Sector: legal
PPC for Birmingham solicitors
Expensive clicks, qualified enquiries, and the lines the ads cannot cross
A legal click in Birmingham is among the dearest a business can buy, so a solicitor's Google Ads account is run on one principle: every pound goes on a search that could become an instruction, and every enquiry is qualified before a fee earner picks up the phone. That means a page per practice area, an intake form that asks the deciding question, negatives for the searches a firm can never serve, and ads that stay inside the SRA Transparency Rules, the CAP Code and Google's policies at the same time. Run from Wrexham, one firm per practice area in the city.
The arithmetic
What a £10 click has to do to pay for itself
The only public benchmark is American: LocaliQ and WordStream's search advertising benchmarks, published 1 June 2026, put legal services at $9.87 a click on average. Birmingham conveyancing and family searches land in that region in pounds. Here is what that number has to turn into.
- 1
£10 a click, 150 clicks
£1,500 of monthly ad spend buys 150 visits to the practice area page. Not to the homepage; to the page that repeats the search.
- 2
One enquiry in fifteen clicks
A page that says what you do, what it costs where the rules require it, and how fast a solicitor rings back converts around one visit in fifteen. Ten enquiries.
- 3
One instruction in four enquiries
The intake form and the first call filter the rest. Two or three instructions a month from £1,500 of spend plus the fee.
- 4
What an instruction is worth
A conveyancing file, a divorce with assets, a settlement agreement, a probate: you know the figure. The report divides it by the cost and says, plainly, whether the campaign should grow, hold or stop.
By practice area
What each kind of searcher wants, and what counts as the enquiry
| Practice area | What the searcher is doing | The enquiry we count | The thing to get right |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conveyancing | Comparing quotes for a purchase or sale, often the same evening the offer is accepted | A quote request with the property price and postcode | The price on the page, as the SRA rules require, and a quote back within the hour |
| Family | Deciding whether to ring a solicitor at all, usually on a phone, often late | A call over a minute, or a form with one question about the situation | A calm first screen, a named solicitor, and the fixed-fee first meeting stated plainly |
| Employment | An employee with a settlement agreement to sign by Friday, or an employer with a grievance | A call or a form with the deadline in it | Separate pages and separate campaigns for employees and employers; they search with the same words |
| Wills and probate | A family after a death, or someone putting affairs in order | A form with the estate in one sentence, or a call | Probate pricing on the page under the transparency rules; no urgency devices at all |
| Immigration | An application with a date and a fee attached | A form with the visa type and the date | The published fee for the application type, and a page in plain English |
| Personal injury | Someone who has already seen twenty claims-company ads | A call, qualified on the first screen | Regulated wording throughout, and a decision about whether the CPC is worth it for your intake |
Compliance
Three rulebooks, one page
The SRA Transparency Rules require price and service information on the website for the listed areas of work, and the landing page for a conveyancing or probate campaign is part of the website. We write the page around the published price rather than sending the click to a page that avoids it.
The CAP Code governs the ad and the page as advertising: no claims of outcomes, no comparative claims that cannot be shown, no “no win no fee” without the terms beside it.
Google's policies disapprove ads for misrepresentation and, in some legal categories, require verification. An account that trips them repeatedly is suspended, and a suspended account is worse than an expensive one.
Where the firms are
Colmore Row to the high street, and the radius that follows
Birmingham's legal district runs from Colmore Row and Temple Row to the courts on Bull Street and Corporation Street, and a firm there draws clients from the whole conurbation and beyond. A firm on the high street in Harborne, Sutton Coldfield or Solihull draws from its own few miles and from the people who searched its town's name. The two need different radiuses, different place names in the ads, and different negatives.
Either way the search terms report is read weekly for the things a firm can never serve: legal aid where you do not offer it, training contracts, free advice, and the practice areas you have chosen not to do. In a city with several law schools, “solicitor” attaches itself to a great many searches that are not clients.
