Ad Leverage. Hart-Levin criminal defense
Signed DUI casesUnder $1,500
Criminal defense PPC for Hart-Levin, a Southern California law firm in one of the country’s most competitive legal markets. Built for signed cases, not clicks. Strategy, targeting, ads and landing pages run end to end by Ad Leverage.
See the results
Results
at a glance
Cost per signed DUI case, blended across the full engagement
Lead-to-case close rate, up from the low 20s
Lead quality
Signed cases per month, sustained through 2026
Average monthly case revenue
20 months.
20 profitable months.
Blended return on ad spend
Return on ad spend in peak months
Attributed case revenue exceeded ad spend in every month of the engagement, without exception.
The challenge
One click can cost
hundreds of dollars.
Criminal defense is one of the most competitive and most expensive categories in paid search. Cost-per-click in Southern California routinely ranks among the highest in any industry.
Hart-Levin needed paid search that paid for itself in signed cases, not in clicks, form fills or raw lead counts.
A person searching for a defense attorney typically hires within hours, not weeks. There is no room for wasted spend or slow follow-up.
The strategy
Others optimize for clicks.
Ad Leverage optimizes for cases.
Over a 20-month engagement, Ad Leverage rebuilt Hart-Levin’s Google Ads account around case value instead of raw lead volume. Budget flowed only to the keywords, practice areas and geographies proven to convert into retained clients. Everything else lost its spend.
The results
Better quality traffic.
Better conversion data.
Better results.
Twenty months of Google Ads for Hart-Levin, measured the way a law firm measures it: signed cases and case revenue.
Close rate doubled
Close rates climbed from the low 20s to over 40% as targeting narrowed to high-intent searches, cutting intake time wasted on unqualified calls.
Case revenue beat ad spend in 20 of 20 months
Attributed case revenue exceeded ad spend in every month of the engagement, without exception.
Predictability at scale
PPC became a budgetable acquisition channel rather than a gamble. Hart-Levin can plan around the case volume paid search delivers, month after month.
The takeaway
PPC stopped being a gamble.
It became a budget line.
Clicks in Southern California criminal defense didn’t get cheaper. What changed was what the account was built to win. Ad Leverage tied every dollar to signed cases. Twenty months later, Hart-Levin runs paid search as a predictable acquisition channel with case revenue ahead of spend every single month.
What other firms can take from it:
Optimize for cases, not clicks
Lead volume is a vanity number. Retained clients and case revenue are the scoreboard.
Let proof steer the budget
Keywords, practice areas and geographies earn spend by converting into signed clients. Or they lose it.
Narrow to high intent
Tighter targeting doubled the close rate and gave intake its time back.
Start optimizing for metrics that help you win!
Ready to turn paid search into signed cases? Ad Leverage builds performance-driven PPC programs for law firms across Southern California and beyond.
Talk to
today.