Yes, for some practice areas, at a cost that depends almost entirely on how the firm handles the phone afterwards. Across the Meta accounts we run for law firms, an enquiry costs between $23 and $77 for the practice areas Meta suits, against $210 to $560 on Google Ads for the same firms. The enquiries are colder, because the person was scrolling rather than searching, and how many become clients depends on the claim type and how hard the form screens. A firm that calls within five minutes and screens in sixty seconds does very well out of that. A firm that calls back on Tuesday concludes that Facebook leads are junk.
This guide is the general version for every practice area. We have separate pieces on Facebook ads for personal injury firms, which is where Meta works best, on Meta versus Google for law firms, and on why most law firm Facebook ads fail. Here the questions are the ones a managing partner asks before approving the budget: does it work for our practice area, what does an enquiry and a client cost, what can we legally say, where does the lead go, and how much do we need to spend to find out.
Key Takeaways
- Meta enquiries cost $23 to $77 in the practice areas it suits, and $4 to $20 per click. Google Ads for the same firms run $11 to $81 per click and $210 to $560 per enquiry. The gap is the price of reaching people before they search.
- Cost per enquiry says little about revenue. The most expensive Meta enquiry in our accounts, at $220, comes from a NSW motor accident firm that signs matters worth more than $80,000 in fees. At a NSW workers compensation and TPD firm, one in ten Meta and Google enquiries signs, at about $560 per signed client against a fee of about $4,600.
- Meta works for personal injury, TPD, workers compensation, immigration and family law with the right offer. Business litigation is promising and still being tested, commercial work is hard to sell before the problem exists, and conveyancing and wills do not work at any budget we have tested, because the matter value cannot carry the enquiries that go nowhere.
- The ad is the targeting. Detailed interest targeting for legal services was mostly removed in 2022 and the exclusions went in 2025. What remains is geography, age, broad delivery and a creative that makes the right person stop scrolling and the wrong person keep going.
- Australian rules are stricter than Meta's. Queensland's personal injury advertising restrictions apply to a Facebook ad exactly as they do to a billboard, "specialist" is a protected word in most states, and a results claim without the basis for it is misleading conduct. The compliance table below is the one we work from.
Do Facebook ads work for lawyers, and for which practice areas
The first thing most managing partners want to know is whether any firm has actually signed clients from Facebook. Our accounts say yes, in some practice areas and not others.
| Practice area | Does Meta work | Why | What we have seen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal injury: motor accident, workers compensation, TPD, public liability | Yes, best fit | The injured person is at home, on their phone, not yet looking for a lawyer, and the claim is worth enough to fund the cost of sorting enquiries | $23 to $56 per enquiry, more when the form screens hard; matters worth $4,600 to more than $80,000 in fees |
| Immigration | Yes | Visa holders are a definable audience by language, location and life stage, and the decision is time-bound | Cheap clicks and high enquiry volume; screening for visa type and eligibility is the whole job |
| Family law | Yes, with the right offer | Separation is private; nobody wants a divorce ad in their feed. A fixed-fee first step, a principal on camera, and three screening questions on the form make it work | $55 to $78 per enquiry on video ads at a Sunshine Coast family firm, against $137 on Google for the same firm |
| Criminal law | Sometimes | The person charged is searching, not scrolling, and the window is hours. Meta works for retargeting and for specific charge types with a longer run-up (drink driving, traffic) | Google and the Business Profile first; Meta as a retargeting layer |
| Wills, estates and estate disputes | Partly | Wills: the audience is everyone, the matter value is low, and the enquiry rarely proceeds. Estate disputes: works, because the trigger is a death and the matter value is high | Contest-a-will campaigns have performed; "get a will" campaigns have not |
| Commercial | Hard, as a proactive offer | Most commercial work is reactive. The director looks for a lawyer once the dispute exists, and Meta cannot see that moment. Selling protection before the problem means the owner has to feel the weight of the risk first. Peninsula (formerly Employsure) has grown selling employment compliance to small businesses this way, with a large sales operation behind the ads | Works for compliance-style offers with a team that follows up hard; Google Ads and SEO for disputes already under way |
| Litigation | Promising, still testing | Meta is strong for B2B because almost every business owner is on it, and a business dispute is high pain with immediate urgency. Shareholder and partnership disputes, director penalty notices and debt recovery give the ad a specific problem to name | Early results only, with far less data than injury. Google Ads and SEO stay the base |
| Property and conveyancing | No | Price-driven, searched at the moment of need, and the margin does not fund enquiry handling | Google Ads on "conveyancing [city]" and a fee page |
The pattern underneath: Meta works where the trigger is a life event the platform can see or infer, the matter value is high enough to absorb the enquiries that do not proceed, and the firm can handle volume. Where the matter value is low, it does not. Business events sit in between: Meta reaches the director easily, but the ad has to name a problem they already have, because a risk they have not felt yet is a hard sell.