Intake
The form is the campaign
A fee earner's hour is the most expensive thing the campaign can waste. The form on each page asks the one question that separates a client from a conversation.
- Conveyancing
- Property price, postcode, buying or selling, and whether a mortgage is involved. Enough to quote, nothing more.
- Family
- Whether proceedings have started, and whether there are children. Everything else waits for the call.
- Employment
- Employee or employer, and the deadline. A settlement agreement due Friday is a different enquiry from a grievance.
- Wills and probate
- Whether there is a will, and roughly the estate. It routes the enquiry to the right person and sets expectations on fee.
Keep reading
Next door to this page
Landing pages
One page per practice area, with the transparency information on it.
Property and lettings
The other side of the conveyancing search: the agents and developers.
Pricing
Most firms sit on Growth or Scale because legal clicks are dear; the tiers are on one page.
Get a quote
Send your practice areas and your patch; the reply says which are open and what a click costs there.
Questions from Birmingham law firms
How much does a click cost for a solicitor in Birmingham?
There is no published Birmingham figure. The nearest public benchmark, from LocaliQ and WordStream on 1 June 2026, puts the average search cost per click for attorneys and legal services at $9.87, drawn mostly from American accounts. Your own figure comes from Google's Keyword Planner with Birmingham set as the location, and for family, conveyancing and injury searches it is usually the most expensive click on this site.
Is Google Ads worth it for a small Birmingham law firm?
When a case is worth thousands, a click that costs ten pounds is not the problem; an intake form that lets the wrong enquiry through is. At £10 a click, one enquiry in fifteen clicks and one instruction in four enquiries, an instruction costs about £600 in ad spend. For a conveyancing file that is marginal; for a divorce with assets, or a settlement agreement, it is comfortably worth it.
What do you need to know about the SRA Transparency Rules?
That they exist and that the landing page must keep them. Firms regulated by the SRA must publish price and service information on their website for listed work, conveyancing, probate, immigration, employment tribunals for employees and employers, motoring offences, debt recovery and licensing among them, and the ad cannot lead to a page that hides it. We write the page around the published price rather than around it.
Can the ads say we win cases?
No. The CAP Code and Google's own policies both rule out claims of outcomes that cannot be substantiated, and "guaranteed", "no win no fee" without the terms, and "Birmingham's best solicitors" all get either the ad disapproved or a complaint upheld. The ads say what you do, where, what it costs where the rules require it, and what happens when someone rings.
How do you stop paying for people who cannot be clients?
Three ways. Negatives for the searches a firm can never serve: legal aid where you do not offer it, jobs, training contracts, free advice, the practice areas you do not do. A landing page and a form that ask the qualifying question, such as where the property is or whether proceedings have started. And a monthly conversation about which enquiries became instructions, fed back into the bidding so it buys more of those.
Which practice areas work best on Google Ads?
The ones where the searcher has a deadline and a budget: conveyancing quotes, family law, employment settlement agreements, wills and probate after a death, immigration applications with a date. Personal injury is expensive and crowded with claims management companies; it can work for a firm with the intake to match, and it needs its own compliance care.
Do we need a separate landing page for every practice area?
Yes. A divorce searcher and a conveyancing searcher have nothing in common except the firm, and a page that serves both converts neither. Each page repeats the search, names the fee or the fee basis where the rules require it, gives the number and a two-question form, and says how quickly a solicitor will ring back.
What does it cost to run?
The fee is set by spend, not by sector: £249 a month up to £1,000 of ad spend, £399 up to £3,000, £599 up to £8,000. Because legal clicks are dear, most firms sit on Growth or Scale, and one firm per practice area in Birmingham on the monthly plans.
Send your practice areas. The reply says what a click costs for each in Birmingham and whether the area is still open.
One firm per practice area in the city on the monthly plans. If you already advertise, add the customer ID and the free check reads the search terms for the enquiries you paid for that could never have instructed you.