Case studies / Legal
Expungement & DUI defence · Google AdsA $20 lead and a $175 lead, in the same account.
Kolacia Law ran two practice areas with completely different economics. Expungement leads cost around $20 and returned roughly ten dollars for every one spent. DUI leads cost $175 and closed one to three cases a month, worth far more each, and impossible to forecast. One account, two ways of measuring success.
A California firm running two practices with nothing in common.
Kolacia Law helped Californians clear criminal records and defended DUI charges. The same firm, but almost nothing about how those two clients arrive is similar.
We were brought in to run Google Ads across both practice areas at once, on a single monthly budget that had to serve two very different economics.
One practice paid weekly. The other paid in lumps.
Expungement produced steady, cheap, predictable work: small fees, high volume, and a return you could see inside a month. DUI produced a handful of cases whose value swung enormously depending on whether it was someone's first offence or their third. Judged by the same metric, the expungement side looks like the only thing working. Judged properly, they were doing different jobs.
Cheap, steady, measurable in weeks.
Nobody is in a hurry, the conviction was years ago. Search volume is decent, clicks are affordable, fees are modest and consistent. The return shows up quickly enough to make budget decisions on, which makes it the practice area you can actually optimise.
- Cost per lead ~$20
- Fee size Modest, consistent
- Time to measure Weeks
- Reported return ~10:1
Expensive, lumpy, measurable in quarters.
Among the priciest keywords in legal search, contested by every criminal defence firm. A handful of cases a month, each potentially worth many expungements, but a first offence and a third offence are different pieces of work at very different fees.
- Cost per lead ~$175
- Fee size Large, variable
- Time to measure Months
- Cases closed 1 to 3 a month
Two practice areas, two different clients.
Kolacia Law helped Californians clear criminal records and defended DUI charges. The same firm, but almost nothing about how those two clients arrive is similar.
Four things shaped the account.
Expungement has no deadline
Nothing forces action until something does: a failed background check, a job offer withdrawn, a rental application declined, a licence application stalled. People search when someone else's decision makes the old record matter again.
Most people don't know if they qualify
Eligibility depends on the offence, the sentence, time elapsed, and state law. A meaningful share of enquiries come from people who cannot be helped, not bad leads exactly, but ones the firm can't convert regardless of intake quality.
DUI is urgent and expensive
Arrested last weekend, court date pending, choosing counsel within days. High intent, and click prices to match.
Nearly everyone called
As with our other criminal defence accounts, the phone carried most of the volume. Anyone dealing with a record or a charge wants to speak to a person, not submit a form and wait.
Four parts, run for a year.
Two practices, separated at every level that mattered.
Separate the practices and their budgets
Expungement and DUI split into their own campaigns with their own budgets. At nearly nine times the cost per lead, DUI would otherwise have consumed spend meant for the practice area producing steady, measurable returns.
Both funded, each judged on its own terms.
Write for two completely different moments
Expungement copy aimed at someone whose past has just cost them an opportunity: patient, private, focused on what becomes possible afterwards. DUI copy aimed at someone with a court date, focused on what happens next and how fast they can speak to a lawyer.
Messaging matched to why each person was searching.
Filter the searches that look relevant and aren't
Continuous search term review and negative keywords against the research traffic that shadows every criminal law term: people checking penalties, reading about the process, or looking for information rather than representation.
Expungement leads held around $20.
Measure each practice on its own clock
Expungement reviewed on a short cycle, where cost per lead and return move quickly enough to act on. DUI judged over longer periods, because one to three cases a month with widely varying fees cannot be read monthly without drawing the wrong conclusion.
Neither practice optimised against the wrong signal.
$175 a lead was fine. $20 a lead was also fine.
Nearly nine times the cost per lead, and both numbers were acceptable, because a DUI case is worth many times an expungement, and because the question was never "which is cheaper."
- Monthly media $2,500
- Expungement cost per lead ~$20
- DUI cost per lead ~$175
- Expungement return, client reported ~10:1
- DUI cases closed 1 to 3 per month
A firm running both from one blended cost per lead would see an average that describes neither. The only useful question is what each practice area costs and what each one returns, and for DUI, the honest answer takes a quarter to arrive.
That's the part most legal accounts get wrong. Monthly reporting suits practice areas with steady volume and predictable fees. Applied to work that arrives a few cases at a time with fees that vary by a factor of several, it produces a number that swings for reasons unrelated to how the advertising is performing.
We reported them separately and on different cycles, which meant nobody made a budget decision about DUI based on a quiet month.
From the attorney.
"Great business. They walk you through the process. I started seeing positive results due to their service and will continue working with them."
Daniel Kolacia, Kolacia Law · five star review posted publicly on Google.
The best performing practice area was legislated away.
The expungement campaigns were the most efficient thing in the account, roughly $20 a lead and, by the client's own reckoning, about ten dollars back for every one spent.
Then California changed how record relief works. The state moved toward granting relief automatically for many categories of conviction, rather than requiring people to petition for it. For a large share of the people who had been searching for an expungement attorney, there was no longer a reason to hire one.
Nothing about the campaigns stopped working. The demand they were capturing stopped existing.
It's worth publishing because it's a risk nobody accounts for when they build a marketing channel. Competition, costs, and platform changes get planned for. A statute removing the need for your service doesn't.
For any firm whose practice depends on a procedural requirement, such as record relief, certain filings, or compliance work, it's worth asking what happens to that revenue if the requirement is automated or repealed. The answer decides how much of the marketing budget should sit behind it.
Four things for multi-practice firms.
Never blend cost per lead across practices
A $20 lead and a $175 lead averaged together produce a number that describes neither, and hides which practice is actually working.
Match the reporting cycle to the case flow
High volume, low fee work can be read monthly. A practice closing one to three cases a month can't, judge it over quarters or you'll act on noise.
Expensive leads aren't bad leads
The right question is what a lead costs against what a case is worth. Cheap leads for low value work can be worse business than expensive leads for high value work.
Know which revenue depends on a statute
If a practice area exists because the law requires a process, it can disappear when the law changes. Worth knowing before it becomes your biggest channel.
What went into it.
Five of our services, over one year.
Do you know what each practice area costs you?
If your firm advertises more than one service, a blended cost per lead is hiding which one is carrying the account. Give us read only access and we'll break it out by practice, and tell you which numbers you're reading too often. Findings are yours to keep either way.
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