Law Firm Google Ads Audit: The 28-Point Checklist for Criminal Defense Firms

This is the checklist I use when a criminal defense firm asks me to look at its Google Ads account. You can run most of it yourself in an afternoon. Each item comes with what to look for and why it matters for signing cases, not just for getting clicks.

Start with section 1. If your account can’t tell you which calls became signed clients, everything after it is guesswork.

1. Tracking: can you see signed cases?

1. What is the account optimizing for? Check which conversions are set to “primary.” If page views, button clicks or every phone call count, Google is chasing the wrong thing.
2. Are calls tracked by source? Every number on your site, ads and Google Business Profile should be a tracking number, with recordings on.
3. Do short calls count? Calls under about 60 seconds are mostly hang-ups and wrong numbers. They shouldn’t count as conversions.
4. Do signed cases flow back to Google? If not, set up offline “Signed Case” conversions.
5. Does every new matter have a lead source and fee? Pull last month’s matters and count the blanks.

2. Search terms: are you paying for the right searches?

1. Read the search terms report for the last 30 days. Mark every search that isn’t someone who needs a defense lawyer in your area.
2. Look for other firms’ names. If people searching for competitors trigger your ads, add those names as negatives. One Birmingham account needed more than 100.
3. Look for practice areas you don’t handle: civil, family, immigration, personal injury.
4. Look for free-help searches: public defender, legal aid, “free lawyer,” pro bono.
5. Check match types. Broad match with no signed-case data usually wanders. See the criminal defense negative keyword list.

3. Structure: are campaigns organized by charge?

1. One theme per campaign or ad group: DUI, drug charges, assault and domestic violence, theft, expungement, federal.
2. No overlapping campaigns bidding on the same searches. Merging four overlapping campaigns cut one account’s weekly spend 38%.
3. Is broad “criminal attorney” eating the budget? In one account it returned about 2× against about 4× for charge-specific searches.
4. Is there a brand campaign? Check whether it’s actually adding cases. One paused brand campaign had spent $2,714 with little to show for it.

4. Location and schedule: are you paying for callers you can’t serve?

1. Location setting: use “presence” (people in your area), not “presence or interest.”
2. Counties and ZIP codes: exclude areas that call but never sign.
3. Impression share lost to budget in your best counties: that’s where more budget pays. One county went from 44.5% to 86.2% impression share after a targeted increase.
4. Ad schedule: run ads when someone can answer the phone, including nights and weekends if you have coverage.

5. Ads and landing pages: does the click land on the right page?

1. Each charge goes to a page about that charge. Check that domestic violence searches don’t land on an expungement page, and so on.
2. Tap-to-call at the top on mobile.
3. Ad copy names your county and the charges you handle, so people outside your practice scroll past.
4. Ads follow your state bar’s advertising rules: no promised outcomes, no misleading claims.

6. Intake: are the leads being answered?

1. Call your own ad number at 9 p.m. on a Saturday. Who answers?
2. Listen to ten recent calls. Did intake book a consultation before hanging up?
3. Check missed-call follow-up. How long until someone calls back?

7. Local Services Ads

1. Are you disputing invalid leads every month? One defense firm recovered about $850 to $1,300 a month.
2. Are low-value categories turned off? Minor traffic tickets can eat budget.
3. Does the budget last all day? If the listing disappears by afternoon, you miss evening arrests.

How to run a 30-minute Google Ads audit yourself

1. Conversions (5 minutes). Go to Goals → Conversions. List what counts as a conversion. If page views, button clicks or calls under 30 seconds are marked Primary, your numbers are inflated and your bidding is chasing the wrong thing.
2. Search terms (10 minutes). Open Insights and reports → Search terms for the last 90 days, sorted by cost. Mark every term you would not take: other practice areas, other firms’ names, “public defender,” “inmate search,” other states.
3. Campaigns (5 minutes). Are campaigns split by charge (DUI, drug, assault, federal)? Do two campaigns bid on the same searches?
4. Locations and hours (5 minutes). Check that location targeting is set to “Presence” (people in your area), not “Presence or interest,” and that ads run when someone can answer.
5. Landing pages (5 minutes). Click your own ads on a phone. Does a DUI search land on a DUI page with a tap-to-call button?

If you finish with a list of problems in several of these steps, start with tracking. Every other fix depends on being able to see which clicks became signed cases.

What a real criminal defense audit found

These are the main findings from auditing Amari Law Firm’s account in Birmingham before fixing it:

Finding	What it cost	Fix
DUI campaign had conversions every month but zero signed cases in its history	Its entire budget	Rebuilt around the DUI searches that actually signed
Four campaigns overlapped on the same searches	Inflated bids against itself	Merged and moved to exact match: weekly spend −38%, cost per conversion −65% in week one
Competitor firm names in the search terms	Clicks from people who wanted another firm	More than 100 competitor names added as negatives
Domestic violence searches landing on the expungement page	Lost calls	Each charge sent to its own page
Brand campaign with little return since March	$2,714	Paused
Jefferson County losing impressions to budget	Missed urgent searches	Budget moved: impression share 44.5% → 86.2%

Beyond Google Ads: a full law firm marketing audit

If you are auditing all of your marketing, add these to the checklist:

• Google Business Profile: correct categories, hours (including after-hours phone coverage), and a steady flow of new reviews.
• Local Services Ads: job types limited to cases you want, disputes filed monthly. Here’s what that looks like.
• Website: a page for each charge and county you want, fast on mobile, with the phone number at the top.
• Intake: listen to ten recent calls. How fast were they answered, and did anyone ask for the appointment?
• Case management: does every new client have a lead source and a signed fee recorded?

Updating a legacy Google Ads campaign

Many defense firms are still running an account someone built years ago, with settings Google has since changed or retired. If your account is more than a few years old, check these first:

• Conversion goals imported from Universal Analytics, which stopped processing data in 2023. Rebuild them with the Google tag or GA4 and confirm they still fire.
• Expanded text ads. Google stopped allowing new ones in 2022, and responsive search ads replaced them. Rewrite your ads by charge.
• Old broad match keywords that now match far wider searches than they used to. Read the search terms report.
• Location targeting set to people “in or interested in” your area, which brings out-of-state callers. Switch to people in or regularly in your locations.
• Search partners and the Display Network still switched on inside Search campaigns.
• Call assets (formerly call extensions) showing at hours nobody answers.
• Duplicate or stale conversion actions counting the same call twice.

Updating an old campaign is usually better than starting over, because the account keeps its history. The exception is when the structure itself is the problem, such as overlapping campaigns bidding against each other. In one Birmingham criminal defense account, merging four overlapping campaigns and moving to exact match cut weekly spend 38% and cost per conversion 65% in the first week. For tracking problems specifically, see how to fix Google Ads conversion tracking for a law firm.

How to score your account

Items checked off	What it usually means
24–28	A well-run account. Focus on bidding for case value.
15–23	Real waste to cut. Start with search terms and location.
Under 15	Fix tracking first. Without it, other changes are guesses.

Get a straight answer on your account

Rather have me run this audit for you? Book a free 30-minute account review. I’ll look at your search terms, your call recordings and what you signed last quarter, and tell you where the money is leaking, whether you hire me or not. I work with one criminal defense firm per city and 12 firms at most.

Or call Henry directly at 612-203-3591. See pricing or the full Amari Law Firm results.

Henry Bell runs Bellringer Marketing, a Google Ads practice that works only with criminal defense firms. He managed paid search and Local Services Ads for Amari Law Firm in Birmingham, Alabama, from September 2025 to August 2026, reporting results in signed cases from the firm’s case management system.