How exclusive lead supply works for a lawyer
Each lead is generated by a vetted marketing campaign — usually paid search, social, or a high-intent landing page — and the contact details are routed to a single lawyer within minutes of consent. No other firm has access to that prospect, which is what drives the high contact and sign-up rates.
Sizing a monthly budget
$10,000 is not a lot for a personal injury law firm to spend on lead acquisition in a single month — most growth-focused PI firms run between $10,000 and $100,000 per month. For an individual attorney's billing or a single case fee, $10,000 is modest; PI cases routinely settle for six- and seven-figure amounts.
A practical sizing exercise:
- Decide a target — e.g., 4 signed cases per month.
- Use a 12% conservative sign-up rate → 34 leads per month.
- At a $300 average CPL → about $10,200 in monthly lead spend.
- Adjust based on the actual rates you observe in the first 60 days.
Case-type strategy
The 80/20 rule for lawyers is the observation that roughly 80% of a firm's fee revenue comes from about 20% of its cases or marketing channels. In practice it means concentrating on high-value case types (severe-injury MVA, truck, wrongful death) and the lead sources that produce them, rather than chasing every inquiry.
For most lawyers, a smart mix is 70% standard auto MVA, 20% truck, 10% motorcycle/pedestrian — adjusted for what your firm settles best. Catastrophic and wrongful-death leads cost more per lead, but the case fees justify it.
What not to do
- Don’t buy shared leads alongside exclusive — it skews your measurement.
- Don’t pause and restart supply weekly; signal stabilises around weeks 3–6.
- Don’t outsource intake to a part-time answering service if you’re serious about signed-case rate.