What Meta ads cost by practice area
These are our accounts, in Australian dollars, over the last 18 months. Older accounts are excluded from anything involving signed clients or revenue, because the tracking was not closed-loop that far back. The accounts are described by place and type rather than name.
Meta ads cost per enquiry by practice area, our accounts, 2025 to 2026
Cost per click across these accounts: $2.40 to $5.70. Google Ads for the same firms: $210 family, $400 personal injury, $560 commercial litigation per enquiry.
The NSW motor accident campaign at $220 is the most expensive enquiry on the chart, and the firm running it is happy with it. The form asks four screening questions before it submits, because the firm only wants claims above a threshold, and each client it signs is worth more than $80,000 in fees. Its cost per enquiry is eight times the general injury figure and has nothing to do with what the campaign earns. Screening moves the cost to the front of the funnel, where it belongs, and spares the intake team from calling people the firm would never act for.
A cost per enquiry only means something next to what a signed client is worth:
| Firm, by place and type | Cost per enquiry | Typical fee per signed client |
|---|---|---|
| Workers compensation and TPD firm, NSW | $54 (Meta and Google combined) | About $4,600 |
| TAC firm, Victoria, first 90 days | $18 | About $22,800, estimated |
| Workers compensation firm, Adelaide | $73 | About $28,000 |
| Motor accident firm, NSW | $220 | More than $80,000, estimated |
| Family law firm, Brisbane and Gold Coast | $140 | Varies, from consent orders to contested property matters |
Cost per signed client is the number to run the decision on, and it needs months where intake recorded what happened to every enquiry. In those months, the NSW workers compensation and TPD firm signed one in ten enquiries at about $560 per client, and the Victorian TAC firm signed one in 52 at about $915 per client in its first 90 days. Both are a small share of the fee.
The injury figures are broken down by claim type and state in personal injury marketing by claim type, and the family law figures in family law marketing.
Why the leads feel worse than Google leads, and what the trackers say
A Google Ads enquiry typed "workers compensation lawyer Parramatta" and clicked an ad. A Meta enquiry watched a thirty-second video about what happens after a workplace injury, thought "that is me", and tapped a form. The first person has decided to find a lawyer. The second has decided to find out whether they have a problem. Both can become clients; they need different handling.
| Google Ads enquiry | Meta enquiry | |
|---|---|---|
| State of mind | Ready to hire, comparing firms | Curious, often not yet aware a claim exists |
| Share reached on first call attempt | About half | Under half; many submitted the form at night |
| Share that sign, injury accounts | Higher; the person has already decided to hire | 4% to 15% |
| Time to sign | Days | Days to weeks; a nurture sequence lifts it |
| What kills it | Slow callback, voicemail | Slow callback, a lawyer who opens with legal questions instead of listening, no follow-up after one attempt |
| What the firm needs | Someone to answer the phone | A screening script, a three-call cadence, a text sequence, and a CRM that reports which ads produced the signed clients |
The Victorian TAC firm with the $18 enquiries nearly paused its campaign at the three-month mark because the principal felt the quality was mixed. Her tracker said something else: the enquiries that were reached quickly were signing, and the ones that waited had spoken to another firm. She took the calls back herself, narrowed the ads to the claim type she knew best, and signed nine clients in the quarter. The cadence she used is in how personal injury firms improve intake and it applies to every practice area in this article.
Key Point
Meta does not produce bad leads. It produces early leads, and early leads need a process. Every firm we have seen conclude that "Facebook leads are junk" was measuring its own follow-up.
The ad is the targeting
Laser targeting on Meta still exists. The control has moved. In January 2022 Meta removed the detailed targeting options tied to health, religion, politics and other sensitive categories, which took "personal injury" and most legal interests with it, and in March 2025 it removed detailed targeting exclusions altogether. The ad set and audience settings now do very little of the narrowing. The offer and what the creative says do almost all of it: an ad that names a precise situation reaches precisely the people in it.
