Shared vs Exclusive Personal Injury Leads: Who Else Got the Call

A shared lead is sold to more than one firm, so the injured person hears from several lawyers' offices within a short time, and the firm that reaches them first with a credible, calm answer has the edge. An exclusive lead is sold to one firm only. It costs more and gives your intake team room to do the job properly. Neither is cheaper by default: the one that costs less per signed case at your firm is the cheaper one, and you find that out by tracking sign rates for each, not by comparing price sheets.

Same crash, two inboxes

An example, with invented details. A woman is hit by a delivery van while crossing at a light. That evening, she fills out a "see if you have a case" form on a site she found by searching. She doesn't know it, but the site is run by a lead vendor, not a law firm.

If the lead is shared, her name, number and a two-line description go to, say, four firms at once. Within the next half hour, she gets a text from one, a call from another, a voicemail from a third, and an email from the fourth the next morning. She takes the second call because she happened to be holding her phone. By the time the fourth firm emails, she has already scheduled a consultation. The fourth firm paid the same price as the second for a lead it never had a real chance to sign.

If the lead is exclusive, only one firm gets her information. That firm still needs to move quickly, because she may have filled out other forms too, but its intake specialist can call once, introduce the firm properly, ask the screening questions in order and schedule a consultation without competing for her attention mid-sentence.

Side by side

Point	Shared lead	Exclusive lead
Sold to	Several firms	One firm
Price	Lower per lead	Higher per lead
What intake has to do	Reach the person before the others, often within minutes	Reach the person promptly and screen thoroughly
The person's experience	Several firms contacting them at once	One firm, unless they filled out other forms
What you can learn from it	Mostly how fast your intake is	How well your intake screens and signs
What to watch	Paying for leads you never had a chance at	Paying a premium for leads another vendor also sold

"Exclusive" is a word in a contract, not a promise about how the person was found. A lead can be exclusive from one vendor and still be the same person who filled out a second vendor's form an hour earlier. Ask how the vendor defines it.

The speed race and what it costs

Shared leads turn intake into a race, and races change behavior. A firm that buys shared leads ends up building around speed: auto-dialers, instant texts, scripts that skip introductions. Some of that is reasonable. Some of it is a problem with injured people, who may be on pain medication or in a hospital bed, and who start to experience a string of law firm calls as pressure.

The race also has a rules side. ABA Model Rule 7.3 limits soliciting clients through live, person-to-person contact when the lawyer's motive is pecuniary gain. A person who asked to be contacted is in a different position from someone who never reached out, but a lead form that she believed went to one service, followed by calls from four firms she has never heard of, is the kind of situation where your state's rules and ethics opinions deserve a careful read. State rules differ. Since we market law firms rather than practice law, take this as a question for your bar, not as advice.

Refund and credit terms: what to read before the first order

Refund terms often matter more than the per-lead price. Read for:

• What counts as invalid. Wrong or disconnected contact details, no injury, already represented, outside your geography, a case type you didn't order, a duplicate of a lead you already received. If the list is short, more of the risk is yours.
• The dispute window. A few days is not long when the person takes a week to call back.
• Refund or credit. Credit only means your money stays with that vendor whether or not the leads improve.
• What proof the vendor wants. If you must document every call attempt in their portal, factor in that time.
• Whether returns are capped. Some contracts limit returns to a share of each order.
• Who decides. Find out whether there is any appeal if the vendor rejects your return.

Questions to ask any vendor before you buy

1. How are these people found? Ask to see the actual ads, sites and forms. You are responsible for how you get clients, and a misleading ad from a vendor can become your problem under your state's version of Rule 7.1.
2. What does the person see before submitting? You want the exact wording on the form, including what it says about who will contact them.
3. Is any contact made by phone before the lead reaches us, and by whom? This goes to Rule 7.3 and to how the person feels when you call.
4. Exactly how many firms receive a shared lead, and is that number fixed or a maximum?
5. For exclusive leads, is the person's information ever sold again later, for example after a set number of days?
6. Is the lead also sold to non-law-firm buyers, like medical providers or repair shops?
7. What screening happens before delivery, and who does it?
8. How is pricing structured? A price per lead is a different conversation from a price per signed case, which raises questions under Model Rules 5.4 and 7.2 about sharing fees and paying for recommendations.
9. Can we stop at any time, and what happens to leads already in transit?
10. Will you put your answers in the contract?

A vendor that won't answer questions one through three in writing has answered them anyway.

How to compare the two on your numbers

Run both side by side for a fixed period with the same intake team and the same scripts. Record, for each lead, how long it took to first contact, whether contact was made at all, whether the person qualified and whether they signed. Then divide spend by signed cases for each type. Our post on personal injury lead cost walks through that arithmetic with worked examples.

The third column

There is an option the comparison leaves out: inquiries the firm generates itself, through its website, its Google Business Profile and search. Those people chose your firm, saw your name before contacting you, and aren't being called by three of your competitors while they decide. They are not free to generate, and they take months to build, but nobody else is sold the same person. That is the angle we take on personal injury leads: owned inquiry flow, with sign rates you can measure the same way.

If you're buying leads now and want to know what owned search inquiries might cost by comparison in your market, ask for a free SEO case review. We will compare your lead spend with where your site stands in search, and say plainly where we see an opening and where we do not.