Are Google Local Services Ads Worth It for Lawyers? Real Cost-Per-Lead Numbers, the Credit Game, and When LSAs Beat PPC

Google Local Services Ads are worth it for lawyers when the practice is consumer-facing, has strong reviews and answers fast: Google bills per valid lead, not per click, and ranks ads on bid and profile quality. They are a weak first spend for thin review profiles or niche matters needing keyword targeting. Your cost per signed matter decides.

Updated October 20, 2026, against Google's current help pages on billable leads, migration timing and lead credits. Local Services Ads have changed materially in the last two years, and much of what is published about them online describes a product that no longer exists. Marketing information, not legal advice — your state bar's advertising rules govern how your firm may advertise.

There is a specific reason to re-examine that question now rather than next year. Google is moving Local Services Ads campaigns out of the standalone LSA dashboard and into the main Google Ads interface as Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, keeping the pay-per-lead model; once an account moves, the old dashboard is no longer accessible (Google Ads Help, "Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals," article 17213585). The first phase was set for August 2026 and covered selected U.S. home and storefront services, among them plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving — legal was not in it. Google's list of supported verticals places professional services, the category its U.S. screening page uses for lawyers, in the second phase, which it estimates for late 2026 (Google Ads Help, "Supported business verticals for Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals," article 17326460).

So nothing forces a law firm's hand today, but Google's own estimate for professional services is late 2026. Google has not published a migration date for law firms, and its pages are not consistent: a second Google article says professional services are "available starting in late 2026" while placing them, in the same sentence, among categories that "will become available for pay-per-lead goals in Performance Max in 2027" (Google Ads Help, "About pay-per-lead goals for Performance Max campaigns," article 17325249). The only firm-specific warning Google commits to is an email 14 days before an account moves. Treat late 2026 as an estimate, not a deadline, and use the time to fix the operating problems that get more expensive once manual bidding disappears, and to export the reporting that will not survive the move.

How LSAs Actually Bill: Per-Lead Economics vs. PPC's Per-Click Math

Local Services Ads charge per valid lead, not per click. Google counts a lead when the firm answers a call or calls back and speaks with the customer, misses a call during business hours while the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds, receives a text, email or voicemail, or receives a booking request — so the bill is driven by contact events, not by impressions or clicks.

The phone rules are the ones that get firms into trouble, and older advice — including the August version of this post — does not reflect Google's current wording. The help article now titled "How leads work" (Local Services Help, article 7195435) says a missed call during business hours is a valid lead when "the customer stays on the line for more than 20 seconds," and that a call reaching voicemail or an automated greeting during business hours "is charged if the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds, whether or not they leave a message." If a phone menu asks the caller to press a key, the 20-second timer starts after the first key press, and a caller who hangs up without pressing one is not charged.

Two things in that wording matter. First, the widely repeated "a call has to last 30 seconds to be billable" rule is not in Google's current documentation; the number Google publishes is 20 seconds, and it applies to unanswered calls. Second, for answered calls Google publishes no duration number at all: if someone at the firm picks up, "you aren't charged based on the ring time," and the call "is evaluated as an answered call based on your conversation with the customer" (article 7195435). A short missed call that the firm returns is judged by the answered-call rules, and once a lead is charged, follow-up calls or messages from the same number or email within 15 days are not charged again.

The practical consequence is unglamorous. Because answered calls are chargeable and unanswered ones can be too, how a firm answers its phone is part of its billing profile, not just its client experience. Google, not your intake system, decides whether a call is billable: its automated systems filter out spam and duplicate contacts, and charged leads it later judges poor quality, duplicate, or invalid are credited automatically (article 7195435). Google does not publish how it scores an individual call. What a firm actually controls is narrower, and worth controlling well: which contact channels it turns on, the business hours and ad schedule it sets (unanswered calls are charged only inside both), how its phone menu routes callers, and who picks up when the phone rings.