What a law firm can still set in the ad set:
| Targeting lever | Still available | How we use it |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Yes, radius or region | The firm's catchment, which for an injury firm is the whole state and for a suburban family firm is 15 to 25 kilometres |
| Age | Yes | 25 to 65 for most legal work; wider for TPD, narrower for family |
| Language | Yes | The lever that makes immigration work |
| Broad or Advantage+ audience | Yes | The default for prospecting in 2026; the algorithm finds the people who respond to the creative |
| Interest and behaviour targeting | Mostly removed for legal | Not relied on |
| Custom audiences from the website or CRM | Yes, but small for a law firm | Retargeting video viewers and site visitors; the firm's past enquiry list uploaded with consent |
| Lookalike of signed clients | Yes | Useful once the firm has a few hundred signed clients in the CRM |
| Special ad categories | Not applicable to legal services | Housing, employment, credit and social issues have restricted targeting; a legal ad is not in those categories unless it is about one of them |
Everything else happens in the creative. A video that opens with "if you were hurt at work in Queensland and your employer's insurer has stopped paying" is seen by millions and acted on by the few hundred it describes. The algorithm then finds more people like the ones who acted. The words in the ad do the targeting the interest menu used to, and they can be narrower than the menu ever was.
What that creative looks like, from the ads that produced signed clients rather than the ones that produced clicks:
| Format | Share of spend | What works | What does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founder or principal to camera, vertical video, 30 to 60 seconds | 50% to 60% | A specific situation, in plain language, then what to do next. The lawyer the person will actually speak to | A receptionist reading a script; stock footage; the firm's history |
| De-identified client story | 15% to 25% | "A warehouse worker in Dandenong came to us eight months after a back injury..." with the outcome stated carefully and within the state's rules | Named clients, settlement amounts in Queensland, any guarantee |
| Educational carousel or static | 10% to 20% | "Four things the insurer will not tell you after a car accident" | Generic "we fight for you" imagery |
| Retargeting | 5% to 10% | A second video for people who watched most of the first one | Website visitor retargeting on its own, which has weakened as the pixel has |
Meta's personal attributes policy still applies to the copy: an ad may describe a situation ("if you have been injured at work") and may not assert something about the viewer ("you have been injured at work"). Third person, situation not viewer, is the habit that keeps ads from being rejected.
What you can and cannot say in an Australian law firm ad
Every US guide to this topic has a compliance checklist built on American bar rules. None of it applies here, and the Australian rules are in some respects stricter. This is the table we check every ad against.
| Rule | Where it applies | What it means for a Meta ad |
|---|---|---|
| Personal Injuries Proceedings Act 2002 (Qld), Chapter 3 Part 1 | Queensland personal injury | A firm cannot advertise personal injury services except by a statement of name, contact details and area of practice. No touting, no inducements, no "no win no fee" promotion, no case outcomes. A Facebook ad from a Queensland injury firm that says more than that is an offence. The Queensland firms we work with run Meta only within these limits, and the piece on whether personal injury lawyers can advertise in Queensland covers the detail |
| Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW, Victoria, WA) and the equivalent Acts in Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, ACT and the NT | All practice areas | Advertising must not be false, misleading or deceptive; the same standard as the Australian Consumer Law, applied to a profession with its own regulator |
| "Specialist" and "accredited specialist" | All states | Only a lawyer holding the relevant Law Society or Law Institute accreditation can use the term. "Specialist family lawyers" from a firm with no accredited specialist is a common and sanctionable ad |
| Results and success rates | All states | "98% success rate" with no defined basis is misleading conduct. Outcomes must be true, representative and, in Queensland for injury, not stated at all |
| Testimonials | All states | Permitted in Australia, unlike some US jurisdictions, if genuine and not misleading. Client confidentiality means the client must consent and the matter must not be identifiable without that consent |
| "No win, no fee" | All states except Queensland injury | Permitted with the conditions clear; disbursements and the uplift must not be hidden. In Queensland for personal injury it cannot be advertised |
| Costs disclosure | All states | A fixed fee in an ad is a representation; the firm has to honour it and disclose what it excludes |
Meta's own review sits on top of this and is inconsistent. Ads from law firms get rejected for "personal attributes" and occasionally under the policies that cover litigation recruitment, which drew attention in 2026 when Meta removed ads recruiting plaintiffs for cases against Meta itself. A rejected ad is appealed with the policy text and usually reinstated; a pattern of rejections gets the ad account restricted, and that costs weeks.
