News Flash: Lawyer Pay Per Click Advertising is expensive
Typical article in the New York Times about what everyone in the online lawyer marketing world already knows - many PPC search terms are expensive.
There was much bemusement that personal injury terms and particularly the phrase "mesothelioma attorney" can go for over $50/click. The implications are that there was something unsavory and/or strange about this fact.
The tone of the article clearly suggested that the writer didn't understand much about lawyers or search engine marketing. Or maybe even business.
The bottom line is that if you can acquire customers at a certain rate, and profitably earn back a reasonable margin, then obviously you do that.
No doubt at $50 just to get someone's attention, you either need to be converting a high percentage of these inquiries, or converting a smaller number of them for an extremely high ROI for it all to balance out.
But that's just an issue of successful execution, the core of any successful business.