The budget model, and what changes at migration

Pre-migration accounts run on an average weekly budget. Google is explicit that spend can exceed that weekly figure in a busy week, with the ceiling applied monthly — the weekly average multiplied by the average number of weeks in a month (article 7195435). Lead prices themselves are dynamic and vary by location, job type, lead type, and bidding mode. Google publishes no legal-specific price list.

After migration, the mechanics change in ways that matter to a managing partner:

• Weekly budgets become daily averages. Google divides the historical average weekly budget by 7, and monthly spend is capped at the daily budget multiplied by 30.4 (Google Ads Help, article 17213585).
• Manual bidding ends. Google states plainly that "manual bidding (such as setting a maximum cost-per-lead) is no longer supported in Google Ads." Campaigns run on automated bidding, Maximize Conversions by default or Target CPA if you set a target cost per lead, and different Target CPA amounts for separate verticals become one campaign-level Target CPA unless the verticals are split into separate campaigns (articles 17213585 and 17326057).
• Reporting splits in two. Past customer lead history transfers automatically. Past campaign-level performance metrics do not (article 17213585). Google says a download page for historical reports is coming and, until then, suggests screenshots for anyone who needs the reports immediately. If your firm ever wants to prove what a lead used to cost, that record has to be exported before the account moves.
• Verification carries over. A completed business verification and the Google Verified badge transfer to Google Ads automatically when the account moves, and Google says insurance and license reverification are no longer required (article 17213585).
• Notice is short. Google sends an advance notification email 14 days before an account's migration date, with a final reminder seven days later (article 17213585).

Google has not published a migration date for law firms. What it has published is an estimated schedule: service-area businesses, professional services, and accounts with custom bidding or booking configurations in late 2026, then non-U.S. accounts and the remaining categories in 2027 (articles 17213585 and 17326460). A firm that starts now can still do the export deliberately instead of inside a two-week window. We have already archived the lead and spend history for the law-firm LSA account whose leads we review every week, for exactly that reason, and we would tell any firm to do the same well before a notification email arrives.

Real Cost-Per-Lead Numbers for Law Firms, and What Actually Moves Them

Published legal LSA cost-per-lead figures are thin, vendor-published and hard to compare: the personal-injury numbers still repeated in 2026 — a $240 average, $140 in Kentucky, $344 in Los Angeles — come from one agency's 15 client accounts in January 2022, while another agency's September 2026 case study reports $658 per personal-injury phone lead without saying how many accounts it drew on. Google itself says only that lead prices vary by location, job type, lead type, and bidding mode; it publishes no legal price list at all.

Here is what survives a check against each publisher's own page on October 20, 2026, kept as separate rows rather than blended into a single average, because blending sources with different methods and dates produces a number that describes nothing. Figures we could not read on the publisher's own site, or that the publisher now labels a historical planning example, have been removed:

For comparison, on the search advertising side — cost per lead, not cost per click — LocaliQ's legal benchmarks, read on LocaliQ's own site, report median costs per lead of $159.17 for accidents and personal injury law, $103.54 for family law, and $101.49 for criminal law, from 256 U.S. search advertising campaigns that ran between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023. The report was last updated in July 2025, but its data are more than three years old. And note what they are — PPC figures from Google and Microsoft search ads, routinely quoted as though they were LSA figures. They are not.

A 2026 benchmark with 2022's exact numbers

The personal-injury figures in the OptimizeMyFirm row deserve a second look, because they did not stay in 2022. A February 2026 guide from My Legal Academy prints the same three numbers — a $240 average, $140 in Kentucky, $344 in Los Angeles — under a 2026 benchmark heading, and its table credits "Optimize My Firm LSA data 2025" among its sources.