Lead forms or landing pages
Both work. They produce different enquiries and suit different practice areas.
| Instant form on Meta | Landing page on the firm's site | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per enquiry | Lowest; the person never leaves the app | 30% to 80% higher in our accounts |
| Enquiry quality | Lower unless the form screens; Meta pre-fills name and number so a tap is enough | Higher; the person chose to leave the app and read |
| Screening | Three to four custom questions, the "higher intent" review step, and conditional logic | A quiz funnel or a sales letter that qualifies before the form, as described in the personal injury landing page guide |
| Speed to lead | Must be wired to the CRM and phone in minutes; the native leads inbox is where enquiries go to die | The form posts to the CRM directly |
| Best for | Injury claims at volume, immigration, retargeting | Family law, estate disputes, any matter where the person needs to read before they will enquire |
The Sunshine Coast family firm's $55 to $78 enquiries came from an instant form with three screening questions: the matter type, whether there were children or property involved, and whether the person could fund their own representation. The third question removes most of the enquiries a family firm cannot act on, and it is the reason the firm's enquiry cost is higher than an unscreened form would produce and its signed rate is worth having.
Whichever is used, the form submission is a conversion event and the signed client is the one that matters. Firms with a few hundred enquiries a month can send signed-client data back to Meta through the Conversions API from the CRM, which lets the algorithm optimise for people who sign rather than people who tap. Smaller firms optimise for a screened form submission and do the second half by hand. The closed-loop tracking that reports which ad produced which signed client is described in how to tell if marketing is working for your injury firm.
How much a law firm needs to spend
The question underneath "is $1,000 enough" is whether the account can learn. Meta's delivery system needs roughly fifty of the optimised event per ad set per week to leave the learning phase and stabilise. At the costs above, that sets a floor.
| Practice area | Cost per enquiry, our accounts | Weekly spend for about 50 enquiries | Minimum we recommend starting with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal injury, TPD, workers compensation | $23 to $56 | $1,200 to $2,800 | $100 a day |
| Family law, with screening questions | $55 to $78 | $2,800 to $3,900 | $100 a day, accepting a longer learning period |
| Immigration and estate disputes | Between the two bands above in the accounts we have run, and dependent on screening | $1,500 to $4,000 | $100 a day |
A firm that cannot fund the minimum should not run Meta half-heartedly. $1,000 over a month is $33 a day, which produces perhaps thirty injury enquiries and two or three clients if the follow-up is excellent, and tells the firm nothing reliable about whether the channel works for it. The same $1,000 on Google Ads for a criminal or family firm produces fewer, warmer enquiries and a clearer answer. The budget guide for law firms is in how much lawyers spend on marketing.
Scaling, once the account works, is 20% a week on the ad sets that are producing signed clients, not doubling the budget on a Monday, which resets learning. Creative is refreshed every two to three weeks, because frequency above three or four in a local audience is where cost per enquiry starts to climb.
How to know in 30 days whether it is working
The firm should not need the agency's report to answer this. Four numbers, from the firm's own CRM and phone system:
A firm that has all four by day 30 knows more about its Meta account than most firms know after a year. A firm that has only the agency's cost per lead knows nothing it can act on, because cost per lead is the one number that is easy to make look good.
Where Meta sits against the other channels
Meta is the channel that reaches people before they search. It is not the first channel for most firms, and it is not a replacement for the ones that catch people at the moment of need.
| Firm situation | First | Second | Where Meta fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Injury firm, any size, with intake capacity | Meta and Google together | Business Profile and reviews | Primary channel; it produces the volume |
| Family firm, suburban or regional | Google Ads on service and location terms, Business Profile | A site that converts | Third, with a fixed-fee offer and video from the principal |
| Criminal firm | Business Profile, Google Ads | A site that loads fast at 2am | Retargeting only |
| Immigration firm | Meta | Google Ads on visa terms | Primary, by language |
| Commercial firm | SEO at volume, Google Ads | LinkedIn for the partners | Only with a compliance-style offer and a sales team behind it |
| Litigation firm | Google Ads, SEO | Business Profile and reviews | A test budget on specific disputes: shareholder, partnership, director penalty notices |
The comparison by cost and by lead temperature is in Meta versus Google Ads for law firms, and the overall channel map in how to market a law firm in Australia. If the firm does injury or immigration work and has someone who will answer the phone in five minutes, Meta is the cheapest client acquisition in legal marketing. If it is not, start somewhere else and come back when it is.
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