How much do lawyers pay for MVA leads?

Step 1 — set a monthly signed-case target. Be honest about what your intake and case-handling capacity can absorb. Signing cases you cannot work is worse than signing none.

Step 2 — divide by a conservative signed rate. Use 12% on exclusive standard-auto supply for planning, not the 15% top of the range. Four cases ÷ 0.12 ≈ 34 leads.

Step 3 — multiply by your market’s CPL. 34 leads × $400 ≈ $13,600/month. Check your own state’s band in the table above rather than the national midpoint.

Step 4 — add 20% for the ramp. The first month underperforms while filters and the intake script settle. Budget for it instead of concluding the supply is bad.

Lead buying is profitable when your average net fee per signed case comfortably exceeds your cost per signed case. On standard auto that means comparing a $3,900–$11,050 acquisition cost against a typical $12,000–$20,000 net fee — roughly a 3–6× return before overhead and before any referral or recovery revenue.

The ratio to watch is net fee ÷ cost per signed case. Above 3× the programme is comfortably profitable and worth scaling. Between 2× and 3× it works but has no margin for a bad month. Below 2×, the problem is almost never the lead price — it is the signed-case rate, which means intake.

This is why we publish cost per signed case alongside CPL everywhere. A vendor that only quotes cost per lead is giving you the numerator and withholding the number that decides the outcome. Cost per signed case is defined and benchmarked across every acquisition channel, and signed MVA retainers cost $2,000–$10,000+ per case at the top of that ladder — the comparison that puts a CPL in context.

$3,000–$10,000/month. One state, one case type, roughly 7–25 leads. Enough to establish whether your intake converts, not enough to draw conclusions about a market. Expect one to three signed cases a month.

$10,000–$30,000/month. One to two states with a broader case-type mix. The level at which per-state performance becomes readable and a dedicated intake hire pays for itself several times over.

$30,000–$100,000/month. Multi-state supply under one agreement, with per-state CPL and signed-case reporting. Case-mix engineering starts to matter more than price negotiation — shifting share toward truck and catastrophic work moves revenue further than shaving $20 off CPL.

$100,000+/month. Supply availability, not budget, becomes the constraint. Growth comes from adding markets and widening filters, and marginal cost per lead rises as you take share from other buyers in the same auctions.

Three variables explain most state-level price variation in MVA leads: attorney competition, average case value, and crash volume. New York and Florida price highest because attorney density and settlement values are both elevated. High-crash, lower-competition states like Ohio, North Carolina and Indiana produce the lowest cost per signed case in the country, which is why multi-state buyers weight budget toward them rather than toward the marquee markets.

Seasonality. Summer driving months lift Sun Belt pricing 10–25%; winter weather lifts Northeast and Midwest pricing 10–15%; and the Thanksgiving-to-New-Year window drops 15–30% as advertisers exhaust annual budgets. Firms with flexible spend buy premium states in December and value states outside the summer peak, which lowers blended CPL without changing case criteria.

Volume banding. Be cautious of large discounts — steep breaks usually signal either shared supply, loosened screening, or inventory the vendor cannot otherwise place.

Blended CPL vs. per-state CPL. It is the number that belongs in a marketing budget, while per-state CPL is the number that belongs in a buying decision. Reporting only blended CPL hides which markets are actually carrying the account.

Cost per acquisition vs. cost per signed case. Cost per signed case is the media-only version of the same number. Firms that track CPL alone routinely misjudge which channel is profitable, because a cheap lead that consumes an hour of intake time is not a cheap case.

Fixed cost per lead, agreed in writing before delivery. No media-spend markups, no management fee, no variable pricing tied to volume.

From $3,000/month, month-to-month. No annual contract and no five-figure validation trial. Start in one state and widen once the intake desk keeps pace.

Written credit policy. Leads failing the criteria agreed up front — wrong state, no injury, already represented, unreachable contact details — are credited against the next invoice.

Consent record on every lead, with timestamp, IP, disclosure text, source URL, and form payload, producible on request. Full terms and the vendor questions we think you should ask us are on buy MVA leads.