The guide does not say whether those figures are a 2025 re-measurement that happened to land on the identical average and the identical extremes, or the January 2022 sample carried forward, and we are not alleging either. But it shows how benchmark numbers propagate: one vendor measures a modest sample, later pages carry the same figure forward under a newer date, and within a few years a number drawn from fifteen accounts is circulating as a current average. Answer engines then repeat it with confidence.

The lesson for a firm owner is not that any one number is wrong. It is that no published average, however often you see it, can tell you what a lead costs in your county for your practice area with your review profile. Only your own account can.

What one law-firm account actually looks like

The figures below come from Google Ads billing and lead records for a single Local Services Ads account whose leads we review every week — a criminal-defense and DUI practice in one market. They cover October 2023 through mid-October 2026, were re-derived from the account's own records for this update, and are reported as ranges with no firm identified.

Blended across that entire period and more than 600 charged leads, cost per charged lead sits in the low-to-mid $150s. Month to month it has run from just over $105 to the mid-$190s. Take the same account week by week, counting only weeks with at least five charged leads, and it has produced weeks in the mid-$90s and weeks north of $220 per charged lead.

Notice what is not moving across any of that. The geography is constant, the practice area is constant, the firm is constant. A better-than-two-times swing with all three held fixed is worth sitting with, because whatever moved that number, it was not any of the variables a benchmark table holds. In that account the plausible candidates were lead mix, week-to-week competitive pressure, and how the phone was handled — but we are describing one account's history, not establishing a general rule about what dominates cost per lead.

One more distinction, because it is where most published numbers quietly go wrong: cost per charged lead is not cost per lead. On that account only about six in ten leads were charged at all. Divide total spend by every lead, free ones included, and you get a figure in the high $90s — more than a third below the number that matters when you are pricing a signed matter. Both are defensible arithmetic answering different questions — one is your cost per charged lead, the other a blended cost across every recorded lead — and benchmark tables do not always say which they are quoting.

Three levers are worth managing deliberately:

• Intake speed and coverage. Responsiveness is a documented ranking input, and it is also the difference between paying for a lead and earning a client from it.
• Review profile. Rating and review count sit inside the "profile quality" input Google weighs alongside your bid, and they feed local prominence more broadly. Google adds that higher-quality profiles "may rank higher and may also pay lower costs per lead" (article 7527305). Ongoing review management is not a cosmetic exercise here — though it is one input among several, not a lever that buys position.
• Service-category hygiene. LSAs have no keywords. Targeting runs on the industries, job types and service areas a firm selects, plus a broad-search setting: Google opts advertisers into their industry's general category by default, and for law firms the "Appear in general law searches" toggle decides whether the ad serves on queries such as "lawyer near me" that name no practice area (Local Services Help, article 12491364). Bid, budget, reviews, responsiveness and profile completeness all matter, but none of them determine which kinds of matters come through the door. A practice area or general-law setting left on may generate inquiries for work the firm does not want, and Google no longer credits "job type not serviced" leads.

The Operating Discipline: Response Speed, Review Velocity, and Automated Lead Credits

Google says its LSA auction takes into account bid and overall profile quality, and lists the factors as your bid and how likely your ad is to result in a lead, which covers responsiveness, the search itself, relevance, contact channels, and a "profile quality" input made up of rating, review count, average response time, images and completed verification checks. It publishes no weighting. Google's current help documentation describes automated credits and lead feedback rather than a manual dispute process; credits are decided by Google's own models, and two of the categories law firms most want back are excluded under the policy as it currently stands.

Compared with PPC, the levers here are operational rather than creative. There is no ad copy to test, no landing page to optimize, and no keyword to bid on. You still control plenty — your bid and budget, your service categories and geography, the contact channels you enable, your business information and images — but in our experience the levers that pay off first are answering the phone, collecting reviews, and keeping the profile honest — Google documents the ranking inputs without publishing their weights.

