Last Updated on July 27, 2026
Legal keywords are among the most expensive in UK search. A personal injury click costs up to £30. Stack the conversion rates and roughly one click in a hundred becomes a paying client.
That is over £2,000 of advertising to win a case worth £2,000-5,000. Plenty of firms are running exactly that campaign and calling it marketing.
Here is what law firm marketing actually costs in 2026, from our UK solicitor marketing cost research.
What firms actually spend
| Firm size | Monthly budget | Template total |
|---|---|---|
| Sole practitioner | £500-2,000 | £1,000-1,500 |
| Small firm (2-5 partners) | £2,000-5,000 | £2,850-5,250 |
| Mid-size firm | £5,000+ | £8,000-14,700 |
The number that decides everything
Practice area matters more than firm size. The spread inside a single profession is enormous.
| Practice area | Cost per click | Cost per client | Typical case value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal injury | £15-30 | £400-900 | £2,000-5,000 |
| Commercial law | £10-25 | £500-1,200 | £5,000-50,000+ |
| Divorce and family | £8-18 | £250-600 | £3,000-10,000 |
| Employment law | £6-15 | £200-500 | £2,000-8,000 |
| Conveyancing | £5-12 | £80-200 | £800-1,500 |
| Will writing | £4-8 | £50-150 | £500-2,000 |
Will writing costs £50-150 to win a client. Commercial law costs £500-1,200. That is a ten times spread inside one profession, and it means a single firm-wide marketing budget is almost always wrong for most of its departments.
Look at conveyancing carefully. £80-200 to acquire against a £800-1,500 case. That works, but the margin is thin enough that a sloppy campaign turns it negative.
Why the funnel is so unforgiving
Click to enquiry runs at 3 to 5 percent. Enquiry to instruction runs at 20 to 40 percent.
For personal injury at £22.50 a click, that means 20 to 30 clicks per enquiry, so £450-675 of ad spend for one enquiry before anyone has signed anything. Then only a third of those enquiries instruct.
This is why paid search should almost never be the first thing a firm buys.
What each channel actually costs
| Channel | DIY cost | Outsourced cost | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | £0 | £200-500 one-off | Do first |
| Review management | £0 | £100-200/mo | Do first |
| SRA compliant pricing pages | £0 | part of website build | Do first |
| Website | n/a | £5,000-20,000 build | Build phase |
| SEO | £0 | £1,000-5,000/mo | Build phase |
| Content writing | £0 | £200-600 per article | Build phase |
| Email marketing | £50-300/mo | n/a | Build phase |
| Legal directory listings | n/a | £500-3,000/yr | Scale phase |
| Social media management | £0 | £300-1,000/mo | Scale phase |
| PR and awards | n/a | £500-2,000/yr | Scale phase |
| Video content | n/a | £500-2,000 per video | Scale phase |
Two compliance points sit inside that table rather than beside it. The SRA Transparency Rules require published pricing for conveyancing, probate, motoring offences, immigration, employment tribunal and debt recovery work. And testimonials used without client consent are a regulatory problem, not a creative one.
Where to start if you have nothing to spend
The £0 starting plan
- Complete your Google Business Profile with every practice area you actually want work in.
- Ask every client for a Google review at file closure. Firms with 50 or more reviews get 2.5 times the enquiries.
- Publish compliant, plain English pricing for the services that require it.
- Write the answer to the question each department gets asked most, on your own site.
- Track where every enquiry came from, by hand if necessary, for one month.
That review statistic is the cheapest lever in the whole guide, and it sits next to a £5,000 SEO retainer on most firms budget sheets.
What to stop paying for
- One budget across all departments. Will writing and commercial law have nothing in common commercially. Budget them separately.
- Paid search before reviews and content. You are buying the most expensive clicks in the country to send them to a page that has not earned trust.
- Directory listings you cannot attribute. £3,000 a year with no tracked enquiries is a subscription, not a channel.
- SEO expecting quick movement. Legal SEO takes 4 to 6 months to show anything meaningful.
- Testimonials without written consent. That is a regulatory risk that no amount of extra enquiries justifies.
The bottom line
Law firm marketing punishes generalists. The cost per client varies ten times across practice areas, so the only sensible budget is one built department by department.
Start with reviews and compliant pricing. They cost nothing and they lift every campaign you run afterwards.
Not sure where your money is going?
Run a free check on your business and get specific budget recommendations.
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