Comparing Settlement Values by Attorney Case Type and Lead Source

Which vendor, for which case type, routed to which attorney, produces your highest settlements? Not aggregate averages — the actual combination driving your best outcomes. If your reporting can't answer that question, you're making vendor and routing decisions on incomplete data.

Settlement outcomes aren't driven by any single variable. They're driven by the interaction of three: attorney, case type, and lead source. A vendor that looks average in aggregate might be generating exceptional results for one attorney on one case type — while dragging numbers down everywhere else. Single-variable analysis can't surface that. Three-dimensional analysis can.

Why Single-Variable Analysis Misleads

Consider a firm with three attorneys, four lead vendors, and two case types. A simple “average settlement by vendor” analysis shows Vendor B leading at $185,000. Vendor D trails at $92,000. Obvious conclusion: cut Vendor D, scale Vendor B.

That conclusion is wrong.

Break the data by attorney and case type, and the picture reverses. Vendor D's low average is entirely a case mix artifact — it sends predominantly slip-and-fall cases, which settle lower across every vendor. For auto accident cases specifically, Vendor D is competitive. And for Attorney Martinez, Vendor D produces the highest settlement average of any source.

Lead source, attorney expertise, and case type interact. Analyzing any one in isolation produces misleading numbers — and misleading budget decisions.

The Three-Dimensional Framework

To understand settlement performance accurately, evaluate outcomes across three dimensions at once:

• Attorney performance by source. Which attorneys get the best settlements from which vendors? A trucking specialist will extract higher settlements from leads that match that specialty — regardless of where the lead came from.
• Case type performance by source. Which vendors deliver higher-value case types? One vendor sends fender benders; another sends TBI and multi-vehicle cases that settle 3x higher. That mix difference swamps any other quality signal.
• Attorney-case type fit by source. The interaction between expertise and case type matters most. A surgical injury case from Vendor B routed to a premises liability specialist will settle lower than the same case routed to the right attorney — every time.

The pattern is clear. Rodriguez leads on Vendors A and B — those vendors send auto accident cases that match his specialization. Martinez outperforms on Vendors C and D, which skew toward premises liability and slip-and-fall. Chen is consistent but not exceptional across any source.

On aggregate numbers alone, Rodriguez looks like the top performer. But the real insight is routing: match the right attorney to the right case type from the right source, and settlements rise without touching your marketing budget.

Case Type as the Hidden Variable

Case type is the variable most firms underweight. Settlement values swing dramatically by case type — and different vendors produce different mixes. Ignore that and you're making apples-to-oranges comparisons.

A vendor sending surgical injury and trucking cases will naturally show higher average settlements than one sending slip-and-falls — even if the second vendor delivers better-quality leads within its case type. Fair comparison requires normalizing for case type mix.

Normalizing for Case Type Mix

Stop asking “which vendor has the highest average settlement?” Start asking “for auto accident cases, which vendor produces the highest average settlement?” Then repeat for each case type. That's the comparison that holds up.

Now the comparison holds. Vendor B genuinely outperforms across most case types — its aggregate lead isn't just a case mix artifact. But Vendor C edges Vendor B on slip-and-falls. And Vendor D — the “worst” vendor by aggregate — is fully competitive on auto accidents once you strip out its slip-and-fall heavy mix.

Practical Application: Case Routing Optimization

The three-dimensional framework doesn't just improve vendor evaluation — it improves case routing. When you know which attorneys perform best on which case types from which sources, you route intentionally instead of by availability.

For a firm spending $400,000/month on marketing, optimizing routing by attorney-case type-source fit typically raises average settlement values by 8–15%. On 200 settled cases per year, that's $1.6M to $4.2M in additional settlement revenue — from better routing, not more spend.

• Route by attorney specialization. When Vendor B produces a trucking case, assign it to the attorney with the highest trucking settlement average for that source — not whoever has the lightest caseload.
• Evaluate vendors within case type.When considering a budget increase, look at that vendor's performance for the case types you actually want — not their aggregate numbers across all types.
• Identify specialization gaps.If no attorney performs well on premises liability cases from any source, the problem isn't the vendors — it's an expertise gap. Address it through hiring, training, or referral partnerships.

Building the Analysis

Three-dimensional settlement analysis requires three connected data elements:

• Lead source attribution that persists through to case resolution
• Case type classification at the case level, not just the lead level
• Attorney assignment tracked from intake through settlement

In a spreadsheet, this is a pivot table exercise — and it breaks down fast. At 4 vendors, 5 case types, and 4 attorneys, you have 80 unique combinations to track. Manual analysis can't handle that reliably. You miss patterns, you make errors, and the insight you need stays buried.

A revenue intelligence platform handles this automatically — slicing settlement data across all three dimensions and surfacing the combinations that matter most, where performance is significantly above or below expectations.

What This Changes for Managing Partners

Three-dimensional analysis changes the budget conversation entirely. Instead of “which vendor should we cut?” the question becomes “which vendor-case type-attorney combinations produce the best returns — and how do we get more of those?”

That's a more productive question. It moves from blunt cuts to surgical optimization. And it gives marketing directors data that partners can act on — not aggregate averages that hide as much as they reveal.

Firms that analyze settlement performance in three dimensions make better vendor decisions, route cases more effectively, and extract more revenue from the same marketing budget. Firms that rely on single-variable averages are optimizing on an incomplete picture — and leaving money on the table every month.