What is cost per signed case?
Cost per signed case (CPSC) is total acquisition spend divided by cases actually signed, and it is the only figure that compares buying leads with buying retainers. For leads it equals cost per lead divided by your signed-case rate: a $420 lead at a 12% sign rate is $3,500 per case. For a signed retainer it is the sticker price. Cost per lead compares nothing, because the two products convert at completely different rates.
The metric goes by several names — CPSC, cost per retained client, case acquisition cost, cost per acquisition. They describe the same division. What differs between vendors is which costs go in the numerator, and that is where most comparisons quietly break.
The formula, and the version that is honest
CPSC = total acquisition spend ÷ cases signed
For per-lead supply this reduces to cost per lead ÷ signed-case rate. A $420 lead at a 12% sign rate is $3,500 per case; the same lead at 6% is $7,000. Nothing about the lead changed.
The media-only version above is what every vendor in this category publishes, including us. The loaded version adds intake labour, software, and the cases you lose after signing — and it is the only one that can fairly compare buying leads against buying pre-signed cases, because the two models put those costs in completely different places. The full cost stack works through both.
2026 benchmarks by acquisition channel
| Channel | Unit price | Conversion | Cost per signed case | What the number hides |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exclusive MVA leads | $585–$1,105 per lead | 10–15% signed | $3,900–$11,050 | Media only. Add intake labour and software for a true figure. |
| Live transfer calls | $80–$250 per qualified call | 15–25% signed | $400–$1,600 | Cheapest per case on paper, but only converts during staffed hours. |
| Shared / network leads | $40–$120 per lead | 3–6% signed | $800–$3,900 | The cheap unit that is rarely the cheap case. Contact rate collapses. |
| Aged leads | $1–$60 per lead | 1–3% signed | $500–$5,000+ | Only sane with spare dialer capacity already paid for. |
| Signed retainers | $1,500–$20,000+ per case | No conversion step | The sticker price | Adjust for discharge rate — a case that leaves cost full price. |
| Your own paid search | $15,000–$30,000/mo in a competitive metro | Varies wildly by intake | $1,200–$6,000 | Builds an asset you keep. Takes 60–90 days to read honestly. |
By case type
Case type moves the signed-case rate, not our lead price — cost per lead is flat per market. On the retainer side it moves the sticker price directly.
| Case type | Sign rate on exclusive leads | CPSC from leads | Signed retainer price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard auto | 10–15% | $3,900–$11,050 | $2,500–$4,800 |
| Motorcycle | 9–14% | $4,200–$12,300 | $3,500–$6,500 |
| Pedestrian | 8–13% | $4,500–$13,800 | $7,000–$15,000 |
| Commercial truck | 6–11% | $5,300–$18,400 | $10,000–$20,000+ |
| Wrongful death | 5–9% | $6,500–$22,100+ | $10,000–$20,000+ |
Retainer prices are other vendors’ published claims for the nearest equivalent tier — we do not sell that product. Full comparison on signed MVA retainers.
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.
Price is flat per market and does not vary by case type — $585–$1,105 depending on the state.
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
- $49,140
- Cost per signed case
- $4,875
- Gross fees at that volume
- $150,000
- Return on lead spend
- 3.1×
- Lead spend as % of fees
- 33%
At $4,875 per signed case against a $15,000 average fee, acquisition is consuming 33% 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.
Four costs almost every published CPSC leaves out
A specialist costing $55,000 fully loaded who signs eight cases a month adds roughly $570 to every signed case. Media-only CPSC figures — including most of ours — exclude this. Compare like with like or the lead side looks artificially cheap.
Cases that discharge before resolution cost full price and return nothing. Cost per surviving case is sticker divided by the survival rate. On purchased retainers this is the single largest unpublished variable in the category.
If 8% of delivered leads are credited, your effective cost per usable lead is 8% higher than the rate card unless credits are applied before you calculate. Check whether your figure uses delivered or billed units.
A case acquired today produces fee revenue in 9–24 months. CPSC says nothing about working capital, which is the constraint that actually caps most firms' growth rate.
What a good cost per signed case looks like
Profitable personal injury firms typically run marketing at 10–20% of collected fee revenue, and treat cost per signed case against roughly one third of average case fee as the ceiling for any single channel. A firm collecting $2M in fees can therefore support $200,000–$400,000 of annual acquisition spend — which at $3,500 per signed case funds 55 to 115 new cases.
The widely quoted ceiling in this category is that acquisition should stay inside 5–10% of the average attorney fee. On a $15,000 average fee that implies $750–$1,500 per signed case, which almost nothing in the current market meets — our own standard-auto band starts at $3,900. Treat 5–10% as a target worth driving toward, and one third of average fee as the point at which a channel stops being viable.
Other people’s numbers
| Figure | Claim & source | Our read |
|---|---|---|
| $3,200–$4,800 | Cost per signed standard-auto caseMohr Marketing, cost-per-signed-case benchmarking guide (2026) | Almost exactly our own lead-derived figure of $3,500 at a 12% sign rate. The two models are priced to the same number on standard auto — which is why the sign rate, not the price tag, decides. |
| $7,000–$20,000+ | Catastrophic and commercial-truck signed casesMohr Marketing, cost-per-signed-case benchmarking guide (2026) | We agree with this one. At truck-case fee levels the retainer premium disappears into the rounding, and vendor case selection is worth paying for. |
| $2,000–$5,000 | Personal injury cost per signed case, urban marketsMohr Marketing (2026) | Consistent with our band. Note that it excludes intake labour and software on the lead side, which is the comparison most vendors quietly skip. |
| 5–10% of average fee | Acquisition-cost ceiling per signed caseMohr Marketing (2026) | A useful ceiling and a demanding one. On a $15,000 average fee it implies $750–$1,500 per case, which almost nothing in this market currently meets. Treat it as a target, not a benchmark. |
| 60–70% | Vendor-reported conversion on retainer programmesExclusive Leads Agency, retainer purchasing guide (2026) | The most misleading number in the category. It measures the vendor's own funnel from qualified call to signature, not the share of delivered cases that survive to settlement. It is not comparable to your sign rate and should never be pasted into the same table. |
| 48% / 33% | Firms unreachable by phone; firms responding to emailClio Legal Trends Report 2024, cited by Quintessa Marketing | The strongest argument for buying retainers that exists, and it is an argument about your phone, not about lead quality. Both halves of it are fixable for less than the retainer premium costs. |
| $15,000–$30,000/mo | Google Ads spend to sustain MVA case flow in a competitive marketExclusive Leads Agency (2026) | Broadly right, and the reason the buy-versus-build question is rarely decided on cost alone. Owned channels build an asset; purchased supply does not. |
Where to go next
Compare the two purchase models on signed MVA retainers, read the performance-based version on pay-per-signed-case, run your own numbers through the break-even model, or see the per-market rate card on pricing. The underlying dataset and methodology are published in the MVA Lead Cost Report 2026.
Pricing figures on this page follow the methodology of the MVA Lead Cost Report 2026: ranges aggregated from our own campaign delivery data and buyer-reported intake outcomes, updated 2026-07-27. The full tables and the machine-readable dataset live in the report.