Meta (Facebook) Ads vs Google Ads for Law Firms: Which One Signs More Clients?

I should start with a confession. I'm a Google Ads person. I built this agency on search, and ten years ago I would happily spend a weekend inside an account. You could be almost surgical with it back then.

So it matters when I say that, for most of the personal injury firms we work with, the bulk of the budget now goes to Meta (Facebook and Instagram). It matters just as much when I say that for a family, commercial or litigation practice, Google is often still the right first move.

This article sets out how I'd make the decision for an Australian law firm: what the two channels cost per signed client when you track them properly, what the wider evidence says, where each one fails, and the state advertising rules that can make the choice for you.

Meta Ads vs Google Ads for law firms: what is the short answer?

Google captures people who are already looking for a lawyer. Meta reaches people who have the problem but haven't started looking. The first is warmer and more expensive. The second is colder, far cheaper, and takes more work to turn into a client.

I put it to principals like this. Referrals are hot. Google is warm. Facebook is cold. Because it's cold, it's cheap to reach people, and the whole question is whether your firm can warm them up.

What happened when one firm ran both for a year?

On Meta the firm signed clients for about $213 each. On Google it paid about $2,440. Both ran continuously for the 12 months to September 2026, with the same intake team working every enquiry.

The firm acts in workers compensation and TPD claims in New South Wales. It had been a search client of ours for years, and it was nervous about Meta. The principal's words were that they didn't want to dig for gold.

Three things are worth drawing out.

The clients were worth the same. Average fees were about $4,600 on both channels. Google did not bring in bigger matters.

The quality was the same. On Meta, 15% of enquiries were matters the firm would take and 9.8% signed. On Google it was 12% and 8.8%. Almost every article on this topic says Facebook leads are junk and Google leads are gold. In this firm's own records, that wasn't true.

The difference was the price of attention. A Google click for this firm costs about $33. A Meta click costs about $3.50. When the quality ends up similar, that gap carries straight through to the cost of a client.

Some honest limits. This is one firm. The Google figure includes all of its Google spend, including brand and Performance Max campaigns, so it is not a pure search comparison. Returns use the firm's own fee figures. And the result has a cost that doesn't show in the table, which I'll come to.

It isn't a one-off, though. A Gold Coast injury firm spent $3,600 on Meta in one month and signed three clients. In the same month its Google campaigns produced about 90 enquiries, of which one was viable.

Why has Google become so expensive for personal injury?

A handful of very large firms bid on the same small pool of searches, and Google has made it harder to control what you're paying for.

Think of Google as a fishing boat with a wide net. You drag everything back. Some tuna, some trout, a lot you didn't want, and occasionally a whale that justifies the whole trip. The trouble is that whales don't come along every month, and the boat costs more to run each year.

The wider evidence supports that.

• Legal is the most expensive industry on Google. WordStream's 2026 benchmarks put the average US legal click at US$9.87 against US$5.42 across all industries, and cost per lead at US$131.63, the highest of any industry.
• Australian injury search costs three times that. Our Sydney personal injury account averaged $33 a click, up 35% in a year. The phrases that signal intent, such as "no win no fee compensation lawyers", cost $63 to $81.
• You're bidding against firms with revenue above $200 million. Shine Justice alone reported $204 million in FY25. The largest injury advertiser we know of spends about $100,000 a month on Google. It is a deep-pocket space.
• Control has been taken away. An Optmyzr study of about 30,000 accounts found budget has shifted from exact match to broad match, which performs noticeably worse for lead generation unless you feed client values back. Search Engine Land reported that the searches Google hides from advertisers cost 52% more per click.

Ten years ago you could generate 20 leads and be fairly sure 18 would be good. Now the search term no longer tells you whether a lead is good or bad. One in-house marketer at an injury firm told me every keyword now produces as many bad enquiries as good ones. That's the modern version of Google: you still pan for gold, but you pay a premium to do it.

There is a test I use on sales calls. If Google is working, why not double the budget today and double the firm? Most principals hesitate. That hesitation is the answer. It's rarely a budget problem. It's that nobody is confident what the next dollar returns.

We've covered the search side in more detail in why personal injury Google Ads costs keep climbing and why your Google Ads leads are junk.

Is Google search dying because of AI?

No, and I'd be wary of anyone who tells you it is. Google still holds 87.6% of Australian search.

AI answers are taking clicks, but mostly from research-style searches. Pew Research found people clicked a result on 8% of searches that showed an AI summary, against 15% without one. Seer Interactive's 2026 data shows those summaries appear on only about 5% of ready-to-hire searches, and paid click rates there have held up.

What I do see is a change in who is left. More of the careful researchers ask an AI assistant and go straight to a firm's website. A US survey found 28% of people would use ChatGPT to research a lawyer, up from 9% two years earlier. One principal told me recently that he found us by asking an AI assistant for law firm marketers. The people still clicking ads are more often comparing prices and sending the same enquiry to four firms.

Do Facebook and Instagram ads actually work for law firms?

Yes, for the right practice areas, and for a simple reason. Nearly everyone is there, and you can reach them before they're in an auction with every other firm.

