"Personal injury" is not one market. A TPD claim, a workers compensation claim and a motor accident claim reach different people, cost different amounts to find, sign at different rates and pay very different fees. A campaign that treats them as one thing will be steered by whichever is cheapest, and the cheapest is rarely where the money is.
This article sets out the economics of each main claim type for Australian personal injury firms, using nine Meta ad accounts and the signed-client records our clients keep in PixelRush HQ, for the 12 months to September 2026. Firms are anonymised and all figures are ad spend only.
Key Takeaways
- Claim type sets the price of an enquiry more than the firm, the agency or the ad does. Inside one Sydney account, motor accident enquiries cost 2.3 times what TPD enquiries cost.
- TPD and workers compensation are the cheapest to generate, at about $23 and $27 an enquiry. They also need the most sorting, and the reason is in the claims data.
- Motor accident enquiries cost $56 at most firms and about $220 when the form screens hard. The matters behind them can be worth more than $80,000 in fees.
- Where intake recorded every outcome, cost per signed client ran from about $560 to $915. Against fees of $4,600 to $22,800, both were strong returns.
- What you can earn on a matter is often set by regulation, not by you. NSW caps legal costs at each stage of a statutory benefits claim, starting at $371.
- Pick claim types on the fee, the time to resolve and your capacity to sort enquiries, not on cost per lead.
Why does the claim type change the price so much?
The cost of showing an ad is much the same whatever the claim. What changes is how many of the people who click have a claim that fits.
Share of clicks that became an enquiry, by claim type
Meta instant-form campaigns across nine Australian law firm accounts, 12 months to September 2026.
Almost anyone who has stopped work through illness or injury might wonder about a TPD claim, so a lot of people respond. A motor accident claim needs a recent accident, someone else at fault and an injury above the scheme's threshold. Far fewer people qualify, so far fewer respond, and each response costs more.
That is not a fault in the campaign. It's the shape of the market.
Key Point
A low conversion rate on a motor accident campaign and a high one on a TPD campaign can both be healthy. Comparing the two tells you nothing except that they are different claims.
How much demand is there for each claim type in Australia?
Worth knowing before you pick, because some of these pools are much larger than others, and the size of the pool sets how far your budget goes before it starts scraping.
The scheme data gives you the real numbers. Safe Work Australia recorded 146,700 serious workers compensation claims nationally in 2023-24, meaning claims involving at least a week of lost time. ReturnToWorkSA alone received 15,756 claims in 2024-25 at a cost of $854.4 million. On the motor accident side, Queensland's Motor Accident Insurance Commission reported more than 2,600 claims lodged directly by claimants without a lawyer in 2024-25, up about 20% year on year, and noted that the share lodging directly is "now closer to one third", which means roughly two-thirds of Queensland CTP claimants still come through a firm.
TPD is a different shape again. ASIC's review of TPD insurance found that more than 13.4 million Australians hold total and permanent disability cover, almost 90% of them through superannuation. Most of them have no idea. That is the single biggest reason TPD advertising is cheap: you are not competing for people already searching for a lawyer, you are telling people something about their own super that they did not know.
Search demand tracks the same pattern. In Australia, "workers compensation lawyer" runs around 4,600 searches a month, "tpd claim" around 2,100 and "tac claim" around 1,700. Those are the people already looking. Everyone else has to be reached before they start looking, which is what social advertising does and search cannot.
Expert Tip
Match the channel to where the person is. If a claim type has thousands of monthly searches, search advertising can capture them at the moment of intent. If the claim type depends on telling somebody they have a right they don't know about, no amount of search budget will find them, because they aren't typing anything.
What does each claim type cost per enquiry?
Cost per enquiry on Meta, by claim type
Pooled across firms. TPD, workers compensation and motor accident are each drawn from five firms. Public liability is effectively one firm, so treat it as indicative.
