We Spent Millions on LSA Ads for Law Firms. Here's What We Found.

Most PI firms set up their Local Service Ads account, turn everything on, and hope for the best. After three years and millions of dollars spent on LSA specifically for the legal industry, we can tell you that approach leaves a lot of money on the table.

Before we get into the specifics, it helps to understand what LSA actually is and why it matters. ForwardPush puts it well: LSA occupies the very top of Google search results, appearing above traditional Google Ads and organic listings, complete with your photo, star rating, and the Google Verified badge. In 2026, that top inch of the screen is the most valuable real estate in legal marketing. The question isn't whether LSA works. It's whether you're running it the right way.

Here's what actually works.

Start With One or Two Job Categories, Not All of Them

When you first set up LSA for a PI firm, you'll see a full list of job categories available: auto accidents, slip and fall, dog bites, medical malpractice, wrongful death, and more.

The instinct is to select everything. Don't.

Start with one or two, almost always auto accidents. Here's why. The cost per case varies dramatically by category. Slip and fall, for example, can run two to four times higher cost per case than auto accidents. If you're just getting started, that difference will burn through your budget before you have enough data to know what's working.

There's also a policy angle worth knowing: if you have a category like medical malpractice selected and you receive a lead that comes in on a med mal keyword but isn't relevant to your firm, you can't get a refund for it. Google ties refund eligibility to your selected categories. Another reason to keep it tight at first and expand once you know your numbers.

And if the lead costs feel steep, that's because they are. DM Law Partners' analysis of $25M in legal ad spend puts personal injury LSA leads at $150 to $350 per lead. The kicker: you pay for the lead whether they hire you or not. If 40% of leads are qualified and you close 30%, your actual cost per signed case is 8 to 10 times the lead cost. That math makes category discipline even more important from day one.

Pull Your Job Type Report and Build a Pivot Table

Once you've been running for a while, download your job type data and build a simple pivot table. You want to see leads by category, cost per lead, and how many were charged versus disputed. This is one of the most underused reports in LSA.

What you'll likely find: auto accidents and other named categories convert two to three times better than uncategorized leads. But here's the catch. Uncategorized leads, the ones where someone just searched "injury lawyer" without specifying a case type, make up roughly 50 to 60% of your total lead volume.

That creates a real tension. Uncategorized leads are less efficient. But they're also half your scale. Turning them off to chase a lower cost per case could gut your volume. This is a tradeoff you need to make eyes open, not by accident.

We actually brought this job type data to our LSA rep and he was so excited to see it he wanted to take it back to the product team. That's how few firms are actually digging into this.

The Direct Business Search Setting Nobody Talks About

There's a setting in your LSA account called direct business search. In the PPC world we call this branded search. By default, it is turned on.

When it's on, your LSA ads can show when someone searches directly for your firm by name. Those leads tend to convert extremely well and come in at a low cost per case. Which sounds great until you realize it might be making your overall account performance look a lot better than it actually is.

We've gone into accounts where the blended cost per case looked solid, but when we broke out direct business search from everything else, the non-branded cost per case was way off target. The branded leads were carrying the account.

If you're going to keep direct business search on, at minimum separate it out and understand what your non-branded cost per case actually is. And keep in mind: if you're already running branded PPC on the Google Ads side, you may be paying twice for the same person. LSA direct business search has generally outperformed branded PPC in our experience, but having both running simultaneously can push your organic listings down and cannibalize your Google My Business volume.

Message Leads: A Necessary Evil

Right above direct business search in your settings is the message leads toggle. Our recommendation: keep it on. But understand what you're signing up for.

Message leads do not convert as well as phone calls. That's just the reality. But if you turn them off, you lose ground in the auction. And as the r/googleads community notes, LSA ranking isn't just about budget. Google's formula weighs your bid, your profile quality, and your responsiveness together. Dropping message leads signals lower availability and can push you out of the top three spots. In LSA, the top three spots are basically all that matter.

There's also a cost angle that changes the math a bit. Message leads are on average 50% cheaper than phone call leads. So even if they close at a lower rate, the economics aren't as bad as they look on the surface.

The other thing to know is how message lead auctions work. When someone clicks a message lead, it doesn't always go straight to your firm. In some cases, Google groups multiple firms together and sends the lead to whoever responds first. Speed matters. We use a vendor called Juvo Leads that responds to LSA message leads within seconds, which helps response time and auction ranking.

The point is: message leads aren't great, but the cost of turning them off is real. Keep them on, respond fast, and factor in the lower CPL when you're evaluating performance.

Rethink Your GMB Location Strategy

For years the conventional wisdom was simple: create as many Google My Business locations as possible. More satellite offices meant more proximity coverage, which meant more LSA impressions. A lot of firms built out 10, 15, even 20 GMBs across a state.

Our LSA rep told us something recently that changes how we think about this. Proximity to your GMB location only affects your LSA ranking when the user includes a location in their search. Searches like "injury lawyer Sacramento" or "car accident lawyer Charlotte." That's it.

And location-specific searches only account for roughly 10 to 15% of total search volume. The other 85 to 90% of people just type "injury lawyer" or "car accident attorney" and let Google figure out the rest. For those searches, proximity to a satellite office does almost nothing.

So what's the right structure? Use your main GMB, the one with the most reviews, to target your full primary service area, whether that's statewide or a large region like Southern California or West Texas. Then use your satellite locations to capture the smaller slice of location-specific searches. Don't build your whole strategy around proximity when proximity only matters a fraction of the time.

LSA and Google Ads: Not Either/Or

One thing worth addressing directly: LSA is not a replacement for Google Ads, and Google Ads is not a replacement for LSA. ForwardPush frames it well: think of them as complementary tools serving different strategic purposes. LSA gives you top-of-page visibility and the Google Verified trust badge for high-intent local searches. Google Ads give you control, keyword targeting, and the ability to scale without weekly budget caps.

DM Law Partners' data backs this up: Google Ads typically deliver 20 to 40% lower cost per signed case than LSA for optimized campaigns. But LSA has advantages Google Ads can't match: placement above everything else, the Google Screened badge, and a lower barrier to entry. The firms doing it right are running both and understanding what each one is actually contributing to the total picture.

The Bottom Line

LSA for legal is not a set-it-and-forget-it channel. The firms winning on it are the ones pulling the data, asking hard questions, and understanding what each toggle actually does before they flip it.

Start narrow on job categories. Build your pivot table. Know what your branded leads are doing to your blended numbers. Keep message leads on but respond fast. And stop assuming more GMB locations automatically means better results.

The levers in LSA are limited. The ones you have matter a lot.

‍