Google's current ranking documentation is worth reading in its own words, because the tidy six-factor lists circulating on marketing blogs — review score and count, responsiveness, proximity, business hours, budget, complaints — are paraphrases of an older help page that no longer resolves. Google's live page (Local Services Ads Help, article 7527305) says the auction "takes into account bid and overall profile quality," and describes the inputs as your bid together with your likelihood of generating a lead, which covers:

• Responsiveness — "Your responsiveness to customer inquiries and requests: Missed calls may negatively affect your responsiveness."
• The context of the search — "the service or job a customer is searching for, time of the search, location, and other characteristics."
• Business relevance — "services you provide and your business bio."
• Communication channels — enabling message and booking leads "means there are more ways for customers to reach you."
• Profile quality — "Your rating, number of reviews, average response time, use of high-quality images, the verification checks you have completed."

(Local Services Ads Help, article 7527305.) Note where reviews actually sit: inside profile quality, one component among several, with no published weight. That is a meaningful distinction. Reviews demonstrably belong in the rank calculation, but a firm that treats review count as a dial that buys placement has misread the documentation.

The badge is no longer called Google Screened

This is the correction that most needs making, because the usual correction is now also out of date. For years the right answer — still the answer many marketing pages give today — was that law firms receive the Google Screened badge while home services receive Google Guaranteed with its consumer money-back guarantee.

Both of those names are retired. Google announced on August 20, 2025 that a single consolidated badge was rolling out, stating that "Google Verified will replace other LSA badges and programs, like Google Guaranteed, Google Screened, License Verified by Google and the Money Back Guarantee" (Google, blog.google). The consolidation took effect in October 2025. Eligible advertisers who had already completed verification kept their standing automatically, and Google stated that LSA ranking was not affected by the change.

The screening itself did not go away. Google still verifies "that advertisers hold applicable state, provincial and/or country-level licenses," and its overview says business owners, "and in some cases, service professionals," may undergo background checks, with insurance required where applicable — "the insurance type and minimum amount required depend on the category and location" (Local Services Help, article 6230381). For each U.S. legal category, Google's requirements page lists business owner identity verification, state bar license checks for each lawyer in the firm, professional liability insurance where applicable by local law, and business checks for select users (Local Services Help, article 12174778). Google publishes no single national malpractice minimum for law firms, so vendor pages quoting a fixed figure should be treated as an estimate and confirmed inside your own onboarding flow. For accounts that migrate, Google says a completed verification and the Google Verified badge carry over and that insurance and license reverification are no longer required, though it may still ask for additional business-level checks (article 17213585).

How lead credits work now

Google's current help documentation describes automated credits and lead feedback rather than a manual dispute process. Leads are assessed at first contact and invalid ones simply are not charged; charged leads are re-assessed over time and may be credited automatically. Firms influence the process through a "Rate this lead" feedback survey in the Leads section. Credits are applied to the account balance within 30 days in most cases, and the original charge still appears on the invoice (Local Services Help, "About Automated Local Services Ads lead credits," article 15100654). Google's lead documentation adds that it "continuously assesses lead quality over a 30-day period" and shows each lead as "Charged," "Not charged," "In review," or "Credited" (article 7195435).

Two exclusions matter enormously to law firms. Google's own wording is blunt: "Google no longer supports credits for 'job type not serviced' and 'geo not serviced' leads" (article 15100654). As the policy currently stands, a family-law firm billed for a corporate tax inquiry, or a firm licensed in one state fielding a call from three states away, cannot get a credit because the job type or the geography was wrong, though Google may still leave such a lead uncharged, or credit it, if its systems judge it low quality, duplicate, or invalid. Credits are also unavailable altogether for health care verticals, tax specialists, and advertisers in EMEA. Google can revise any of this, so treat it as current policy rather than a permanent rule — and re-check it before building a budget around it.

That single change is why service-category hygiene stopped being housekeeping and became budget control. The mismatch you cannot claw back on those grounds is the one you have to prevent in the profile settings.

