12 questions to ask any MVA lead vendor
A vetting script you can take into any sales call — including ours. Each question comes with the answer that should reassure you and the answer that should end the conversation.
By Tarun Kapoor, Founder · Published 2026-07-30
Almost every buyer opens with price. Price is the least diagnostic thing you can ask, because a low cost per lead is trivially achieved by loosening the filters you cannot see. The twelve questions below are ordered by how much they reveal.
The script
How is exclusivity defined in the contract — word for word?
Exclusive is an unregulated marketing term. Four vendors will mean four different things by it.
- Good answer
- One law firm, permanently, with no resale after any interval and no parallel sale to non-attorney buyers such as chiropractors or repair shops.
- Red flag
- Exclusive 'within your territory', 'for 30 days', or 'per practice area' — all of which permit resale.
Which domains do your ads point to, and can I see the landing pages?
Lead origin determines intent. It also reveals whether the vendor runs multiple sites that can surface the same claimant twice.
- Good answer
- Named domains you can visit, with the disclosure language and form fields visible.
- Red flag
- Refusal to name properties, or a claim that this is proprietary.
What is your channel mix — paid search, paid social, organic, or co-registration?
A $400 lead from Google search intent behaves nothing like a $400 lead from an incentivised co-reg path.
- Good answer
- A percentage breakdown, and willingness to segment your delivery by channel so you can measure each separately.
- Red flag
- 'A blend of premium sources' with no detail.
What consent artifact ships with each lead?
Under TCPA, the burden of proving consent falls on the caller — your firm.
- Good answer
- Timestamp, IP address, the exact disclosure text displayed, the URL of capture, and ideally a third-party certification such as TrustedForm.
- Red flag
- 'All our leads are TCPA compliant' with no per-lead artifact.
What triggers a credit, and what is the dispute window?
An unwritten credit policy is not a policy. The window is where vendors quietly claw back the concession.
- Good answer
- Named, objective conditions — wrong state, no injury, already represented, disconnected number — with a window of at least five business days and credits applied automatically.
- Red flag
- 24–48 hour windows, subjective 'quality review' language, or 'already represented' excluded from valid disputes.
Is 'already represented' a valid credit reason?
It is the single most revealing question on this list. If a lead is genuinely exclusive and delivered in real time, the claimant should almost never already have counsel.
- Good answer
- Yes, without argument.
- Red flag
- Any exclusion here strongly suggests the supply is shared, aged, or resold.
How is the lead delivered, and how long after consent?
Contact rate is a function of minutes. Email-batch delivery destroys the economics of exclusive pricing.
- Good answer
- Real-time webhook or direct CRM post within seconds, with a named integration for your case management system.
- Red flag
- Email delivery, CSV drops, or 'within the hour'.
Can you track a lead through to signed retainer?
Without closed-loop attribution you cannot tell a supply problem from an intake problem.
- Good answer
- A lead ID that persists into your CRM, plus a reporting view that accepts outcome data back from your firm.
- Red flag
- Reporting that stops at delivery.
What volume can you actually deliver in my state next month?
Overselling capacity is how vendors quietly loosen filters mid-campaign to hit a number.
- Good answer
- A specific figure with a stated ceiling, and a commitment to under-deliver rather than relax your criteria.
- Red flag
- 'As much as you can handle.'
Who owns the ad accounts, creative, and pixel data?
This determines your exit cost — whether leaving takes a month or a year.
- Good answer
- Clear statement either way, disclosed before signing rather than discovered at termination.
- Red flag
- Ambiguity, or ownership terms buried in the MSA.
What is the minimum commitment, and what does cancellation require?
Long lock-ins transfer all the performance risk to the buyer.
- Good answer
- Month-to-month with 30 days' notice.
- Red flag
- Annual terms, large validation trials, or auto-renewal with a narrow cancellation window.
Can you name a firm in my state currently buying from you?
Reference checks catch what contracts do not.
- Good answer
- A reference, or a candid explanation of why exclusivity prevents naming buyers in your specific market.
- Red flag
- Testimonials with no attribution and no reference available.
What 'exclusive' should mean in the contract
'Exclusive' means different things to different vendors. Ask whether it means one law firm ever, one firm per practice area, one firm per geography, or simply not resold within 30 days. Also ask whether the vendor runs multiple lead-capture sites that can surface the same claimant twice under different campaign IDs. Get the definition written into the agreement.
How to tell if your leads are being resold
Four signals that supply is being resold: claimants say another firm already called, contact rates run below 50% on supposedly exclusive leads, the vendor will not name the domains its ads point to, and the credit policy excludes 'already represented' as a valid dispute reason. Any one of these warrants an audit before the next invoice.
If you suspect it, the cheapest test is a scripted question at the top of the intake call: “Just so I don’t repeat anything — have you spoken with another firm about this yet today?” Log the answer as a field. Two weeks of that data settles the question, and it is the evidence you need to invoke a credit.
Who owns the campaign data
In a pay-per-lead arrangement the vendor typically owns the ad accounts, creative, landing pages, and pixel data — you are buying output, not building an asset. In a managed-campaign or revenue-share arrangement, ownership varies. Establish before signing what you keep if the relationship ends, because this determines whether leaving costs you a month or a year.
After the vetting call
Get the exclusivity definition, credit conditions, dispute window, and delivery method into the written agreement — not the proposal deck. Then run a single state for 30 days and judge it on cost per signed case, not cost per lead. The full purchase process is on buy MVA leads, and how we compare to named vendors on published pricing and methodology is on best MVA lead companies.