Search ads for law firms — reaching people who need a lawyer today.
'Car accident lawyer', 'divorce lawyer almaty', 'personal bankruptcy price' — these people have already decided to see a lawyer and are choosing whom. We set up Google Ads and Яндекс Директ by practice, send traffic to situation pages, cut off 'free' and 'template' queries and measure cost per contract, not per click.
Search ads are the main advertising channel for most legal practices, because people look for a lawyer in search at the moment of trouble. But the niche has many expensive clicks and many people who do not actually need a lawyer: they want a template application, a free consultation, a job as a lawyer or a law essay. Without strict filtering the budget goes to them.
So we build campaigns by practice and intent. Urgent queries — 'criminal defence attorney', 'car accident lawyer urgent' — lead to a call and only run when someone can answer. Queries with price and city lead to a practice page with situation breakdowns and consultation booking. Informational queries are left to SEO.
Every enquiry goes into the CRM tagged with campaign and query, so after a month you can see which practice and keywords bring contracts and which bring only conversations.
What we do in search ads for lawyers.
Separate campaigns for each practice and city to put budget where the margin is higher.
We cut 'free', 'template', 'download', 'vacancies', 'yourself', 'essay' and dozens of other irrelevant phrasings.
Ads with a call button and hourly scheduling for when a lawyer is actually available; at night only if someone is on duty.
Each ad group leads to its practice page, not the home page; if needed we build a landing page.
Substitute numbers show which query produced a call; for lawyers this is essential — half of enquiries come by phone.
Office address, links to practices, callouts with the consultation fee and engagement format in the ad.
Campaigns in Russian and Kazakh with separate ads and keywords.
Cost per enquiry, consultation and contract by practice and campaign, with data from the CRM rather than just the ad account.
Typical account structure.
- Search: urgent queries focused on calls
- Search: family matters (divorce, alimony, division of property)
- Search: personal bankruptcy
- Search: migration issues
- Search: business registration and support
- Search: queries in Kazakh
- Retargeting visitors of practice pages
- Shared negative keyword list for all campaigns
- Conversions: call, WhatsApp, form, consultation payment
Why you should count contracts, not leads.
In the legal niche clicks are expensive and lead quality varies hugely: one enquiry is a person ready to pay hundreds of thousands of tenge for representation, another is a request to 'explain in a couple of words'. In our experience and according to market data, the cost per enquiry for urgent and commercial practices in Almaty is noticeably higher than in mass B2C niches, and the difference between practices can be several-fold.
So we optimise campaigns by cost per contract: the CRM records who came to a consultation and who signed, and this data is sent back to Google Ads and Директ as conversions. After 1–2 months it becomes clear that, for example, bankruptcy queries give cheap leads but expensive contracts, while corporate ones are the opposite.
Without this link, ads optimise for the number of leads and bring more and more people who do not pay.
Typical mistakes in search ads for lawyers.
- One 'legal services' campaign for all practices — the most expensive and generic queries eat the budget.
- No negative keywords: impressions on 'statement of claim template' and 'free legal consultation'.
- Ads lead to the home page, where the client has to find their situation on their own.
- Urgent campaigns run at night and on weekends when nobody picks up the phone.
- Calls are not tracked, so half the conversions are invisible and campaigns are optimised blindly.
- Ads promise a case outcome — they get rejected, and clients arrive with wrong expectations.
How much search ads for a law firm cost.
Managing one system (Google Ads or Яндекс Директ) for one city costs ₸150,000–250,000 per month; two systems, several cities or two languages ₸250,000–400,000. Setup is included in the first month, one-off setup without management costs ₸150,000.
The ad budget is separate, from ₸200,000 per month; for competitive practices in Almaty ₸250,000–400,000 and more is realistic. Landing page improvements are priced separately. Base prices are on the search ads page.
The short version.
How much do search ads for lawyers cost?
Management from ₸150,000 per month per system, ad budget from ₸200,000 per month separately; in Almaty for competitive practices from ₸250,000–400,000.
Google Ads or Яндекс Директ?
In Kazakhstan most search volume is on Google, so we start there. Яндекс Директ is added once Google is optimised and extra flow is needed, especially in Almaty and Astana.
How do we avoid calls asking for free advice?
Negative keywords, the consultation fee in the ad, a page with clear terms and Kaspi prepayment. Such enquiries will not disappear entirely, but their share drops.
Can criminal defence be advertised?
Yes, it is allowed in Google Ads and Директ as long as the ad does not promise an outcome or mislead. For these queries calls matter, and ads should run only when an attorney is available.
When can we see whether ads work?
First enquiries in the first days after launch, cost per consultation after 2–3 weeks, cost per contract after 1–2 months, bearing in mind legal contracts are often signed later.
Same service for other industries
Want enquiries from search this week? Tell us about your practices.
Tell us your practices and cities, the consultation fee and who answers calls. We'll reply with a campaign plan, budget forecast and estimate within 1–2 business days.