Cost of Leads for Lawyers

Not to take away from your post David Miller

The same legalities apply to real estate as well...
I don't know about the cost of leads, but you cannot take a percentage of anything.

Work the leads, not the sale

Great post.. I agree on the basic fees.. give or take. The thing that is really mind blowing though, is services like findlaw can get away with throwing you on a directory, create a website with seo and then charge anywhere from $300/mo to $1,500 a month... you know they aren't getting the same leads to make it worthwhile.

I have always thought full services are the better way to go than just selling leads. I guess just selling the leads out right is less work needed to be done though.

The fee-splitting issue has many ways around it. There are entire industries based around fee-splitting with lawyers and are moving along just fine. Lawyers just book it as a marketing expense / advertising fee.

Some industries off of the top of my head: Debt management, debt settlement. The business model there is 100 fee-splitting but their are many ways around the issue.

Although, I would suggest to not approach a lawyer they don't already know with a fee-splitting proposal.

Also typically a leads sold by lead vendors are complete junk. A lead generated from your website, non incentivised, will have a much higher closing rate and be worth much more to the buyer. Leads are sold based on the quality / conversion ratio of the leads. So someone might sell leads for $30 with a 3% close ratio or buy leads from you for $100 with a 20% close ratio, even though your cost per lead is higher, it is still a lower cost per close.

Thank you for this list! I just signed up an attorney on a pay per lead campaign and I am within your price range.

David, yeah some of the above people are right, if you use it as a advertising cost it will not be seen as a negative factor.

Interesting thread, though I think that just one rather ambiguous, example of the "Average Cost of a lead" is sort of like a political poll, one can tend to get the answer they want to give or get.

Leads, come in many different types, some are effective others junk as suggested by other posters, however I think it must be absurd, to think that every market is the same based on only feedback from one source.

(no offense meant,)

I just do not see a concrete source here, and while you may have insight into the market for your regional area or even specialty, that does not really define an entire industry or even really give lead providers a good look into the market as a whole.

I suspect, that qualified leads, versus unqualified leads would be a good place to start, along with the old tried but very true idea that you can teach a man to fish a lot more efficiently than you can feed him.

Pardon the pun about fish and sharks, but I suspect that it would be a lot more beneficial to develop a website lead generation system than to "pay" for leads in the first place, so really, there is no deep philosophical moment here.

Leads, might be interesting, they might be economical, they might even become profitable but I do not believe you can assign an arbitrary, price or even range of prices for leads, it depends on the type of lead and where that lead comes from.

I think most people understand that it would be impossible to literally speak for any market, when your just a very small part of the whole market.

little fish big pond, syndrome.

As well, I do see what your trying to imply and that I commend you on educating those that might "think" they can make money by providing leads for a percentage of the payoff, but seriously any attorney worth his or her salt can figure out a method of purchasing valuable services, no matter what they might be, from providing "Consulting services" to trading services, there are tons of things you can do, so really what we know is not as important as what we don't know,

Publishing rates, based on a limited source of information is not really something that I would consider a valid, or even accurate.

In fact, the actual cost might be much higher or lower, developing a personal relationship with a lead purchaser, would really be the way to go, If your capable at generating valid and profitable leads, I am sure you can get a decent amount of "consulting fees" more so if you have a "Real Business and not just an email address"

This is even more evident when you look at advertising costs, but compare apples with apples, not apples with oranges.

Any firm that does not have a website is not a serious concern in this market, and lead generation is a business make no mistake about that, still there are far too many different considerations that effect cost.

Still great post, thanks for sharing.

Hey Everyone...I would like to add a little here if I may...Selling leads is ok if you want that for a business model...I predominately market for attorneys. I am very good at and get great results and I utilize a method only done by a couple of other marketing and design firms.

Now...I am not trying to sell anything here, but I do have some WSO's about this and for heaven sake don't get mad for me saying it because I am only mentioning it because I have a video on the one in my signature where I show actual check stubs from my attorney clients. You can see what I am saying there.

