How Long Does Law Firm Advertising Take to Work? What the First Six Months Really Look Like

The most common reason a law firm gives up on advertising is that it judged the campaign at the wrong moment. Usually that's week six, when the spend is obvious, the leads are mixed, and nothing has signed yet.

Sometimes stopping is the right call. More often the firm was about four weeks away from its first signed clients. This article sets out what normally happens and when, so you know which situation you're in.

The numbers come from PixelRush HQ, where our clients record each lead through to a signed client, and from nine Australian law firm Meta accounts over the 12 months to September 2026.

How long until the first leads arrive?

Two to four weeks from the day you engage someone, in most cases. Image ads are usually live inside a fortnight. Video takes until week three or four, because it has to be filmed and edited. Google search campaigns can be live in a week, but they need a working landing page and correct tracking first, and skipping that is how firms end up with the problems described in why your Google Ads leads are junk.

Enquiries typically start the day the ads do. That part is rarely the issue.

How long until someone actually signs?

Longer than most principals expect. We looked at 219 signed clients across nine law firms and measured the gap between the first enquiry and the date the firm recorded them as signed.

Think about what that means at week six. If half your eventual clients take more than 54 days, then a campaign that has been running for 42 days has shown you well under half of what it will produce from the leads it has already generated. The rest are still in your follow-up.

This is why follow-up matters as much as the ads. Two-thirds of the clients in that data signed more than a month after they enquired. A firm that calls once and moves on never sees them.

Why are the first two months the most expensive?

Because the ad platform is learning who to show your ads to, and you are learning which ads and questions work.

In our Meta data, new personal injury accounts paid $80 to $130 per enquiry in their first month or two. By month five the same accounts were paying around $25. Our longest-running account has then held $20 to $24 for more than a year.

Not every account follows that curve. One Adelaide firm signed four clients in its first fortnight. Others took three or four months of testing before the cost settled. Testing is expensive at times, and it's better to know that going in than to discover it in month two.

The market isn't what's moving, either. Across all nine accounts the underlying cost of advertising on Meta was flat year on year. The early cost is the price of learning. More on the benchmarks in what a law firm lead should cost.

What should you judge, and when?

When should you stop?

Persistence isn't always right. These are the signs a campaign is not going to come good on its own.

• By the end of month two, almost none of the enquiries are matters you'd take. That is a targeting or offer problem, and waiting won't fix it.
• Intake is reaching fewer than a third of enquiries. The ads may be fine. The numbers may be fake, or calls are going out too late. Either way, more budget won't help until it's fixed.
• Nobody can tell you what a signed client has cost. Then there is nothing to judge, and the first job is tracking.
• Cost per enquiry is still climbing in month four. Healthy accounts fall or flatten by then.

One of the accounts we reviewed spent five months on Google at a low cost per click, reached very few searches, and paid about $800 for each real enquiry before it was paused. The warning signs were there in month two. A low bid cap was buying the cheapest, least relevant clicks.

What about the cash?

For family law, criminal law and most fee-for-service work, fees start arriving within weeks of signing, so the campaign can begin to fund itself by month three or four.

Personal injury is different. Most matters take 18 months to three years to resolve, so the cash from a client signed today is a long way off. What you can measure early is estimated fees against ad spend, recorded when each client signs. It also helps to aim for a mix of claim types, including some that tend to resolve in months.

Set the clock properly

Advertising for a law firm is not slow. Leads arrive in weeks. But the full result of any month's spend takes two to three months to show, because that's how long people take to sign. If you judge it before then, you will often stop something that was working.

If you want to see what that looks like with real firms, our case studies show the first 90 days as well as the full-year numbers, and our growth system explains how we track it.