal claims, in a prominent place on the firm's website. They also require the SRA number and digital badge to be displayed prominently on the website. I put both on landing pages built for ads.

This is marketing guidance, not legal advice. Your COLP has the final say on what your ads and landing pages say.

Local Services Ads for legal work are London only

Local Services Ads charge per lead rather than per click. As of September 2026, Google's UK help page lists its legal categories, from family and immigration to personal injury and probate, as available in Greater London only (Local Services Help). Firms elsewhere work with standard search campaigns.

How to structure a law firm Google Ads account

Each Google Ads campaign has its own budget and settings, and ad groups hold similar ads and keywords (Google Ads Help). That is why you split by practice area. If family and conveyancing share a campaign, they share a budget, and you cannot give probate more in January without giving it to everything.

Brand campaign for searches of the firm's name, kept apart so people who already know you do not flatter the practice area figures.
One campaign per practice area: family, conveyancing, wills and probate, employment, personal injury.
Ad groups built around one service each. In family: divorce, financial settlements, child arrangements, prenuptial agreements.
One landing page per ad group.
Split by office only when offices differ in services, hours or the fees they win. Otherwise target each office's area inside the practice area campaign. Multi-office firms, such as the family law firm with eight offices whose Google Ads we run, need that rule settled before the build.

Settings to check:

Location. Google calls broad geo targeting ("Presence or interest") a best practice on Search, and suggests considering "Presence" when you only want people in your chosen locations (location targeting). Presence is the safer start for local work. Probate is the exception to think about: an executor may live nowhere near the estate.
Search partners. These are included by default in new Search campaigns (Google Search Network). I untick them at launch so early results come from Google Search alone.
Schedule. Campaigns show ads all day by default (ad scheduling), but call assets can be set to show only when you can take calls (call assets). A 9pm call that rings out is a wasted click.
Ad copy. A responsive search ad takes up to 15 headlines of 30 characters and 4 descriptions of 90 characters, and Google advises most advertisers not to pin because pinning reduces the combinations it can show (responsive search ads). If your COLP wants one line in every ad, pin that one only.
AI Max. This optional set of features adds broader search term matching, text customisation that writes headlines and descriptions, and final URL expansion that picks landing pages (About AI Max). Each can be switched off, and URLs can be excluded (How AI Max works). Generated ad text and pages nobody signed off are a compliance question, so I leave it off until tracking is proven and the COLP has agreed a checking process.

Match types and negative keywords

Google describes three match types (keyword matching options):

Broad match, the default, can show ads on searches related to the keyword, including ones without its direct meaning, using signals such as the searcher's recent searches and your landing page.
Phrase match ("divorce solicitor") shows on searches that include the meaning of the keyword.
Exact match ([divorce solicitor]) shows on searches with the same meaning or intent. It gives the most control and the fewest searches.

Exact match does not mean the exact words, so even tight campaigns need watching. I start on exact and phrase. Broad match on "divorce", "will" or "injury" pulls in do-it-yourself searches, forms, jobs and news; it earns a place later, in campaigns with enough conversions for Smart Bidding to steer by.

Google says negative keywords do not match close variants, so add singular, plural and synonym versions yourself (negative keywords). Shared lists for every practice area:

Careers: jobs, vacancies, salary, training, course, apprenticeship, paralegal.
Do it yourself: template, form, gov, DIY. Think before adding "free": it blocks "free consultation" searches.
Legal aid, if you do not offer it.
Same-name towns elsewhere.

The search terms report leaves out some searches without enough query activity, for privacy reasons, so you will never see every search. Another reason to keep match types tight.

How search intent differs by practice area

Family law

Searches run from ready to instruct ("divorce solicitor Doncaster") to gathering information. GOV.UK lets people apply for a divorce online or by post themselves, so "apply for divorce online" and "divorce forms" lean towards people doing it without a solicitor: test them as negatives, unless you sell a fixed-fee service for them. Keep divorce, finances and children in separate ad groups, since the questions and pages differ.

Conveyancing

Searches are price-led: "conveyancing quote", "conveyancing fees". Residential conveyancing is covered by the Transparency Rules, so prices must be on your site anyway; put the quote form or price table at the top of the landing page. If conveyancing fees are lower than your other work, the most you can pay per enquiry is lower too. Ad groups: sale, purchase, remortgage, leasehold. Negatives: course, training, jobs.

Probate

Two people search for probate: an executor who wants a firm to deal with the estate, and someone doing it themselves, which GOV.UK lets them do online or by post. "Apply for probate" and "probate form" lean to the second group, so test them as negatives. Uncontested estate administration is covered by the Transparency Rules; link prices from the page. Keep wills in their own ad group, with "free will" and "will template" as negatives.

Personal injury

For minor road traffic injuries, the Official Injury Claim service, which works on behalf of the Ministry of Justice, says people may be able to claim "for free and without legal help" (Official Injury Claim). Searches naming that service are negatives for most firms. Split ad groups by accident type (road, work, slips and trips) so ad and page match. Every "no win, no fee" headline needs a page that explains what the client could still pay, in line with the SRA warning notice.

Employment

Employees and employers want different things, so give them separate campaigns. Employees search "unfair dismissal solicitor" or "settlement agreement solicitor". Acas explains that for a settlement agreement to be legally valid the worker must get advice from a relevant independent adviser (Acas), so those searches tend to come from people who need advice now. Acas also says you must notify it before making an employment tribunal claim (Acas early conciliation), so early conciliation searches are often people following that step, not looking for a firm. Employers search "employment law advice for employers" or "HR solicitor", and that work may be ongoing advice rather than one matter, so value it differently.

