Are MVA leads worth it?
The honest break-even model for buying motor vehicle accident leads — when purchased supply is the cheapest case acquisition a personal injury firm can run, and the four situations where it quietly loses money.
By Tarun Kapoor, Founder · Published 2026-07-30
The one ratio that decides it
Every argument about whether MVA leads are “worth it” collapses into a single comparison: your cost per signed case against your average collected attorney fee. Cost per lead is not the number. A $150 shared lead that signs at 3% costs $5,000 per case. A $450 exclusive lead that signs at 13% costs $3,460. The cheaper lead is the more expensive case.
The working benchmark most profitable personal injury firms run to is this: acquisition should consume no more than roughly a third of the average net fee on the cases it produces. At a $15,000 average fee, that means a signed MVA case should cost under about $5,000 to acquire. Standard auto supply at $320–$550 exclusive CPL produces $3,200–$4,800 per signed case at industry-normal sign rates, which clears that bar — provided your intake desk actually converts.
| Scenario | CPL | Sign rate | Cost / signed case | Verdict at a $15K fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared network, average intake | $120 | 3% | $4,000 | Marginal — thin and volatile |
| Shared network, slow intake | $120 | 1.5% | $8,000 | Loses money |
| Exclusive, five-minute intake | $420 | 12% | $3,500 | Works |
| Exclusive, optimised intake | $420 | 15% | $2,800 | Strong |
| Exclusive, next-day callback | $420 | 4% | $10,500 | Loses money |
Notice what moves the outcome in that table. CPL varies by 3.5× between the best and worst rows, but the verdict tracks the sign rate almost perfectly. Speed and quality of intake, not price of supply, is what decides whether buying MVA leads is worth it.
How many MVA leads do you need?
Divide your target signed cases by your signed-case rate to get the lead volume you need. Ten signed cases a month at a 12% sign rate requires about 84 exclusive leads, or roughly $35,000 per month at a $420 cost per lead. Improving the sign rate from 12% to 15% cuts that same result to 67 leads and about $28,000.
Work the arithmetic backward from case capacity, never forward from budget. Start with how many new files your attorneys and paralegals can genuinely service this month, divide by your real signed-case rate, and only then multiply by cost per lead. Firms that start from “we have $20,000 to spend” consistently overbuy relative to intake capacity and watch their sign rate fall on the leads they already had.
How many MVA leads do you need — and what will they cost?
Work backward from signed cases, not forward from cost per lead. Set your target and your real intake conversion rate; the arithmetic is shown below so you can check it.
Only count cases your firm can actually service.
Exclusive MVA leads typically run $320–$550 depending on state and case type.
Signed cases ÷ leads delivered. Exclusive supply with fast intake typically lands at 10–15%.
Use fees actually collected, not projected settlement values.
- Leads needed per month
- 84 leads
- Monthly lead budget
- $35,280
- Cost per signed case
- $3,500
- Gross fees at that volume
- $150,000
- Return on lead spend
- 4.3×
- Lead spend as % of fees
- 24%
At $3,500 per signed case against a $15,000 average fee, acquisition is consuming 24% of gross fees — inside the range most profitable PI firms run.
We will tell you the real CPL in your state and whether the volume you just modelled is actually available.
What a realistic monthly budget looks like
Across the firms we supply, budgets cluster by firm scale rather than by ambition:
- Solo practitioner:$3,000–$10,000/month — roughly 7–24 exclusive leads, 1–3 signed cases. One state, tight filters.
- Boutique firm (2–9 attorneys): $10,000–$30,000/month — 24–70 leads, 3–10 signed cases. One or two states, a dedicated intake seat.
- Scaling firm (10+):$30,000–$150,000+/month — multi-state supply under one agreement, an intake team, and formal attribution reporting.
Full budget sizing by firm scale is on MVA leads for attorneys, and the underlying CPL tables are in the 2026 MVA Lead Cost Report.
Cost per signed case vs. cost per accepted case
Cost per signed case counts every retainer returned. Cost per accepted case counts only the files that survive attorney review and get worked. The gap between them is your case-selection discipline, and it is usually 10–25%. Budget against cost per accepted case — it is the number that actually maps to fee revenue.
A firm signing 10 cases a month at $3,500 each but rejecting two on attorney review is really paying $4,375 per case it works. If your case-selection criteria are strict — and on MVA they should be — budget against the accepted number and set your lead filters tighter at source rather than absorbing the waste downstream.
The four situations where MVA leads are not worth it
- Your first call goes out in hours, not minutes. Contact rate falls off a cliff after the first five minutes. Purchased supply amplifies whatever your intake already is — if that is slow, you are buying the right to convert badly at scale. Fix this first; see intake requirements before buying MVA leads.
- You have no intake capacity to add files. Signing cases you cannot service creates malpractice exposure and client complaints, not revenue.
- Your average case value is too low for the market CPL. In a state where exclusive MVA supply prices at $500+ and your average net fee is $6,000, the arithmetic does not clear. Consider higher-value case types or a different channel.
- You are looking for a channel to replace, not supplement, owned marketing. Purchased leads are rented demand — the flow stops the month you stop paying. See buying MVA leads vs. running your own Facebook ads.
What the improvement actually looks like
The point above about intake being the deciding variable is not theoretical. We ran an eleven-week controlled test with a Tampa personal injury firm in which the lead supply, CPL, volume, and case mix were all held constant and only the intake script changed. Cost per signed case fell 57%.