Personal Injury Leads: What They Cost and Why You Should Generate Your Own

Here’s what most lead articles won’t tell you: the “personal injury leads” market is designed to keep you dependent. Vendors buy traffic, repackage it, and sell the same contact to multiple firms. You pay $200 per name. So do four competitors. One of you signs the case. The other four just burned money.

There’s a better model. Build lead generation into your firm’s infrastructure with channels like CTV advertising for law firms. Own the media, own the brand, own the relationship from first impression to signed retainer.

What PI Leads Actually Cost

These numbers are averages. Your actual cost depends on market, case type, and how you get the lead.

Case Type	Average CPL
Slip and fall	$312
Workplace injury	$354
Auto accidents	$391
Product liability	$476
Medical malpractice	$512

Market matters even more than case type. A lead in Des Moines and a lead in Manhattan aren’t the same product.

Market	Typical CPL
Average market	$100-$300
Competitive metro	$400-$700
Major metro (NYC, LA, Miami)	$700-$1,500

But CPL is the wrong metric. Cost per signed case is what matters. A $150 shared lead that converts at 3% costs $5,000 per case. A $400 exclusive lead from your own campaign that converts at 20% costs $2,000. The “cheap” lead is the expensive one.

The Problem with Buying Leads

Most firms start with lead vendors because it feels easy. Pay money, get names. But the economics don’t hold up under scrutiny.

Shared Leads Are a Race to the Bottom

A shared lead gets sold to three, four, sometimes five firms simultaneously. The prospect’s phone rings within minutes from multiple attorneys. Whoever calls first usually wins. That’s not marketing. That’s a speed-dial competition.

The conversion gap tells the whole story. Shared leads convert at 2-5%. Leads from your own brand and media campaigns convert at 15-20%. The prospect who saw your CTV ad, remembered your name, and searched for you specifically is a completely different kind of lead than a name sold to four firms.

Aged Leads Are Even Worse

Some vendors sell “aged” leads at a discount. These are contacts from days, weeks, or months ago. The prospect may have already hired an attorney. They may have resolved the issue. They may not remember filling out a form at all.

Aged leads exist because the vendor couldn’t sell them fresh. That should tell you everything.

The Dependency Trap

Here’s what lead vendors don’t advertise: when you stop paying, the leads stop. Completely. You’ve built nothing. No brand awareness. No search visibility. No relationship with your community. Every dollar went to renting access to someone else’s audience.

Compare that to a firm that spent the same budget on CTV, content, and search. When they pause a campaign, they still have brand recognition. They still rank organically. People still remember the name.

How Firms Actually Generate Their Own Leads

The firms growing fastest in PI aren’t buying leads. They’re building systems that produce them. Not one channel. A full stack of channels that feed each other.

Paid Search: Google Ads and LSAs

Paid search is still the fastest path to leads. Someone types “car accident lawyer Houston” and your ad shows up. High intent, immediate volume.

The costs are real, though. Average CPC for PI keywords runs $181. In competitive metros, it’s $300-$400 per click. At a 5-8% conversion rate, that’s a $442 average cost per lead through Google Search.

Local Service Ads work differently. Google Screened badge, pay-per-lead instead of pay-per-click, and placement above traditional search ads. LSAs average $378 per lead but come with built-in trust signals that improve conversion.

Microsoft Ads (Bing) offer lower CPCs with smaller volume. Worth running alongside Google, not instead of it.

Paid search captures existing demand. It doesn’t create it. That’s the critical distinction. If nobody knows your name, you’re competing on price for generic clicks against every other firm in your market.

Social Media: Meta, YouTube, and TikTok

Facebook and Instagram (Meta) give you targeting precision that broadcast can’t touch. Household income, homeowner status, geographic radius, life events. A PI firm can reach people within 25 miles who recently moved, own a car, and match the demographic profile of past clients.

YouTube pre-roll works similarly to CTV but on a different screen. A 15-second non-skippable ad before a local news clip costs a fraction of broadcast and reaches a younger, cord-cutting audience.

TikTok is emerging in legal. Some PI firms are building organic followings with case explainers and “know your rights” content. Paid TikTok ads reach demographics under 40 that traditional legal advertising misses entirely.

Social doesn’t replace search. It feeds it. Someone sees your Facebook ad Tuesday. Gets rear-ended Thursday. Searches your name Friday. That’s how these channels compound.

Retargeting: The Channel That Closes the Loop

Most people who visit your website don’t call. Industry average is 3-5% conversion on first visit. Retargeting brings the other 95% back.

Three flavors matter for PI firms.

Display retargeting follows previous visitors across the web with banner ads. Google Display Network reaches 90% of internet users. Someone visits your site, leaves, then sees your ad on a news site the next morning.

