Case study · 6-month engagement
An Atlanta personal injury firm was spending $26,000 a month on Google Ads and Meta. Their dashboard showed 247 inquiries a month. Their case management system showed 31 signed cases. Half the spend was going toward case types they did not take, slip and fall claims under $5k, and people who had already retained another firm.
The challenge
Personal injury firms have the hardest qualified-lead problem in legal marketing. The headline metric is "case inquiries" which sounds like business. The actual metric is "signed cases that have a path to settlement above your minimum threshold." Those are very different numbers.
When we audited six months of intake data:
The firm's previous agency was running performance-max campaigns with broad keywords. Performance Max optimizes for the conversion event you give it. They had set "phone call" as the goal. The algorithm was perfectly optimizing for cheap phone calls, which meant cheap callers, which meant junk cases.
The plan
We removed "phone call" as the conversion event. New conversions: "intake form completed with case-type match," "case scheduled for attorney review," and the offline conversion "case signed" pushed back into Google Ads via API once the firm signed a client. The bid algorithms started working off real outcomes within 30 days.
Built a pre-intake screener that runs on the landing page before the human intake team gets the call. Three questions: case type, when the incident happened, are you currently represented. Cases that fail the screener get a polite "not a fit, here are some other resources" message. The intake team only sees pre-qualified inquiries.
Auto accident, motorcycle, truck accident, premises liability, dog bite, wrongful death. Each gets its own landing page with case-specific FAQs (statute of limitations, GA dram shop laws, comparative negligence rules) written by the firm's senior attorney and reviewed by the marketing partner. Quality score climbed and CPL fell.
Removed all the case types they did not take. Added negatives for "free consultation" (everyone offers it, attracts shoppers), "near me cheap" (price shoppers do not have real cases), and brand names of competitor firms.
Built a Messenger-based intake bot that runs the same screener flow on Meta lead-form ads. Catches inquiries from people who are scrolling at 11 PM and would not pick up a phone but will tap a chat.
AI tools we used
We do not pretend the work happens by hand. Three of our internal tools are the reason this engagement moved as fast as it did. Each of them replaces what used to be days of human time.
Three-question intake on the landing page that classifies case type and qualification status before a human gets involved. Filters about 41% of junk.
When a case is signed in the case management system, it automatically pushes back into Google Ads as a conversion. The bid algorithms learn from real signed cases instead of phone calls.
Runs the same screener flow inside Facebook Messenger for Meta lead-form traffic. Catches the late-night browsers.
The execution
| Week | What we shipped | What moved |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1-3 | New conversion events configured, offline conversion API live | Bid algorithm has real outcomes to work with |
| Week 2-5 | Pre-intake screener built and deployed | Junk hitting intake drops from 41% to 8% |
| Week 4-10 | 6 case-type landing pages shipped | Quality score moves from 4.8 to 7.6 average |
| Week 5 | Negative keyword overhaul | Wasted spend down $3.4k/mo |
| Week 8 | Meta intake bot live | Captures 19 cases in first 30 days |
| Week 12 | First clean reporting month | Cost per signed case down 38% |
| Month 6 | Retainer continues, expansion to second office | Pipeline of qualified cases doubled |
The numbers
The 2× lift in qualified cases came from:
The previous agency had been hitting their reporting goals every month. Phone calls were up. CPL was down. The firm was spending the same money and signing the same number of cases. Six months in with us, the firm signed 22 more cases per month at a 38% lower cost. Same managing partner. Same ad spend. Different math underneath.
We had a good agency. They reported good numbers. Our case load did not move for two years. After ActionScale rebuilt the conversion model, the partner who hated marketing meetings now asks for the dashboard every Monday.
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