The cap Google does not publish in the help center

There is one more mechanic worth knowing. The help center says a lead can be credited "as a bonus credit for leaving feedback" (article 15100654); it does not mention a limit on those credits. Google's Ads API does. It documents a decision value named FAIL_OVER_THRESHOLD, defined as a bonus credit that is not issued because the provider has reached the bonus credit cap. A companion value, SUCCESS_REACHED_THRESHOLD, describes a credit issued successfully where the cap has now reached its threshold; the same list also carries SUCCESS_NOT_REACHED_THRESHOLD and FAIL_NOT_ELIGIBLE, for a lead that is not eligible for a bonus credit (Google Ads API reference, LocalServicesLeadCreditIssuanceDecisionEnum).

That is documentation of a ceiling on feedback-driven bonus credits, in Google's API contract, for a cap the help center never mentions. What the API does not disclose is the threshold amount, the period it covers, or whether "provider" means an account, a customer ID, or a profile.

Our own submissions on that law-firm account are consistent with a ceiling that binds in practice, and the API names it in its own vocabulary. In the two July 2026 rating passes for which we logged Google's response, nine negative lead ratings went in; eight came back FAIL_OVER_THRESHOLD and none produced a credit. The next pass, in August, returned four SUCCESS_REACHED_THRESHOLD. We report that as what our records show, not as evidence of how the cap is administered — three submission passes on one account cannot establish a threshold, a period, or a refill rule, and we are not claiming any of the three. What it does establish is that the cap is not theoretical. It is a value Google's own system handed back to an advertiser rating its leads every week.

On timing, keep three things separate. Google documents that credits are applied to the account balance within 30 days in most cases — a credit timeline. Its lead documentation says it assesses lead quality "over a 30-day period" — an assessment window. Neither is a deadline for submitting feedback, and Google publishes none, although a 30-day feedback window is widely reported across the industry. Either way the practical instruction is the same, and it costs nothing to follow. Feedback is a perishable asset.

The operating conclusion is straightforward: rate leads promptly and every week, rate the good ones as well as the bad ones, and treat feedback as a steady rhythm rather than a quarterly cleanup. A firm that batches three months of complaints into one afternoon is rating leads well outside the 30-day period over which Google says it assesses lead quality, and Google does not say what it does with feedback on leads that old. As for the cap, it exists and Google discloses nothing about how it is administered — not the threshold, not the period, not whether it applies per account or per profile. Weekly rating is simply the practice that keeps a firm's feedback inside that 30-day period and spreads its submissions out; we would not claim more for it than that.

When LSAs Are Wrong for a Firm: Practice Areas, Markets, and Budgets Where PPC or SEO Wins First

LSAs fit consumer practices with real review volume and fast, wide intake coverage. Google documents responsiveness and average response time as inputs to rank — it does not require around-the-clock answering, so treat extended coverage as an operational advantage rather than an eligibility test. Where LSAs are usually the harder first dollar is thin review profiles and high-value niche matters that need keyword control; those cases generally belong in Google Ads or in organic search first.

One caveat on that placement row, because it is the line marketing pages most often overstate: the LSA unit is not on every result. Whether it appears at all, and where, varies by query, location, device, and auction. "Prominent when it shows" is the honest form of the claim; "always at the top" is not.

Stop assuming the lead is exclusive

One pricing detail has quietly changed the economics. Google's lead documentation says a message lead's price is based on the customer's estimated likelihood to book, and that the estimate considers "whether the customer has contacted other local advertisers," along with the lead type ("standard message lead or Request a Quote"), the service requested, and the customer's previous ad engagement (article 7195435).

Google does not publish whether a Request a Quote inquiry goes to more than one firm, or how each recipient would be billed for it. Treat any confident claim on that point, including from an agency, as unverified.