Facebook's advertising audience covers 82.8% of Australian adults, and Instagram's 69.2%. The belief that "our clients aren't on Facebook" doesn't survive those numbers. One sole practitioner described his own market to me better than I could: his estates clients are probably looking for him on Google, and his injury clients are young blokes off work, sitting at home scrolling Instagram.

If Google is the wide net, Meta is going out for a marlin. A specific rod, a specific stretch of water, a specific technique. If you come home with a bag of crabs, you did it wrong. But because the fish cost so much less to catch, even the smaller ones are profitable, and you aren't waiting for a whale to save the month.

Two things make that work.

The ad does the targeting. On Google the keyword decides who sees you. On Meta it's the creative. Speak broadly and you get broad people back. Speak to a specific person at a specific stage of a specific claim and you get that person back. One of our best-performing ads for a Queensland firm was plain text about a single step in the claims process.

Ordinary beats polished. If you visit ten injury firm websites they all say the same thing. A principal talking plainly to camera is a far better point of difference, and it outperforms slick production nearly every time. I call them ugly ads. People's brains are very good at spotting an ad and scrolling past it.

If you take the Google approach to Meta, "we're Melbourne's best divorce lawyers, come and see us", it won't work. A multi-practice firm I spoke with in March was certain Google was where real enquiries came from. By August they told me Google had failed for them and they were nearly all-in on Meta, with plenty of leads and no return yet. The ads were polished 20-second brand videos. The channel wasn't the problem. The message was.

Meta is not getting cheaper, to be clear. Meta's own results show its average price per ad rose 12% in a year. In our accounts the cost of reaching people was flat, and new accounts settled to $20 to $35 per injury enquiry by about month five. The full numbers by claim type are in personal injury marketing by claim type.

Where does Meta fall down?

In the firm, more often than in the ads. If I'm honest about our own record, roughly half the firms that start Meta with us win quickly and half struggle, and the difference is almost always what happens after the enquiry arrives.

It creates work. The NSW firm above handled more than four times as many enquiries from Meta as from Google, and 85% were not matters it would take. The principal's summary was fair: the leads are better value, they're annoying, they don't answer, you have to chase them, and you need more staff for Meta than for Google. Staffing is the reason that firm hasn't moved its whole budget.

It punishes slow follow-up. When Clio mystery-shopped 500 US firms, only 40% answered the phone and 33% replied to email. That hurts on Google. On Meta, where the person wasn't looking for you in the first place, it is fatal. Our best injury client aims to call within five minutes. See the 60-second rule.

Referral-fed firms find it a shock. Injury firms are used to panning for gold. A commercial or family firm built on referrals has had the cream delivered for years, and the first reaction to Meta is "what do you mean I have to call a lead three times?"

The platform is harder to live with. In all my years on Google I never had anything like the problems I've had with Meta: account restrictions out of nowhere, ads rewritten automatically, delivery outside the state you asked for. It is one reason I tell clients to keep some Google running as insurance.

The independent numbers favour search. Ruler Analytics puts the share of legal website visitors who enquire at 7.8% from paid search and 2.2% from paid social, and more than half of legal enquiries are phone calls, which Meta forms don't produce. That data leaves out Meta's built-in forms, but the direction is right. Cold traffic converts worse. It only wins because it costs so much less.

Where does Google still win?

Wherever the need is urgent, specific or commercial, and wherever the firm can't take on extra intake work.

Family law. People search when the separation happens, and those leads are easier to sign. I got this wrong with one family law client. Early on, Meta looked clearly better, so we doubled down on it, and the client simply couldn't close enough of the leads. We went back to Google, let it settle, and layered Meta on top. You almost want Google on from the start, even while it burns some money dialling in, because once it stabilises the warmer leads are much easier to convert. Our family law accounts return about 3x to 5x on Google, which is workable if you watch cost per client closely. Family law matters are possible on Meta. They just run on longer timelines. On Google the person is actively searching. On Meta you have to reach the right person at the right moment in a separation, which is much harder to time, so expect a slower build and more follow-up before anyone signs.

Google isn't always enough on its own either: one Queensland family firm paused Google this year after 12 months at about that level, because the good matters were too inconsistent once fees were counted.

Criminal law. Someone charged on Friday night searches on Friday night. Our criminal law data shows enquiries continuing through evenings and weekends.

Commercial and litigation. These are researched at a desk in work hours. It was the only area in our data where desktop out-converted mobile, and the phrase "commercial litigation lawyers melbourne" produced an enquiry for every four clicks at $74 a click. A commercial director told me a Google lead who has already been sued and has a deadline is a no-brainer to sign, while the equivalent Meta lead got scared by costs and seemed to expect no win, no fee. See how we approach litigation marketing.

I do think commercial clients can be found on Meta, but not with the offer most firms run. Selling a proactive service is harder than catching someone in a reactive, need-it-now state. "We handle all your commercial law needs" gives a business owner no reason to act today. The offer has to solve one specific problem for one specific kind of business, not appeal to everyone. One construction and insolvency group I spoke with was fishing for whales with an ebook as the rod. There was no pain in it and no intent behind the downloads.