Landing pages that turn clicks into enquiries

The landing page decides how many clicks become enquiries, which feeds straight into cost per enquiry. For each ad group:

Match the search: "settlement agreement solicitor" in the main heading, not the homepage.
Phone number at the top, tap to call on mobile.
A short form: name, phone, email, one line. Say what happens next, and only promise a response time you keep.
Prices, or a clear link, where the Transparency Rules apply.
SRA number and digital badge in plain view.
A named solicitor with a photo and role, and the nearest office address.
Nothing that leads away, such as a blog feed or full menu.

Then test it on a phone.

Setting a budget from cost per enquiry

Start from the value of the work:

Average fee for the matter type.
The share of that fee you will spend to win a client.
The share of enquiries that instruct.
Maximum cost per enquiry = fee × share you will spend × share that instruct.

With made-up round numbers, not benchmarks: a £3,000 probate fee, 20% spent to win the client (£600), and one enquiry in four instructing means you can pay up to £150 per enquiry. The cost per enquiry calculator does this, and shows cost per client and return per pound.

Then estimate click costs. Keyword Planner's top of page bid range runs from roughly the 20th to the 80th percentile of what advertisers have historically paid (Keyword Planner); treat it as an estimate. If clicks cost £9 and one in ten becomes an enquiry, that is £90 per enquiry, inside your £150 limit, and 20 enquiries a month costs £1,800. The Google Ads budget calculator gives the maximum bid per click, cost per enquiry at a given click cost, and a monthly budget from target enquiries or from the money available.

Budgets are set as an average daily amount. A campaign can spend up to twice that on a given day, but you will not be charged more than 30.4 times it in a month (Google Ads Help), so £1,800 a month is about £59 a day.

Choosing a bid strategy

Enhanced CPC is gone: Google says it has not been available for Search campaigns since the week of 24 March 2025, and campaigns not moved are effectively on manual CPC (Google Ads Help).

Smart Bidding (Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximise conversions, Maximise conversion value) sets bids in each auction using signals such as device, location, time of day and the search itself (Smart Bidding). It optimises for conversion actions set as primary, so tracking comes first (bid strategies). Google says you can turn it on without prior data, though it recommends meeting certain conversion baselines, and suggests judging performance over periods with at least 30 conversions, such as a month or longer.

How I sequence it:

New campaign or doubtful tracking: manual CPC, with bids set from Keyword Planner ranges and your maximum bid per click.
Tracking proven, enquiries arriving: Maximise conversions.
Cost per enquiry stable for a month or two: Target CPA close to what you actually achieve.
Brand: Target impression share is often enough.

Conversion tracking, including calls

Set only real enquiries as primary conversions. Primary actions appear in the Conversions column and drive bidding; secondary actions are for observation and appear in All conversions (primary and secondary conversions).

Primary: form submissions, calls from ads, calls to your website number from ad visitors.
Secondary: clicks on the phone number on your mobile site (a click, not a confirmed call), downloads, page views.

Google Ads tracks calls from call assets and calls to your website number through Google forwarding numbers, which are available in the United Kingdom (phone call conversions, forwarding numbers). A call counts when it lasts longer than a minimum length you set (website call conversions). Google can use AI on call recordings to judge lead quality, but as of September 2026 only where both parties are in the US or Canada (Google Ads Help), so UK firms rely on call length and their own notes on each caller. Dedicated call tracking goes further, and is a subject of its own.

Next, tell Google which enquiries became clients. With enhanced conversions for leads, your site sends hashed details such as the form's email address, and you import the conversion when that lead instructs; Google says this reports more accurately than standard offline conversion import, and you must follow its customer data policies (enhanced conversions for leads). As of September 2026, the same page says the web and leads versions of enhanced conversions are being combined into a single on/off setting. Then you can judge each practice area on cost per client.

Google's EU user consent policy also covers users in the UK (Google), so check your cookie banner passes consent choices to Google, for example through consent mode.

What to check every week

For four or five practice area campaigns, I would allow about an hour.

Search terms. Read them per campaign and add negatives.
Conversion status. "Awaiting conversions" means none recorded in the last seven days (Google Ads Help). On a campaign with steady traffic, treat it as a fault until checked.
Test the routes. Submit each form, ring each tracked number, confirm both were recorded.
Spend against plan by practice area.
Lost impression share. Search lost IS (budget) is the share of time ads did not show because of budget; Search lost IS (rank) is the share lost to poor Ad Rank (impression share). Budget loss on a profitable practice area means move money to it. Rank loss means look at ads, pages and bids first.
Enquiry quality. Ask whoever takes new enquiries which were real, and compare with the case management system.
Disapprovals and notices, including verification requests.
Schedules, for bank holidays and office closures.
AI Max, if on: the search terms and the pages Google chose.

Once a month, add cost per instructed client by practice area and compare it with your maximum.

You can read how our Google Ads service works for solicitors, or ask for a free audit if you want a second pair of eyes on an existing account.

Common questions

How much should a law firm spend on Google Ads?

Work it out per practice area: the maximum you can pay per enquiry, from fee and instruction rate, then your actual cost per enquiry multiplied by the enquiries you want.

Do solicitors need a Google certification to advertise in the UK?

As of September 2026 I found no legal services certification in Google's UK advertising policies. Firms still need to complete advertiser verification when asked, follow SRA rules on publicity, and check Google's financial services verification page before running financial claims ads.

Can UK law firms use Local Services Ads?

Only in Greater London, as of September 2026, according to Google's Local Services Help. Firms elsewhere use standard search campaigns.

PPC for law firms: a Google Ads guide for UK solicitors