Price per Lead vs Price per Signed Case: The Sign-Rate Math

There is no single price for a personal injury lead, and the sticker price is the wrong number to compare. What a firm actually pays is the cost per signed case: the price of each lead divided by the share of those leads your intake turns into signed retainers. A lead that costs little and never signs is more expensive than one that costs a lot and signs often. Prices move with case type, metro, exclusivity and how much screening the vendor does, so the only fair way to compare two offers is to convert both to cost per signed case using your own sign rate.

Three ways leads get priced

Vendors and channels price injury leads in roughly three ways, and each one moves risk to a different side of the table.

Per lead. You pay for every inquiry delivered: a form fill, a transferred call, a chat transcript. The vendor carries little risk. Whether the person was hurt, already has a lawyer, or crashed three states away is your intake team's problem, minus whatever the refund policy covers.

Per qualified lead. You pay only for inquiries that meet criteria agreed in advance, for example an auto collision in the last set number of months, medical treatment received, not at fault by the caller's account, no current attorney, inside your counties. The price is higher, and the definition of "qualified" matters more than the price.

Per signed case. You pay when a retainer is signed. The vendor carries the most risk and charges accordingly. This model also raises professional responsibility questions, covered below, that the other two raise less directly.

There is a fourth cost that often gets left out of the comparison: the inquiries you generate yourself, through your website, your Google Business Profile and paid search. They have no per-lead price, but they are not free, and they belong in the same spreadsheet.

The formula

Cost per signed case = cost per lead divided by sign rate

If your intake signs 1 in 8 leads from a source, each signed case from that source costs eight times the lead price. The sign rate has to be your own, measured per source. A vendor's claimed rate tells you about their other buyers, not your intake team at 7 p.m. on a Friday.

Worked example: three offers on the same desk

These numbers are made up for illustration. Say a firm is comparing three auto-accident offers in its metro:

Offer (example)	Price	Firm's sign rate on this source	Cost per signed case
A: shared web leads	$150 per lead	1 in 15	$2,250
B: exclusive, screened leads	$400 per lead	1 in 5	$2,000
C: pay per signed case	$3,500 per case	not applicable	$3,500

Offer A looks cheapest per lead and is not the cheapest per case. Offer C looks expensive and carries no risk of paying for dead leads. Offer B wins on this math, but only if the firm's sign rate on it really is 1 in 5, which it won't know until it has bought enough to measure.

Now add what the table hides:

• Intake time. Fifteen shared leads to sign one case means fifteen call attempts, fifteen screenings and fifteen sets of notes. That labor has a cost even if nobody puts it on the invoice.
• Case mix. A signed soft-tissue rear-end case and a signed commercial truck case are both "one signed case", but they are not worth the same to the firm. Compare sources on the cases they produce, not just the count.
• Refunds. A generous refund policy on invalid leads lowers the effective price of Offer A. A narrow one, or a short dispute window, raises it.
• Time. Leads that sign quickly but settle in four years tie up money differently from leads that settle in one.

Where a paid click fits

Paid search is the closest comparison, because a click is the raw material of a lead you generate yourself. Google Ads data from October 2026 priced a US click at about $246 for "car accident lawyers", $171 for "personal injury lawyer" and $509 for "truck accident lawyer". Those prices change and vary by city.

A click is not a lead. Carry the same example forward: if 1 in 10 clicks on a $246 term became an inquiry, each inquiry would cost $2,460 before your sign rate is applied. At a 1 in 4 sign rate on your own inquiries, that is $9,840 per signed case from that term alone. Exclusive inquiries from your own ads may sign better than bought ones, because the person chose your firm, but that is something to measure, not assume. Our click-cost equivalent tool runs this chain for any term and rate you enter.

What changes the math for an injury firm

The ceiling on what a firm can sensibly pay per case comes from the fee side. Contingency percentages depend on the fee agreement and on your state's rules. Case value depends on liability, coverage limits and injuries. Costs the firm advances, from records to experts, come out before anyone knows the outcome. A firm that runs the cost-per-case math without the fee side knows what it spent, not whether it was worth it. Our cost per case tool puts both sides on one screen.

Pay-per-case offers and the rules

Paying a vendor for each signed case raises questions that per-lead pricing raises less sharply. ABA Model Rule 5.4, on a lawyer's professional independence, generally keeps lawyers from splitting legal fees with nonlawyers. Model Rule 7.2 generally prohibits rewarding anyone for recommending a lawyer, outside a short list of exceptions. Whether a particular pay-per-case structure fits within your state's version of those rules depends on how it is built and on what your state says. State rules differ, so check with your state bar or ethics counsel before signing. Nothing in this post is legal advice; we build marketing for law firms and do not practice law.

How to run your own numbers this week

1. Pull every inquiry from the last 90 days and tag each one with its source.
2. Count signed retainers per source over the same window, allowing for cases that sign a few weeks after the first contact.
3. Divide each source's total spend by its signed cases.
4. Put your own channels in the same table: website forms, Google Business Profile, paid search, referrals.
5. Repeat each quarter. Sign rates drift as staff, scripts and vendors change.

Once the table exists, you can judge every new offer, including ours, on the number that matters. Our page on personal injury leads explains how we approach inquiries a firm owns instead of rents.

If you want a second set of eyes on your numbers, ask for a free SEO case review. We will look at where your inquiries come from today and what it would take to generate more of them yourself.