Audit the account and repair attribution
Campaigns, search terms, call tracking, WhatConverts and invalid-click controls were reviewed together. The account map exposed overlap, weak relevance and spend that was not producing consultations.
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Family Law Marketing Case Study
How a California family law firm built a $105k+ monthly case pipeline
Cage & Miles moved from zero attributable Google Ads case revenue to an average of more than $105k per month across paid and organic search in the first three months.
Case study walkthrough
$105k+
Monthly case revenue
586
Tracked case leads
$137
Acquisition cost per case
93
Keywords in Google's top 10
The client and the commercial context
Cage & Miles LLP
Cage & Miles LLP serves families across Southern California, including San Diego and Los Angeles. Its attorneys work across divorce, child custody, domestic violence, spousal support and mediation.
The firm already had experienced lawyers and a substantial content library. The missing piece was commercial visibility: which searches created consultations, which consultations became matters and which practice areas justified more investment.
The delivery team behind Silver Atlas began work in March 2026. Attribution came first, followed by a paid-search rebuild organised around location and family-law service rather than one broad campaign.
Problem and diagnosis
The challenge
Family-law clicks in Southern California were expensive, but the account did not separate divorce, custody and domestic-violence demand reliably enough to show which work was creating signed matters.
The commercial problem at onboarding
The advertising account was active, but no closed case revenue was attributable to Google Ads. Performance Max and Search were competing for budget while services with very different economics sat inside the same reporting view.
That made the marketing discussion too abstract. Clicks and forms were visible; the relationship between a search, a consultation and a retained matter was not.
The first step was a combined review of campaigns, search terms, call tracking and WhatConverts. Once the measurement gaps were identified, the account could be rebuilt around practice area and geography.
What the audit found
- No closed case revenue attributed to Google Ads at onboarding
- Performance Max and Search competing for the same budget
- High click costs across San Diego and Los Angeles
- Divorce, custody and support demand needed separate campaign logic
- Case values were not consistently feeding back into channel reporting
- The two markets needed distinct location and message structures
Before and after
What changed in the operating picture
The shift was from activity reporting to a measurable pipeline connected to retained family-law matters.
Before
$0
Attributed ads revenue
No closed matters connected to Google Ads
Mixed
Campaign structure
Search and Performance Max overlapped
High
Click costs
Competitive Southern California auctions
Unknown
Return on spend
Marketing activity without matter-level revenue
After three months
$105k+
Monthly case revenue
Closed matters from ads and organic search
586
Tracked case leads
Calls and forms recorded in the source period
$316k+
Closed revenue
Logged during the first three months
93
Top-10 keywords
Organic visibility supporting paid demand
The sequence
From zero attribution to a $105k+ monthly pipeline
A three-month sequence built around measurement, intent separation and revenue feedback.
Rebuild search by market and matter type
Dedicated search structures were launched for San Diego and Los Angeles across divorce, custody, domestic violence and related family-law services. Underperforming overlap was removed.
Use matter revenue to guide the next decisions
Closed matter values began feeding the optimisation process. Paid conversions improved while existing organic assets, including the firm's divorce quiz, added measurable enquiries.
Documented outcomes
What changed commercially
Data note: Revenue figures are closed case values recorded in WhatConverts for Google Ads and organic-search leads. Individual lead-quality tags were not maintained consistently, so the qualitative pipeline breakdown is incomplete.
$105k+
Average monthly case revenue
$316k+
Closed in the first three months
586
Tracked case leads
+295%
Source-period lifetime ROI
During the first three months, the source reporting recorded more than $316,000 in closed case revenue and an average above $105,000 per month across Google Ads and organic search.
Google Ads accounted for $178,000 of closed revenue in that period, while organic search added $78,500. The open quote pipeline recorded in WhatConverts was a further $496,500.
The later 30-day comparison showed spend down 10.7%, closed revenue up 22% and reported return improving from 1.68x to 2.30x. The San Diego divorce campaign increased conversions by 73% on nearly flat spend.
Those figures matter because they connect optimisation to retained matters rather than to lead volume alone. The goal was not simply more enquiries; it was enough feedback to identify which family-law demand deserved further investment.
These are client-specific historical results from the stated source periods. They do not guarantee the same outcome for another firm.
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