I regularly get setup fees of $3500 and more plus $1500 to $5000 monthly on a years contract for providing a variety of services but mostly educational video content. My clients get big cases in return and the geographical markets I am in are very competitive. My systems pulled in multimillion dollar clients for my clients and I am way cheaper than the phone book. So you can sell $50 leads if you want to, but I prefer offering a premium service and get paid a premium for it.

You have to sell 80 $50 leads to make $4000 per month. I do that with one client. Thing is any of you can do it too. Just encouraging you to aim a little higher. Good thread everyone.

When you run a lead generation business, are you all using traditional methods?

Such as you're using your website to drive in traffic and generating leads that way

Then on the other side, you've contacted firms directly and stated that you can help them with lead generation and agree to a fixed amount per lead?

Thanks in advance!

I remember seeing the business model of an online lead gen company for lawyers several years back. It would have been 2006 or so.

In any case, what they did was had cold callers calling on law offices to sell them a done-deal case. I believe the price was $1500. The lawyer paid that fee up front and then this company would send them a qualified lead. If the lawyer closed the deal then it was done. If the lawyer didn't close the deal then they would get another lead.

The pitch to the lawyer was that the average personal injury suit is worth $x. I don't remember what the number was but let's say $15,000. With a 33% commission to the lawyer equaling $5,000 they've essentially paid $1500 to make hopefully $5,000 or more.

I don't know how well this sold. I don't know if they still operate this way. I don't know if it breaks any laws or not. I do know that the website is still around and is one of the major players in the space (I won't mention what it is because I don't want to be misrepresenting them if they do things differently now). If this was a successful business model, though, it's an interesting way to sell leads.

is soon as i get a few sales coming with my cold calling im doing i will get into lead generation. i am so exited and can't wait. sometimes i cant even sleep thinking about all the money that can be made out there.
my plan is to give them a week trial, once they see they get real leads im sure i will be able to sell them for more than 60$ per lead..yeah im stingy! lol.i want to really be paid for my work

I am thinking about dabbling in some legal leads. Should we have any disclaimers on our sites, videos, etc?

I have seen varying opinions on it. The strictest is that lawyers can't buy leads from someone that doesn't comply with all the advertising guidelines that the lawyer would have to do themselves.

Then I've see the liberal interpretation that seems to think I don't have to use a disclaimer because I'm not an attorney. But that would seem to bypass the intent of the disclaimer rules if the leads go to an attorney.

What's your opinion? Should I include the standard "The choice of a lawyer is an important decision.........." disclaimer on all my stuff? I'd hate to be producing leads lawyers can't buy. Some of my leads will be forms and some might be forwarded phone calls.

where is David Miller?

Yikes! I am sure it changes by area but I have always thought adsense CPC would be a good start after all that's what they would pay if they ran ads.

I work with Lawyers and have been working with the since 2009.

In my experience there are a whole number of factors that come into play in respect of the costs a Lawyer is willing to pay.

Also for consideration is whether you're working with individual Lawyers or a Law firm (big difference). Add to that the current level of success of the Lawyer or the Law firm i.e. are they just starting out and struggling or looking to expand their current reach and the location they're in or are trying to reach.

So suffice to say, that 'cost' depends on a wide range of actors and your own ability to position your offering to the individual Lawyer/Attorney or the Law firm.

Just my contribution based on working with Lawyers and Law firms in Illinois and Dallas.

Bayo

Just a little word of warning to be very careful when dealing with lawyers and if your a newbie I would advise picking a different niche !
It is way to easy for a lawyer to sue you if you make a mistake and do not word what you are doing for them correctly. If they do not feel like paying you they can find a loophole and sue you and get it for free while putting you out of business.

Dentists and doctors pay just as good as lawyers .

Best of luck

I'm sorry this must be a silly newbie question, but what exactly is a complete lead for a lawyer?

Do they require just the phone number or do they require, Phone, Address, Email.

