Worked scenario · break-even CPC
A law firm's £2,000 a month
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Digital Signet. Updated July 2026.
Legal is the most expensive category in the 2026 dataset: $9.87 per search click at the median LocaliQ, 2026 data. A $2,000 budget buys just 202 clicks. The maths still works, because the value of a won case dwarfs the cost of the clicks that found it. This page shows both halves of that argument.
How few clicks $2,000 buys
Benchmark figures are USD as sourced, so the ticket runs in dollars; £2,000 divides the same way against your own measured CPC.
Lot 01 · legal median, USD
The dataset's own measured cost per lead for the category is $131.63 LocaliQ, 2026 data. Our worked figure lands higher because category medians for CPC and conversion rate come from different columns and do not compose exactly; treat the $131.63 to $181.82 band as the honest planning range. Category detail, including the practice-area spread, is on the legal benchmark page.
The break-even test
A break-even CPC is profit per won case multiplied by the click-to-case conversion rate: the click price at which the average click stops paying. Take an illustrative £1,500 profit per case; that number is an assumption for you to replace with your own file values, not a statistic. At the category's 5.55% conversion rate:
Lot 02 · break-even, illustrative case value
A break-even near £83 against a $9.87 median is why legal CPCs stay high: firms can pay eight times the going rate before a click loses money, and the auction prices that in. Run your own case values in the break-even calculator, pre-filled with this scenario.
When not to compete on the head terms
Small firms lose head-term auctions to national spenders not on quality but on tolerance for expensive experiments. If your budget buys only a couple of hundred clicks a month, aim them where intent is sharpest: practice-area plus location phrases, urgent modifiers, and the specific matters you actually want. A high CPC on a precise term beats a slightly cheaper one on a vague term, because the conversion rate, not the click price, decides the cost per case. If your CPC still looks wrong, why is my CPC so high is the diagnostic, and what is a good CPC shows where $9.87 sits against every other industry. Cheaper end of the same method: the online shop scenario.