Immigration is the exception that runs the other way. Google is cheap for immigration by legal standards, at about $4 a click and $57 an enquiry in our data. Meta leads are cheaper again, incredibly cheap. The catch is volume. You have to be willing to qualify hard and work through a lot of enquiries to find the gold. Firms that do will most likely sign clients for less than Google can deliver them. Firms that won't should stay on search.

Large firms with their own data loop. One national injury firm I spoke with signs clients from Google at well under $1,000 each, because it feeds signed-case data back to Google and has a full intake team. At that scale, with that discipline, Google works, and I told them so.

There is a floor, too. To scale Google with confidence I'd want a client to be worth $10,000 to $12,000, because a signed client will realistically cost $1,000 to $3,000. One commercial firm was spending more than $10,000 a month on Google to win clients worth about $3,000 each. At that value you're set up to fail on Google, and Meta didn't rescue it either. The answer there was to focus on the work with repeat value and build content the firm owns.

Can lawyers advertise on Facebook and Google in Australia?

Yes, but for personal injury work the rules differ by state, and in two states they change this whole comparison. This is general information, not legal advice, so confirm the current position with your regulator before you run anything.

• Queensland. The Personal Injuries Proceedings Act restricts what a personal injury ad may contain to little more than the firm's name, contact details and areas of practice. The Legal Services Commission's guidance applies this to Google and social media ads and the pages they link to, and says images, video, testimonials and slogans are not permitted. The Queensland Law Society summarises the rules here.
• Western Australia. Part 3 of the Civil Liability Act 2002 also limits personal injury advertising to basic information and bans touting.
• New South Wales. Many articles still say personal injury advertising is banned. The Law Society of NSW says the old prohibition was not carried into the Uniform Law, leaving the general rule against false, misleading or offensive advertising. Work injury advertising may be treated separately, so check.
• Elsewhere. The general conduct rules and Australian Consumer Law apply.

Why this matters for the comparison: everything that makes Meta work is creative. Faces, video, a specific message. A Google text ad is structurally much closer to what Queensland allows than a Meta video is. Some claim types, such as TPD, may fall outside the personal injury rules, which is one reason Queensland firms lead with them. Take advice on your own situation. We wrote more about this in can personal injury lawyers advertise in Queensland.

Meta has its own rules as well. Ads that imply you know something personal about the viewer ("Were you injured at work?") are often rejected, and Meta's 2025 restrictions on health-related data can limit how injury firms optimise their campaigns.

One more thing. Most US articles on this topic lean on Google's Local Services Ads, the pay-per-lead format with the "Google Screened" badge. Google doesn't offer them in Australia, so that advice doesn't apply here.

Which should your firm run, by practice area and budget?

Start with the channel that matches how your clients look for you, and only add the second when the first is tracked and paying for itself.

On budget, about $3,000 a month in ad spend is the practical minimum for Meta. Doing Google properly in a competitive metro market takes closer to $8,000 to $10,000 a month for injury work, and $3,000 to $4,000 for family law. Under about $3,000 in total, pick one channel.

If Google is already working, don't rip it out. It is very hard to undo something that is working on paper. Run Meta alongside it for 90 days, compare the two on cost per signed client, and move budget towards the winner.

Allow time. Google used to kick in within 48 hours. These days it can take three to four months to settle, and Meta takes three to six months of testing. The month-by-month pattern is in how long law firm advertising takes to work.

Why does the measurement matter more than the channel?

Because without it you'll choose the channel that feels better, and the feeling is usually wrong.

Victorian regulator research found 34% of legal service users first found their lawyer online and 59% researched online before choosing. Your marketing matters. But the firm in this article didn't learn that Meta was eleven times cheaper per client from a report. It learned it because its intake team recorded, for every enquiry, whether they spoke to the person, whether it was a matter they'd take, and whether the person signed. Before that, Google looked like the safer bet, because the leads felt better.

It matters for the ads too. Both platforms learn from whatever you tell them. It's like training a puppy. If Google sends you ten spam calls and you count them as conversions, it thinks it did the right thing and goes to find more. Tell it which enquiries became clients and it looks for those. Meta's own figures, as reported by LeadsBridge, are that campaigns optimised to qualified leads cost about 19% less per quality lead, though they suggest you need around 200 leads a month for that to work, which many small firms won't reach. Recording the outcome of each lead is the part every firm can do.

I don't pretend the measurement is perfect. People see a Facebook video and later enquire through the website or a search for the firm's name, so last-click reporting undercounts Meta. For injury work, returns rest on fees the firm estimates at signing, and the cash arrives one to two years later. And I've asked myself whether Google's decline for our injury clients is partly us picking up those same people on Facebook first. I think the larger cause is the changes Google has made, but I can't rule it out.

Where I've landed is not "Meta instead of Google". It is Meta, Google and content you own, each doing the job it's good at, and all of it tracked to a signed client. If you can't yet say what a signed client costs you on each channel, start there. It's the first thing we set up for the law firms we work with, and it's what our growth system is built around.