Owned demand vs bought leads: how plaintiff firms should compare them

Plaintiff firms get new cases two ways, besides referrals. They buy leads from a seller who advertises and passes inquiries along, or they own the demand: run their own ads, on accounts in their own name, sending people to their own pages. Both can work. They’re rarely compared fairly.

The difference in plain terms

Bought leads. A lead seller runs ads, collects inquiries and sells them to firms, usually per lead. Some sell each lead to one firm (exclusive); others sell the same lead to several (shared). You pay for the inquiry, and you don’t control how it was generated.

Owned demand. Your firm runs ads under its own name, on accounts you own, to pages you control. You pay the ad platforms for media and pay someone, in-house or an agency, to manage it. The data, the ad history and the audience stay with you.

Compare on cost per signed case, not cost per lead

Per-lead prices make bought leads easy to budget. They don’t make them easy to compare. A cheap lead that was also sold to three other firms, or that arrives hours after the person filled in the form, may sign far less often than a more expensive lead from your own ad.

The fair comparison is cost per signed case, with all costs included:

Track every bought lead with its own source in your CRM, just like an ad campaign, and count signed cases by the month the lead arrived.

Check the rules before you buy

Lead buying is allowed in many places, but the details matter, and they differ by state.

• The ABA Model Rules. A comment to Model Rule 7.2 says a lawyer may pay for lead generation as long as the lead generator doesn’t recommend the lawyer, the payment is consistent with the rules on fee-sharing (Rules 1.5(e) and 5.4), and the generator’s communications aren’t false or misleading (Rule 7.1). A seller that tells people it found them “the right lawyer” may cross that line. Your state’s version of the rules is the one that applies.
• California. Operating a lawyer referral service requires State Bar certification under Business and Professions Code §6155. Whether a particular lead seller counts as a referral service depends on how it operates.
• California workers’ compensation. Labor Code §3215 makes it unlawful to pay for referring workers’ comp clients. Any per-case or per-retainer payment to a lead source needs careful review.
• How you pay matters. Payment tied to signed cases or to fees raises more questions than a flat price per inquiry.

This isn’t legal advice. Have your counsel review any lead source, its contract and its ads before you buy.

When buying leads makes sense

• Testing a new market before committing to building your own campaigns there.
• Filling spare intake capacity for a short period.
• Covering a channel you can’t run well yourself yet.

In each case, set a time limit and judge it on signed cases, not on lead volume.

When owning the demand wins

• You want control over what’s said in your name, and to approve every ad.
• You want speed. Leads from your own forms arrive the moment they’re submitted, and nobody else is calling them.
• You want it to build. Ad accounts, audiences, creative tests and search history get more valuable over time. Leads you buy don’t.
• You want the data. With your own demand, you can connect ads to signed cases and feed outcomes back to the platforms so they find more people like your clients.

How to run a fair test

1. Same period, same intake. Run both sources at the same time, handled by the same team with the same follow-up.
2. Separate sources in the CRM. Every lead tagged by where it came from, with duplicates removed.
3. Ninety days, counted by lead month. Cases take time to sign, so short tests mislead.
4. All costs in. Lead prices on one side; ad spend plus management on the other.
5. Compare cost per signed case by case type, along with contact rate and speed to lead for each source.

Whichever wins, you’ll know why. And you’ll have the tracking in place to keep checking.