What a firm can safely conclude is narrower and still consequential: exclusivity is no longer a safe assumption. If several firms can be working the same inquiry, the firm that answers first has an advantage that no budget increase replicates. That is the strongest argument we know for spending on intake coverage before spending more on bids — not because Google requires the coverage, but because a shared inquiry is won on the phone.

When Google Ads wins the first dollar

Traditional Google Ads for lawyers wins when control matters more than placement:

• Niche or high-value matters. Commercial litigation, mass torts, and appellate work are defined by specific search language. LSAs cannot bid on language at all; PPC can, and can add negative keywords to exclude "free," "pro bono," and job seekers.
• When the destination matters. PPC sends traffic to a page the firm controls and can test. LSAs send it to a Google-hosted profile.
• Sub-practice budget control. A pre-migration LSA account runs on one average weekly budget, and at migration Google merges separate per-vertical Target CPA amounts into one campaign-level Target CPA unless the verticals are split into separate campaigns (article 17213585). A firm that wants to spend aggressively on one matter type and lightly on another has only blunt tools for that inside LSAs; Google Ads budgets and bids can be set campaign by campaign.

The liability is symmetrical: PPC bills for the click whether or not anyone converts, and in competitive legal markets a weak landing page drains a budget quickly.

When organic search wins the first dollar

Lawyer SEO wins when a firm is buying an asset rather than renting attention. Paid LSA and PPC leads stop when the ads stop running — when the monthly budget is spent, the campaign is paused, or the Google Ads account is suspended, which Google says also suspends Local Services Ads; local pack and organic visibility survive those events. They are not, however, permanent — competitors invest, algorithms update, sites change, and eligibility can be lost. The distinction is that organic visibility keeps working while you are not paying for it, not that it keeps working forever. Firms with a real budget usually should not choose between the two channels, because one input genuinely does double duty: reviews feed LSA profile quality and the prominence signal Google documents for local ranking. Responsiveness is different — it is an LSA-specific operational signal, valuable inside the ad channel, not a documented local-ranking factor.

The honest caveat: no public data settles how long organic visibility takes to build, because it varies by market density and by what competitors are doing. Any agency that quotes you a guaranteed timeline is quoting you a sales figure.

Are Google Local Services Ads Worth It for Lawyers in Your Market?

The only way to answer that for your firm is to price your own account rather than a national average — cost per charged lead by practice area, how much of it is credit-eligible, and what your intake is actually doing to the bill.

Get my free strategy call. Bring your account and we will go through it with you: charged-lead history, cost per lead by matter type, which charged leads fall into categories Google still credits and which fall into the ones it no longer does, and what your reporting will look like once your account migrates into Google Ads. If LSAs are the wrong first dollar for your firm, we will tell you that too.

JustLegal Marketing was founded by a practicing attorney and works exclusively with law firms. Call 843-619-0229 or contact us to schedule.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Google Local Services Ads worth it for lawyers?

Usually, for a consumer-facing practice with solid reviews and fast intake: LSAs bill per valid lead instead of per click, and Google's auction weighs bid and overall profile quality, which reviews and response time feed. They are a harder first investment for firms with few reviews or matters that require keyword-level targeting. Wide intake coverage is an operational advantage rather than a requirement: Google documents responsiveness as an input to rank, not as an eligibility rule. The decision is properly settled by your own cost per charged lead and cost per signed matter, not by an industry average.

Do law firms get the Google Guaranteed badge?

No, and they no longer get Google Screened either. Google announced in August 2025 that "Google Verified will replace other LSA badges and programs, like Google Guaranteed, Google Screened, License Verified by Google and the Money Back Guarantee," with the change taking effect in October 2025. Screening remains: for U.S. legal categories Google lists business owner identity verification, state bar license checks for each lawyer in the firm, professional liability insurance where applicable by local law, and business checks for select users.

Can a firm dispute a bad LSA lead and get a refund?