The range inside each claim type is wide. TPD ran from $11 at a firm advertising nationally to $42 at a firm limited to one region. Workers compensation ran from $20 to $31 at four firms, with one outlier near $100 on a very small sample. Where you advertise and how tightly you screen move the number as much as who runs the ads.
For the wider practice area picture, including Google, see what a law firm lead should cost in Australia.
I'll say the obvious thing about the cheap end, because it catches everybody. Nobody wants a $15 lead until they've got a $15 lead. Then the same principal who asked for cheaper leads is telling me he'd happily pay $150 if they were better. Both instincts are right at different moments, and the way to settle the argument is further down this page: work out what a signed client costs, not what an enquiry costs.
Why are TPD leads so cheap and so messy?
Because the claim is invisible until somebody tells the person it exists, and because a lot of people who think they qualify don't.
ASIC's review of TPD claims is the best evidence available on the second part. Across the period it examined, the average declined rate on TPD claims was 12%. But where the policy was assessed under an activities of daily living test, which applies to certain cohorts, 60% of claims were declined, five times the general rate. Roughly one in eight claims was withdrawn before a decision. And the Life Insurance Code of Practice allows an insurer six months to decide a TPD claim, extendable to twelve.
Put that together and the marketing picture is obvious. A huge pool of people hold cover they don't know about. A meaningful share of them won't succeed. The ones who do may wait a year for an answer. So a TPD campaign generates enquiries at $15 to $25, and a large share of those people will not end up with a claim you can run.
That is not a broken campaign. It's the claim type. The firms that do well in TPD are the ones that accept high volume and build for it, either with hard qualifying questions on the form or with intake capacity to sort quickly. The ones that struggle are the ones that wanted motor accident economics from a TPD budget.
If I'm advising a firm going into TPD, I tell them to qualify hard from day one. Volume is not the constraint. Attention is. You are far better off paying $50 for an enquiry that has already answered three questions than $15 for one that hasn't.
Key Point
In TPD the value is in the sorting, not the finding. Any agency can find you TPD enquiries. What decides whether the campaign makes money is how quickly and cheaply you can tell the good ones from the rest.
What does each claim type cost per signed client?
This is where the claim types separate properly. The table uses firms with complete tracking, so each row is one real firm.
| Claim type | Cost per enquiry | Enquiries per signed client | Cost per signed client | Typical fee per client |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workers compensation and TPD, NSW | $54 (Meta and Google combined) | 10 | $562 | about $4,600 |
| TAC, Victoria (first 90 days) | $18 | 52 | $915 | about $22,800, estimated |
Two more firms sit at the expensive end of the enquiry range: a South Australian workers compensation firm at $73 an enquiry, with fees of about $28,000 a client, and a NSW motor accident firm at $220 to $254 an enquiry, with fees above $80,000. Their cost per signed client is left out until there are enough months with complete intake feedback to count it properly.
A few things are worth drawing out.
The cheapest enquiries needed the most sorting. The Victorian TAC firm paid $18 an enquiry and needed 52 of them to sign one client. That's a healthy campaign, but it puts real load on intake.
The dearest enquiries came from the firm with the most valuable matters. The NSW motor accident firm pays more per enquiry than anyone in our data and signs clients worth more than $80,000 in fees. At one point we were preparing to "fix" that, until the firm's feedback showed what those enquiries became.
The same claim type can carry very different fees. The two workers compensation firms differ sixfold on fee per client. Same label, very different mix of matters. Your own fee data matters more than any benchmark.
Fees marked "estimated" are the firm's own estimates recorded at signing, because most injury matters take 18 months to three years to resolve. SIRA's 2025 review of the NSW motor accident scheme puts damages claims at an average of 35.3 months from lodgement to resolution, so waiting for the actual fee before judging a campaign would mean three years without feedback.
Key Point
Work out your ceiling for each claim type separately: average fee for that claim type, multiplied by the share you're prepared to pay to win it. A $4,000 client is expensive for one claim type and cheap for another.
