The number your ads dashboard will never show you.
Google Ads counts a $0 first-time phone call as a conversion — spam, solicitors, and wrong numbers included. Your P&L counts signed cases. Set the sliders to your firm's numbers and see what a case actually costs you.
What your dashboard says
$275
per "conversion" — looks healthy, files nothing
11× higher
What your intake funnel says
$3,055
true cost per signed case — 3.3 cases from $10,000/mo
Where the money goes
Each stage shows what a surviving lead has cost you so far. Watch the unit price climb.
Est. monthly fee revenue: $49,100Ad spend as share of that revenue: 20%
Same budget, tighter funnel
No extra ad spend. Intake rates moved to the optimized benchmark: 90% answered, 62% substantive, 50% booked, 65% signed.
Signed cases / mo
6.6
vs 3.3 today · +3.3
True cost per case
$1,515
vs $3,055 today
Added fee revenue / mo
+$49,500
at your average fee
The same math the industry data shows: a firm converting at the average signs 14 of 100 leads; an optimized intake signs 35. Same lead spend, ~2.5× the cases.
The cheapest fix is a clock
Most of the leak above isn't an ads problem. It's response time.
Average firm response
42 hours
to a web-form lead
Respond in under 5 min
3–4×
higher conversion vs. 30+ minutes
Hire the first responder
79%
of legal consumers do
Sources, assumptions & fine print
Benchmarks compiled April 2026 in the PULSE legal-services knowledge base from published industry research (legal marketing benchmark reports, intake platform data, Google Ads category data). Ranges, not point estimates.
Cost per reported lead is what your Google Ads dashboard divides spend by — it counts first-time phone calls and form fills as $0-value conversions before any quality screen. FL personal-injury CPL benchmark: $200–$500; CPCs commonly run $100–$500+.
Substantive call = over 60 seconds, first-time caller, non-spam — the same definition PULSE uses in production call scoring.
Funnel benchmarks: lead-to-signed averages 7–14% industry-wide; 25–40% is good; top intake operations reach 40–50%. Consult-to-retainer averages 40–50%, top firms 70%+. Cost per signed PI case benchmarks at $2,500–$8,000.
Default scenario tie-out: $10,000 ÷ $275 = 36.4 leads → 75% answered → 60% substantive → 40% booked → 50% signed = 3.3 cases ≈ $3,055 per case, inside the published $2,500–$8,000 band, at a 9% overall lead-to-case rate, inside the 7–14% average band.
These are illustrative estimates, not guarantees of cost or outcome for any firm. Your actuals depend on market, practice mix, and intake operation — measuring them is the point.
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Want your firm's actual numbers?
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