Ask how much an injury firm should spend on marketing, and you will often hear a percent of revenue. 5%. 10%. 15%. Sometimes 20% for firms trying to grow fast.
Those numbers get repeated so much they sound like facts. They are not. No one has published reliable data on how much law firms spend as a share of revenue. And even if they had, it would tell you what other firms spend, not what a signed case costs you.
A budget that works starts from your own numbers: what a signed case is worth, what you can pay for one, how many your team can handle, and which channels can bring them in at that price.
How much do injury firms spend on ads?
In 2024, about $2.64 billion was spent on tracked legal ads in the US. That covers TV, radio, print, billboards and online ads, but not social media. It bought about 27 million ads.
Injury firms spend most of that, and a few firms spend a big share of it. Morgan & Morgan alone spent about $218 million. The next biggest law firms spent $25 million to $50 million each. Our benchmark of the biggest injury firms in America shows how unevenly that money turns into Google traffic.
But for your firm, these totals are background, not a target. The firm down the road might spend big on TV because it built its name there 20 years ago. That does not tell you what your budget should be.
How do you set an injury marketing budget?
Work backwards from four numbers in your own records.
| Step | Question | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Case value | What is your average fee per signed case? | $9,400 (an average car accident claim with a one-third fee) |
| 2. What you can pay | What can you pay per case and still make three times that in profit? | About $1,500 |
| 3. How many you can handle | How many new cases can your team take each month without things slipping? | 40 |
| 4. Budget | What you can pay per case, times how many you want | About $60,000 a month |
Step 3 is the one most firms skip. A budget that brings more cases than your team can handle does not grow the firm. Calls get slower. Fewer leads sign. The cost per case goes up, and it looks like the ads stopped working. Our guide to scaling an injury firm shows how staff need to grow with the budget.
Cash matters too. You get paid months or years after you spend on ads. A firm spending $60,000 a month puts $720,000 a year into cases that pay out later. Your budget has to be one you can carry through that wait.
What is the least each channel needs to work?
Every channel has a minimum. Below it, the channel does not really work. If you split a small budget across five channels, all five end up below their minimum.
| Channel | What it needs to work | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Google ads | Enough to show up all day on your main case type in your area. In big cities, car accident clicks cost $200 to $760, so that usually means a five-figure monthly budget. | Less than that and you mostly pay to be third or fourth. If money is tight, focus on one case type in a smaller area. |
| Google Local Services Ads | A steady weekly budget, plus strong reviews and fast answering. | You pay per lead, so smaller budgets can work. |
| Facebook and Instagram | Can start on a much smaller budget than Google, as long as you test new ads every month. | Needs attorney videos and very fast intake. Often the best first paid channel. |
| Google rankings and articles (SEO) | Steady new pages every month, for at least six to twelve months. | The cheapest cases over time, but slow to start. |
| TV, radio and billboards | Enough ads in one city for people to remember your name, for months. | The most expensive way in. Only pays off if your website and intake can catch the searches it creates. |
My advice to almost every firm: pick one channel and fund it properly. Get it signing cases at a cost you are happy with. Make it run smoothly. Then add the next. One channel done well almost always beats five done badly.
Should an injury firm advertise on TV and billboards?
TV and billboards are where the biggest injury firms spend most of their money, and they clearly work for those firms. But they work slowly. They make people remember a name. The payoff comes later, when someone gets hurt and searches that name.
You can see this in Morgan & Morgan's numbers. At least 38% of its Google visits come from people searching the firm's name. That is mostly years of TV paying off. Our breakdown of how Morgan & Morgan gets so many cases covers it.
| TV and billboards | Online ads (Google, Facebook, Local Services) | |
|---|---|---|
| Best at | Getting your name known across a whole city | Reaching people when they need a lawyer, or who do not know they have a case |
| Time to results | Months to start, years to build | Days to weeks |
| Least you can spend | High. You need lots of ads. | Lower, especially Facebook and Local Services Ads |
| Can you measure it? | Only roughly, through name searches, tracked phone numbers and asking clients | Yes. Every lead can be tied to its ad and followed to a signed case. |
| If you stop | People slowly forget | Leads stop almost right away |
For most growing firms, the best order is online first, TV later. Get online ads signing cases at a profit. Make sure your website shows up when people search your name and your main case types. Make sure intake can handle more calls. Then TV or billboards in your city can boost a system that already works.
If you start TV with a weak website and slow intake, you pay to make people curious. Then they call whoever shows up first on Google, or whoever calls back first.
If you do run TV, measure it. Use a separate phone number and web address for each campaign. Watch how many people search your name before and after. And ask every new client how they heard about you.
What should you spend at each stage?
| Stage | Main focus | Also do | Hold off on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 20 cases a month | One paid channel for one case type, usually Facebook or Local Services Ads. Track every lead to a signed case. | Reviews. A fast website with one page per case type. | TV, billboards, several paid channels |
| 20 to 50 | Grow the first channel. Add intake staff. | Start building Google rankings for each case type and city. | TV and radio |
| 50 to 100 | Add a second paid channel, like Google ads for big case types. | Articles, video, ads on your own name. | Too many case types at once |
| 100+ | All the channels that work, each judged on cost per signed case. | Local TV, billboards or radio to grow your name. | Anything you cannot measure |
Where does injury marketing money get wasted?
Most of the waste is not in the ads at all.
- Leads that never get a call. In Hennessey Digital's 2025 test of 1,333 law firms, 26% never replied to a web lead within a week. All the money spent getting those leads was wasted.
- Channels you cannot measure. If you do not know which channel signed last month's cases, you do not know what to cut or grow.
- Loose Google ads. Paying $250 a click for searches that bring job seekers and the wrong case types.
- Every ad going to the homepage. A page built for one case type works far better.
- Paying for leads you do not control. Bought leads can fill a gap. Our guide on whether injury lawyers should buy leads covers the costs and rules.
- Stopping when things get slow. Firms that switch everything off in a quiet month lose what they built, and it takes longer to rebuild.
If you want help setting a budget from your own numbers, picking the right first channel, and tracking every dollar to a signed case, that is what our US personal injury marketing is built for. Our guide to what a personal injury lead costs shows how to work out your own cost per case.
Want us to implement these strategies for you?
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