Does a lead to a lawyer means that the customer simply calls the lawyer for more information, or does it mean that I have to arrange a full meet?

To obtain leads can we advertise the prices or not?

Here's the thing, I know I can get these leads, and I know I can sell these leads, but I don't know what is the right format.

Rizzy

Amazing post

Awesome, this all help set goal values in Analytics! Thanks man!

can anyone help ? i am looking for buyers of my legal leads (personal injury mainly)

I'd say that most people's mind is on their money and they want to get the most out of their efforts.

I would only charge a weekly fee of $100, and accept 30% on landscaping jobs. This is before I started doing my own landscaping jobs.

I wonder if accepting the percentage was against that law in my situation.

It violates the Code Of Professional Responsibility for a lawyer to buy a lead. It is the same as paying "bird dogs" for personal injury cases. It is considered to be fee sharing and is not allowed. The lawyer could lose his/her law license.

While the lawyer may get into trouble for buying a lead, it is not illegal for anyone to sell the lead to a lawyer. But I sure would not trust a lawyer who paid for a lead because a lawyer who pays for a lead either doesn't understand the Code Of Professional Responsibility (ie. doesn't know the law) or doesn't care (ie. probably also doesn't care about his/her clients).

The above is just one reason it is hard to sell leads to lawyers. Ethical lawyers just do not buy them.

Hi,
This is really interesting Post and really great Information of leads. I know another website Law Firm Marketing, Revenue & Profitability Consultants*|*Law Firm Marketing, Revenue & Profitability Solutions that give leads really like this for Law firm marketing.

Thanks!

Hi,
Welcome to this forum site, here you can find lots of things, i suggest for your question, you have to contact any other expert, right now i am not able to give your proper answer.

Top Ten classified website

Hey guys,

Im a lawyer looking for leads in Southern California. I practice personal injury law, generally car accidents and slip and falls. I treat my clients really well, I actually care about them and their respective cases. I help people recover from physical and mental trauma. My clients really appreciate the work I do for them.

I dont do alot of marketing. I could really use some help getting leads. Any suggestions?

Hey David, I found your post when researching lead rates for lawyers.

First, I wanted to say thank you for posting so long ago. Maybe the lead rates have increased since you posted?

I am surprised at the rates when lawyers pay as much as $250 just for a click on Adwards for injury related keywords.

At that click cost it could easily run to a $1,000 or more just to get a client.

Compared to paying $50 for qualified calls. Even if you only convert 1 in 4 that is still a massive cost difference.

Wow, old thread, must be ranking well in Google all of a sudden.

I work in marketing for law firms and I can't really wrap my head around what OP posted. I work specifically in personal injury so I'll speak to that. (Note personal injury is the most expensive discipline in regards to leads, which is also interesting in the original post that he says medical malpractice leads sell for more than injury leads which just makes no sense as their are limits on what lawyers can make with med mal.)

Lawyers get emails every day offering pay-for-lead services and those leads are usually $200-$500 and are qualified in the sense that the user was searching a website or Google for a lawyer within this area, but are not pre-screened or anything.

Yeah, that is expensive and even from those leads the lawyers are only hoping to retain 5%-10%. So to acquire a client by buying leads they are looking to pay $2,000-$10,000 each.

The thing with legal leads though is that they are easy to close, a lawyer could retain pretty much every lead they talked to. But they are only retaining 5%-10% because the leads themselves don't have a case that would be worth much money (if any).

The upside is personal injury leads could be worth tens of thousands or millions of dollars. There are plenty of lawyers paying these outrageous prices because they are worth it.

But this is the reality from where I sit. And if there was someone really selling leads for $50 that were actually real leads they could unload these leads faster than tickets to a Drake concert.

That said, the law firms with real budgets aren't buying these leads anyways. They have their own marketing departments and are generating them themselves with simple PPC campaigns.

In the UK, I'm getting leads to my clients website at approx 20% conversion rate. Ie 1 call in 5 clicks. About $50 per lead. Like clock work since May last year.