Social retargeting does the same thing on Facebook and Instagram. Meta Custom Audiences let you upload your website visitor list and serve ads specifically to people who’ve already shown interest. These convert at 2-3x cold audiences because the prospect already knows who you are.

RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads) is the sleeper. When a previous website visitor searches “personal injury lawyer” on Google later, your bid goes up automatically. You’re paying more per click, but the conversion rate justifies it because they’ve already visited your site.

Retargeting isn’t optional. It’s the channel that turns every other channel’s waste into a second chance. A $50/day retargeting budget can materially improve ROI across your entire media mix.

Programmatic CTV: Local Awareness at Scale

Connected TV puts your firm on Hulu, Peacock, Tubi, and every major streaming platform. Unlike broadcast, CTV lets you target by geography, household demographics, and behavioral data.

CTV doesn’t generate “leads” the way search does. It generates the brand awareness that makes every other channel cheaper. When someone in your market gets injured, they remember your name. They search for it. That branded search lead converts at 2-3x the rate of a generic click and costs 60-80% less.

Most PI firms still put 78-92% of their TV budget into broadcast. The audience has moved. 47.5% of TV viewing is streaming. The firms that figure this out first get the awareness advantage.

Branded Search: Capturing the Demand You Built

Once someone knows your name, they search for it. Branded search is the highest-converting, lowest-cost channel in legal marketing. Not close.

Generic search: “car accident lawyer Houston.” CPC: $150-$400. Conversion rate: 5-8%.

Branded search: “Smith & Associates injury lawyer.” CPC: $2-$5. Conversion rate: 25-40%.

Same person. Different intent. The prospect who searches your name has already decided you’re worth calling. That’s practically a client.

CTV, social media, community involvement, and content all drive branded search volume. Every dollar you spend building recognition pays dividends in cheaper, higher-converting search traffic.

SEO and Content: Compounding Returns

SEO isn’t fast. Takes 12-14 months to see meaningful organic traffic in PI. But the economics are hard to argue with.

Average SEO cost per lead in legal: $183. That’s less than half what Google Ads costs. And unlike ads, organic traffic doesn’t stop when you pause spending.

A firm that publishes useful, local content builds topical authority. The article about “what to do after a car accident in [your city]” brings in people who need a lawyer right now. Over time, Google rewards that with better rankings for the high-value terms.

SEO compounds. Every month, the asset gets more valuable. That’s the opposite of paid search, where you’re renting traffic month to month.

Referral Marketing

Don’t overlook referrals. Attorney-to-attorney referrals still drive a significant share of PI case volume. A general practitioner who doesn’t handle PI refers a client to you. A family law attorney sends over an accident case.

Building referral relationships takes time but costs almost nothing. Join local bar associations. Co-host CLEs. Stay visible in the legal community. The cost per case from referrals is often the lowest of any channel.

Community partnerships work the same way. Chiropractors, physical therapists, body shops. Not in a way that violates solicitation rules. In a way where professionals who see injured people regularly know your name and your reputation.

Building Your Lead Generation Infrastructure

Buying leads is a transaction. Building lead generation is an investment. Here’s what the full infrastructure looks like.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s how the top PI firms in every major market operate. They don’t buy leads from vendors. They build the media infrastructure that generates leads their competitors can’t access.

The Ethics Question

Is buying leads ethical? In most states, yes. Provided the vendor complies with bar advertising rules and doesn’t engage in direct solicitation.

But ethical and effective aren’t the same thing. A lead vendor who runs Facebook ads and sells the resulting contacts to five firms isn’t violating any rules. They’re just running a business model where the vendor wins and four out of five law firms lose.

The better question: why pay a middleman to do what you can build yourself?

When you run your own CTV campaign, your firm controls the message. When you build your own content, you control the narrative. When a prospect calls because they saw your ad and searched your name, that’s a relationship between your firm and a potential client. No vendor in the middle. No one else racing to the phone.

What to Do If You’re Currently Buying Leads

Don’t cut vendors overnight. Transition.

Start building your own channels while vendors maintain lead flow. As your CTV awareness campaigns drive more branded search, as your SEO starts producing organic leads, reduce vendor dependency. Within 12-18 months, most firms can shift from majority vendor-sourced to majority self-generated.

Track cost per signed case by source. Not cost per lead. The data will show you exactly when your owned channels outperform purchased leads. For most firms, it happens faster than expected.

References

1. CasePeer. "Personal Injury Lead Generation: A Complete Guide." 2025.
2. IAB. "2025 Digital Video Advertising Spend Report." 2025.
3. Nielsen. "The Gauge: Streaming Share of TV Viewing." 2025.
4. WordStream. "Google Ads Benchmarks for 2025." 2025.
5. First Page Sage. "Average Personal Injury Cost Per Lead." 2025.