Why do two firms doing the same claim type earn such different fees?
Partly mix, and partly because in several schemes what you can charge is set by regulation rather than by you. This is the part of the economics most marketing advice ignores entirely, and it decides whether a claim type is worth advertising for at all.
Take NSW motor accident work. For statutory benefits claims, SIRA publishes maximum legal costs by stage. As at the current schedule, a claimant's practitioner can recover $371 for stage one, from retainer to notice of claim, and $548 for stage two. Later stages scale with the resolution amount, from a base figure plus a small proportion of the sum recovered. SIRA is also explicit that no costs are payable for legal services in connection with an insurer's internal review.
Read that next to the cost per enquiry data and something jumps out. If a claim never progresses beyond the early statutory benefits stages, the total recoverable fee can be a few hundred dollars. You cannot pay $220 an enquiry for that work and survive. The NSW motor accident firm can afford $220 enquiries because it is signing damages claims worth more than $80,000, not because NSW motor accident work is universally lucrative.
The thresholds matter for the same reason. In NSW, the Motor Accident Injuries Act defines a threshold injury as a soft tissue injury, or a psychological or psychiatric injury that is not a recognised psychiatric illness. In South Australia, ReturnToWorkSA's serious injury threshold now sits at 35% whole person impairment for physical injury claims. Those definitions decide which of your enquiries can become the matters that actually pay. An ad campaign that ignores them is buying people who fall on the wrong side of a line drawn by statute.
Queensland has its own constraint on the fee itself. Under the Legal Profession Act, claim-related costs cannot exceed 50% of the client's entitlement under a judgment or settlement, after statutory refunds and disbursements. The Queensland Law Society is clear this is a cap on what can be charged and recovered, not a licence to charge a 50% contingency fee, which remains prohibited.
Expert Tip
Before you advertise for a claim type in a new state, get your own principal to tell you what a typical matter actually recovers there, under that state's costs rules. Two states, same injury, can differ by a factor that makes one worth advertising for and the other not. This is general information, not legal advice, and the schedules are indexed and change.
How should you choose which claim types to advertise?
Motor accident is the golden child of the category, and it is also the most competitive. Workers compensation usually comes next, then TPD, then public liability, which fewer firms want at all. That ranking is worth knowing precisely because everyone is chasing the same top of it. The firm willing to build for a less fashionable claim type often gets a much easier run at it.
What does the ad need to say for each claim type?
The message changes with the claim, because the person's situation does.
TPD. Many people don't know the cover exists inside their super. The ad has to explain the idea in plain words before it can ask for anything. Expect many enquiries that don't qualify, and plan the form questions around that.
Workers compensation. People worry about their job and whether claiming will cause trouble. Reassurance and a clear first step do more than urgency.
Motor accident and CTP. Time limits and fault matter, and schemes differ by state. Say who you can help, and let the form screen the rest.
TAC in Victoria. Volume is high and cheap. The work is in sorting, so intake speed decides the result.
There's a better way to build these than by claim type alone, and it's the single biggest improvement we've made to injury campaigns. Write to where the person is in their own journey, not to the legal category they belong to.
Someone who has just been to the doctor and been handed a certificate is in a completely different frame from someone who was injured two years ago and has been fighting an insurer since. Same claim type. Different ad. When we built a Queensland workers compensation campaign around journey stages rather than claim labels, the ads that worked were the ones where somebody read it and thought "that's me, I just got that form last week".
One dust disease practice we worked with took this furthest. Asbestos and silica claimants often sit across workers compensation, common law and TPD entitlements at the same time, sometimes across more than one jurisdiction. Advertising to them as "injured at work" would have missed the point entirely. The campaign was built around lodging promptly and the value of a specialist, because that is what actually matters to that person.
In every case, video of the principal speaking plainly has outperformed anything polished for us. A phone camera and a real answer beats a production budget. Our guide to Facebook ads for personal injury firms covers the structure.