Not through a dispute process that Google documents. Google's current help documentation describes automated credits and lead feedback rather than a manual dispute process: leads it judges invalid are not charged, charged leads are reassessed by its models, and firms can leave feedback through a "Rate this lead" survey. Google explicitly no longer credits "job type not serviced" or "geo not serviced" leads — two categories law firms frequently want back, and the reason service-category and geography settings deserve real attention.

Can you add negative keywords to Local Services Ads?

No. LSAs are keywordless: there are no keywords and no negative keywords. Targeting runs on the industries, job types and service areas a firm selects, plus settings such as the ad schedule and, for law firms, the "Appear in general law searches" toggle, which is why category settings carry so much weight.

Do LSAs bill per click?

No. LSAs bill per valid lead: an answered call, or a returned call in which you speak with the customer; a missed call during business hours where the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds; a text, email or voicemail; or a booking request. Traditional Google Ads bills per click.

Does Google charge law firms for missed LSA calls?

It can. Google's help article "How leads work" says a missed call during your business hours is a valid lead when the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds. With a phone menu, the timer starts at the caller's first key press, and a caller who hangs up without pressing a key is not charged; a call that reaches voicemail or a greeting during business hours is charged after 20 seconds whether or not the caller leaves a message. If your ad schedule differs from your business hours, unanswered calls are charged only when they fall inside both.

Is my firm affected by the migration into Google Ads?

Not until Google emails your account's administrator, which it does 14 days before the move. The first phase covered selected U.S. home and storefront services such as plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, pest control, and moving. Google's supported-verticals page puts professional services, the category Google's U.S. screening page uses for lawyers, in Phase 2, estimated for late 2026, while another Google page also ties professional services to 2027. Campaign-level performance history does not transfer, so export it before your migration date.

What actually moves a firm's LSA cost per lead?

Google says lead prices vary by location, job type, lead type, and bidding mode, and that higher-quality profiles "may rank higher and may also pay lower costs per lead." Separately, it says its auction takes into account bid and overall profile quality, with responsiveness, rating, review count, contact channels and completed verification among the inputs that determine rank. Those are two different mechanisms, and a firm's blended cost per lead reflects both plus the mix of matters it actually receives. Published averages describe other firms' accounts, not yours.

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Sources: Google Ads Help, "Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals" (article 17213585) · Google Ads Help, "Supported business verticals for Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals" (article 17326460) · Google Ads Help, "About pay-per-lead goals for Performance Max campaigns" (article 17325249) · Google Ads Help, "Lead quality and budgets for campaigns with pay-per-lead goals" (article 17326057) · Google Ads Help, "About Ad Rank" (article 1722122) · Local Services Help, "How leads work" (article 7195435) · Local Services Help, "About ad rankings" (article 7527305) · Local Services Help, "About Automated Local Services Ads lead credits" (article 15100654) · Local Services Help, "How providers qualify for Local Services Ads" (article 6230381) · Local Services Help, "Business screening and verification requirements – United States" (article 12174778) · Local Services Help, "Edit your industries, service areas, and job types" (article 12491364) · Local Services Help, "About Google Verified badge" (article 16498018) · Google, "Google Verified makes it easier to find trusted local businesses advertising on Google," blog.google, August 20, 2025 · Google Ads API reference, LocalServicesLeadCreditIssuanceDecisionEnum · Google Business Profile Help, "Tips to improve your local ranking on Google" · 39 Celsius, "Case Study: Up To 3X Lower Cost Per Lead For Attorneys, LSA vs Google Ads (2026 Data)," September 24, 2026 · OptimizeMyFirm, "How Much do Local Services Ads Cost Personal Injury Attorneys?" and "Are Google Local Services Ads for Attorneys Cost Effective?" (April 5, 2022) · My Legal Academy, "Google Local Services Ads for Law Firms: The Complete 2026 Guide," February 15, 2026 · LocaliQ, "Legal Search Advertising Benchmarks for 2024" (last updated July 14, 2025). All read October 20, 2026.