Case studies / Legal
DUI & traffic defence · MichiganSeventy percent of the budget bought a third of the leads. That was correct.
Haque Legal's DUI leads cost $250. Its speeding leads cost $35. On a lead count report the cheap ones look like the better channel, they're seven times cheaper and produce nearly twice the volume. Measured against what each case bills, the expensive ones are the business.
A Michigan firm running two practices with opposite economics.
Haque Legal defends DUI and speeding matters in Michigan. Both are real practice areas, both produce work, and the economics of advertising them are almost opposites.
We were brought in to run Google Ads across both practices from a single monthly budget, allocated by what each case actually bills rather than by cost per lead alone.
A cost per lead is meaningless until you divide it into the fee.
Cheap leads feel like good leads, and lead count reporting reinforces it every month. But a $35 lead for work that bills a few hundred dollars and a $250 lead for work that bills several thousand are not comparable, and the number that decides which deserves more budget isn't on the ad platform at all. It's in the firm's fee schedule.
Cheap, plentiful, modest fees.
Thirteen leads a month at $35, using under a fifth of the budget. Good work, steady volume, and a fee per matter that limits how much acquisition cost it can carry. Worth advertising, not worth prioritising.
- Leads per month 13
- Cost per lead $35
- Share of budget ~18%
- Share of leads 65%
Expensive, scarce, substantial fees.
Seven leads a month at $250, taking around 70% of the budget. The client reports fees of roughly $4,500 for a first offence and up to $10,000 for a subsequent one, which is what makes a $250 lead comfortably worth buying.
- Leads per month 7
- Cost per lead $250
- Share of budget ~70%
- Share of leads 35%
Two practices that reward budget very differently.
Haque Legal defends DUI and speeding matters in Michigan. Both are real practice areas, both produce work, and the economics of advertising them are almost opposites.
Four things shaped how the account was run.
The blended number would have been useless
Averaged across both practices, cost per lead comes out around $110, a figure that describes neither and would lead directly to the wrong budget decision in either direction.
Lead counts point the wrong way
Speeding produces nearly twice the leads for a fraction of the spend. Any report ranked by volume or by cost per lead makes it look like the account should move money there.
Fee data lives outside the ad account
Nothing in Google Ads knows what a case is worth. Without the firm's fee information, no allocation decision between the two practices can be made properly.
Low DUI volume means slow signals
Seven leads a month is a small monthly sample. Judging the DUI campaign on any single month would mean reacting to noise, so it was reviewed over longer periods.
Four decisions, held for five years.
The first one is why the rest were possible.
Split the practices and never blend the reporting
DUI and speeding given separate campaigns, budgets, and cost per lead targets, reported separately every month. A single blended figure would have hidden a sevenfold difference and made the allocation look arbitrary.
Two readable practices instead of one misleading average.
Set the target from the fee, not from the benchmark
What a DUI lead is worth paying for comes from what a DUI case bills, not from what leads cost in other markets. With fees reported at roughly $4,500 and up, $250 a lead is a straightforward buy, a number that would look alarming in almost any other category.
Budget allocated by case value rather than by lead price.
Keep the speeding campaign funded, and capped
The cheap practice kept running with its own modest budget rather than being scaled up because the cost per lead looked attractive. It's genuinely profitable work at a limited size, and it stops being so the moment it's asked to absorb budget the DUI side should have.
Both practices producing, neither distorted.
Judge the DUI campaign over quarters
Seven leads a month moves considerably month to month for reasons that have nothing to do with the campaign. Reviewing it over longer windows prevented budget decisions being made on a quiet fortnight.
Five years on the same structure.
Where $2,500 a month actually went.
| Practice | Leads | Cost/lead | Spend | % of budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DUI defence | 7 | $250 | $1,750 | ~70% |
| Speeding | 13 | $35 | $455 | ~18% |
| Monthly | 20 | $110 blended | ~$2,205 | of $2,500 |
The blended $110 is the number most reporting would lead with, and it's the one number on this page that shouldn't be used for anything. It's an average of a $35 lead and a $250 lead in a ratio that changes every month.
A firm optimising on cost per lead would shift budget to speeding immediately, seven times cheaper, nearly twice the volume. It would also be moving money away from the practice that pays for the firm.
What $250 a lead actually means
The client reports fees of around $4,500 for a first DUI, rising to as much as $10,000 for a subsequent offence. Against that, the arithmetic is comfortable at a wide range of conversion rates:
- At a 10% close rate ~$2,500 per case
- At 20% ~$1,250 per case
- At 30% ~$833 per case
Illustrative only. We don't hold close rate data for this account and aren't claiming one, the point is the range of rates at which a $250 lead remains sensible against a four figure fee.
That calculation is the whole job. It can't be done from inside an ad account, because nothing in Google Ads knows what a case bills. Any agency allocating budget between practice areas without asking for fee information is guessing with the client's money.
Four things about cheap leads.
Divide cost per lead into the fee
A lead price means nothing alone. $250 is cheap against a $4,500 case and ruinous against a $300 one, and only one of those numbers is in your ad account.
Never act on a blended average
Across services with different economics, the blended figure describes none of them and moves for reasons that have nothing to do with performance.
Cheap practices should stay capped
Low cost leads are attractive precisely because volume is limited. Scaling them usually means bidding past the point where they were cheap.
Give your agency your fee data
Without it, budget allocation between your services is a guess dressed as optimisation. It's the single most useful thing a client can share.
What went into it.
Five of our services, over five years.
Is your cheapest lead your best one?
Probably not, and a blended cost per lead will never tell you. Give us read only access and your fee ranges, and we'll show you what each service actually costs to acquire against what it's worth. Findings are yours to keep either way.
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