This playbook is for trial users at PI firms configuring GavelGrow for the first time. By the end you will have tracking numbers provisioned per campaign, a sub-60-second auto-collision intake firing on every form submit, and signed-case attribution wired back to the originating Google Ads keyword. Most PI firms hit their first signed-case attribution in 4-6 weeks following this playbook.
Looking for the Personal Injury marketing pitch? See /solutions/personal-injury.
PI is a high-stakes, high-spend, high-value game. Industry-average response time is 47 minutes — leads contacted under 5 minutes convert 21× higher. Your setup priority is firing intake automation in under 60 seconds on every form submit and inbound call, before anything else.
PI firms routinely run $25K+/month on Google Ads. Without keyword-level attribution to signed cases, you cannot tell which $2.40 click paid for a $100K settlement and which paid for a tire-kicker. Your setup must connect Google Ads sync, tracking numbers, and case records into one funnel from the start.
PI cases live for 2-3 years. The intake data you capture on day one — date of incident, injuries, insurance carrier, medical providers — needs to live with the case forever. Your intake form has to capture lien-ready detail without breaking the sub-60-second response window.
Stand up tracking, intake automation, and Google Ads sync so every paid lead is attributed end-to-end.
Tune the intake funnel against speed-to-lead and conversion data, kill underperforming keywords, and start filling case-value tracking.
Use 500-firm benchmarks to calibrate spend, expand to underweight campaigns, and lock in repeatable attribution reporting.
Bracketed tokens like [city] are placeholders — replace with your firm service area before launching campaigns.
50-60% of paid budget — these convert at the highest rate and define your benchmark CPL
[city] personal injury lawyer[city] car accident attorneyauto accident lawyer near mebest personal injury attorney [city][city] injury law firm15-20% — lower volume but higher signed-case value; track each as its own campaign for attribution
slip and fall lawyer [city]truck accident attorney [city]motorcycle accident lawyer [city]rideshare accident attorney [city]dog bite lawyer [city]10-15% — strong signal of severity; high case value justifies higher CPL ceiling
spinal injury attorney [city]traumatic brain injury lawyerback injury car accident lawyerwhiplash attorney [city]broken bone injury lawyer5-10% — cheap clicks, defends against competitors bidding on your name
[your firm name][your firm name] reviews[your firm name] attorney[partner last name] injury lawyer[firm name] [city]10-15% — softer intent but cheap CPL; route to nurture sequence not immediate consult
free consultation injury lawyerno fee unless we win attorneycontingency injury lawyer [city]how much is my car accident case worthshould I hire a lawyer after car accidentDrives statute-of-limitations urgency and triggers different intake routing if recent (under 7 days) vs aged (over 60 days).
Auto accident, slip-and-fall, and premises cases route to different attorneys and trigger different SMS sequences. Conditional fields collapse irrelevant questions.
Soft-tissue vs catastrophic injury changes case priority and target retainer. Free-text plus a severity dropdown lets attorneys triage at a glance.
Captures the carrier and policy-limit indicator so attorneys can quote a realistic settlement range on the first call. Lien-ready.
Foundation of every PI case file. Capturing on intake means no follow-up exchange is needed before the consultation.
Y/N + report number if available. Determines how much pre-consult work the paralegal needs to do.
Vehicle damage, scene photos, ER discharge papers attached to the lead from intake forward — survives into the case record.
Y/N gate. If retained elsewhere, lead is logged but routed to a referral-out workflow rather than the consult queue.
Required for compliant SMS automation. Append-only audit trail logs the consent event for defensible compliance.
All sequences are TCPA-compliant by default — STOP / HELP keywords honored automatically, consent events captured to an append-only audit log.
Targets are anchored to the GavelGrow 500-firm benchmark dataset.
Target: $110 mid-market average; $55 top-quartile (per the 500-firm benchmark)
If off-target: If your CPL is above $110 in month two, audit underperforming keywords and pause anything with zero signed-case attribution after 60 days of spend.
Target: Under 60 seconds for SMS auto-response; under 5 minutes for human first-call
If off-target: If median creeps past 60s, the issue is almost always a misconfigured trigger or staff call queue — not lead volume. Check the audit log.
Target: 95%+ of signed cases attributed to a campaign / source / keyword
If off-target: Untracked signed cases mean a tracking number or UTM gap. Sub-90% attribution makes spend decisions guesswork.
Target: 10-15% mid-market for paid PI; 18-22% top-quartile
If off-target: If conversion is below 8%, the issue is usually intake quality, not ad spend. Audit speed-to-lead and intake-form drop-off first.
Target: Track and segment — no universal target
If off-target: A $300 CPL on a campaign producing $80K average cases is excellent. A $60 CPL on a campaign producing $4K cases is a problem. Always pair CPL with realized case value.
Target: 20%+ of missed calls recovered to a booked consult via auto-SMS
If off-target: If recovery is under 15%, your missed-call SMS template likely reads as automated. Personalize the first sentence and re-test.
Today GavelGrow ships English and Spanish intake sequences. Set the form language selector as a required field on landing pages targeting Spanish queries, and the lead record auto-routes to the Spanish sequence. Make sure at least one intake staffer is bilingual or set up a routing rule so Spanish leads are queued for a Spanish-speaker callback.
GavelGrow handles the marketing funnel (click → consultation → signed case). Once a case is signed, export to your case management tool. CSV export is supported today; native Litify, Filevine, and Smokeball API integrations are on the Q3 2026 roadmap. In the meantime, set a weekly export cadence as part of your Days 31-60 milestone.
Yes — at minimum once you cross 100 leads/month. Per-campaign Twilio numbers are pass-through billed at $1/month plus usage, so the cost of granularity is trivial relative to the attribution clarity. Start with three numbers (top campaigns) on day one and expand as sub-practices get their own paid budget.
Build the hosted intake form with the 4-5 must-have fields (incident date, type, contact, consent, severity dropdown). On submit, the auto-collision sequence sends a secure follow-up link asking for full lien-ready detail (insurance, providers, photo upload). This keeps the front-end form short for conversion while still capturing everything attorneys need before the first call.
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