How Does Your PI Firm's Marketing Performance Compare to Firms Your Size?

Every managing partner wants to know the same thing: are we performing at, above, or below the level we should be — given what we spend? The problem is that most benchmarks circulating in the PI space are either too broad (“firms spend $2,000 to $6,000 per case”) or too narrow to a specific channel to be useful.

What actually matters is benchmarking against firms in your spend tier. A firm investing $150K/month in lead generation operates under fundamentally different economics than one spending $600K/month. Market saturation, vendor mix, and intake capacity all shift as spend scales.

This article gives you benchmark ranges segmented by monthly marketing spend — so you can compare your firm's performance against the right peer group.

Why Spend Tier Matters More Than Firm Size

Two firms with 25 attorneys can have wildly different marketing operations. One might spend $120K/month across three vendors. The other might spend $450K/month across nine. Attorney count tells you about the firm. Monthly marketing spend tells you about the marketing operation.

Spend tier affects every downstream metric. Higher-spend firms typically work with more vendors, which increases complexity and overhead. They also tend to operate in more competitive markets, which raises cost per lead. But they have more negotiating leverage with vendors and more data to optimize against.

The benchmarks below reflect direct marketing spend (lead generation costs) divided by outcomes. They cover auto accident and general personal injury — firms focused on catastrophic injury or mass tort will see different numbers.

Performance Benchmarks by Spend Tier

Tier 1: $100K–$250K/Month

Firms at this spend level are typically running two to four paid lead sources alongside organic and referral channels. The most common setup is Google Ads, one or two lead aggregators, and some form of local SEO or LSA presence.

At this tier, lead volume per dollar tends to be highest because firms are often buying from the most efficient channels first. A firm spending $180K/month should expect roughly 500 to 720 leads per month, with 30 to 65 signed cases depending on intake performance and case criteria.

If you're in this tier and your cost per case is running above $3,500, the most common culprits are a low intake conversion rate (below 5%) or heavy reliance on shared leads from aggregators. Start by breaking down cost per case by source to identify the outlier.

Tier 2: $250K–$500K/Month

This is the tier where marketing operations get meaningfully more complex. Firms are typically managing five to eight lead sources, often including TV or radio alongside digital channels. Vendor management becomes a real job — not a side task.

Lead efficiency (leads per dollar) tends to decrease slightly as firms move into this tier, because they're adding channels with higher cost per lead to maintain volume growth. But intake conversion often improves because firms at this spend level tend to have dedicated intake teams with better processes.

A firm spending $375K/month should expect 825 to 1,275 leads per month and 60 to 130 signed cases. If you're generating leads at the right pace but signing fewer than 60 cases, your intake operation is likely the bottleneck — not your lead sources.

Tier 3: $500K+/Month

Firms spending $500K or more on lead generation are operating enterprise-level marketing operations — even if the firm itself has 20 attorneys. At this level, you're typically managing eight to fifteen sources across digital, broadcast, out-of-home, and direct mail channels.

Cost per lead and cost per case both tend to be higher in this tier, because the incremental channels are more expensive. You can't scale from $250K to $750K by buying more Google Ads — you have to add channels with different cost structures. That's expected.

The critical metric at this tier is not cost per case in isolation — it's case acquisition ROI. A $5,000 cost per case that produces cases settling at $350K average is a far better investment than a $2,500 cost per case producing cases that settle at $80K average.

How to Position Your Firm Within These Ranges

Where you fall within a given range depends on three controllable factors:

• Vendor mix quality. Firms that regularly review vendor performance and reallocate budget toward top performers tend to sit in the lower half of cost per case ranges. Firms that set vendor budgets once and leave them tend to drift toward the upper half.
• Intake conversion rate. A 2-percentage-point improvement in lead-to-sign rate can reduce cost per case by 20–30% without changing a single marketing dollar. This is often the highest-leverage fix available.
• Case criteria clarity. Firms with clearly defined case criteria that are consistently applied at intake spend less per case because they reject fewer qualified leads and sign fewer unqualified ones.

The Missing Piece: You Need Your Own Data First

Industry benchmarks provide orientation, but they don't replace firm-specific tracking. To know whether your $3,200 cost per case is strong or weak, you need to know your cost per case by source, your intake conversion rate by source, and your average case value by source.

Without that granularity, benchmarks are just interesting numbers. With it, they become a framework for identifying where your firm has the most room to improve.

RevenueScale's marketing ROI dashboard calculates your cost per case by vendor automatically — giving you the firm-specific data you need to benchmark against your own performance over time, not just against industry averages.