Expert Tip
Don't let the platform choose your claim mix for you. If one campaign covers every claim type, the budget flows to whichever is cheapest to generate, which is usually the one you wanted least.
How much screening should each claim type get?
As much as the claim type needs, which is not the same for all of them.
Across the firms we work with, screening runs from a single question to seven. One firm qualifies on one characteristic: was the injury in the last three years. Another runs a motor accident enquiry through seven checks before it reaches intake. Both are right for their situation.
The rule of thumb we use is to screen in proportion to volume and inversely to fee. A high-volume, lower-fee claim type like TPD earns heavy screening, because you have enquiries to spare and cannot afford the intake time. A scarce, high-fee claim type like a serious motor accident damages claim earns lighter screening at the form and heavier screening on the phone, because you cannot afford to lose one.
Every question you add lifts cost per enquiry. In the NSW motor accident account, screening took cost per enquiry to $220, roughly four times the unscreened rate for the same claim type, and the campaign is one of the best performing in our data.
Key Point
Screening is not a way to get better leads out of the same budget. It is a way to spend the same budget on fewer, better leads. If your intake team has spare capacity, screen less. If they are drowning, screen more. The right level is a staffing decision as much as a marketing one.
Can you advertise personal injury services in Queensland?
Yes, but under real restrictions, and they shape which claim types make sense there.
Under Queensland's personal injuries proceedings legislation, advertising of personal injury services is not permitted on radio, television, cinema or recorded telephone messages. Print advertising and third-party websites are limited to the practitioner or firm name, contact details, and the areas of law practised, without pictures or self-promotional statements. On your own website you can go further and explain how personal injury law works, the rights involved, and your conditions of representation including no win no fee. Touting and referral restrictions apply on top of that.
The practical effect is that a Queensland injury firm's paid advertising leans heavily on its own website, where more is permitted, and on claim types that fall outside the personal injuries regime. TPD is the obvious one, because a TPD claim arises under an insurance contract rather than as a claim for personal injury damages, which puts it in a different regulatory position.
None of this is advice on your obligations. Check your position with your regulator or your own compliance adviser before you write a word of ad copy, and treat any agency that waves the restrictions away as a liability. We go through the detail in can personal injury lawyers advertise in Queensland.
Expert Tip
Build the compliance check into the creative process rather than the approval stage. It is far cheaper to write within the rules than to produce a campaign and have it rejected, and it changes what you shoot, not just what you caption.
Does this apply to Google Ads too?
Partly. On Google you can see the claim type in the search itself, so screening is easier, but the clicks are far dearer, and the price varies by claim type just as the Meta cost does.
The gap between claim types on search is large. In Australia, clicks on TAC claim lawyer terms run around $55 to $60, while motor accident lawyer terms sit nearer $15 and workers compensation lawyer terms nearer $14. That is a four-fold difference driven almost entirely by how many firms are bidding on a scheme with a concentrated, well-defined claimant pool.
Our one personal injury search account averaged $33 a click and about $400 an enquiry, with Western Sydney campaigns at $50 to $65 a click. The comparison by channel is in Meta Ads vs Google Ads for law firms.
The useful way to hold the two channels together is this: search finds the people already looking, and social finds the people who should be. For a claim type with thousands of monthly searches, search is capture. For TPD, where most of the eligible population doesn't know it is eligible, search can only ever reach the small end of the pool.
Know your numbers by claim type
Most firms know their overall cost per lead. Few know their cost per signed client for each claim type, and that's the number that tells you where the next dollar should go.
It takes a few months of recording what happens to each enquiry: whether you spoke to them, whether it was a matter you'd take, whether they signed, and what it was worth. Split by claim type, that one table will change your advertising more than any change to the ads themselves. It's what our growth system is built to produce, and what our case studies are made from.
This article is general information about marketing, not legal advice. Costs schedules, thresholds and advertising rules differ by state, are indexed or amended over time, and should be checked with your regulator or compliance adviser.
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