How One PI Marketing Leader Reduced Wasted Vendor Spend by Connecting Cost Per Case to Settlement Data

Sarah had been the marketing director at a 25-attorney personal injury firm for three years. She managed $200K per month in lead generation spend across seven vendors. Every month she built the same spreadsheet, pulled the same reports, and presented the same numbers to the partners. Cost per lead by vendor. Lead volume by vendor. Conversion rates when she could get them.

The numbers looked fine. The firm was signing cases. The partners weren't complaining — much. But Sarah had a nagging feeling she couldn't shake: she had no idea which of her seven vendors were actually making money for the firm.

The Setup: Seven Vendors, $200K per Month, and a Spreadsheet

Sarah's vendor portfolio looked like many mid-size PI firms. She had two digital agencies managing Google Ads and LSAs, three direct lead vendors (mass tort, auto accident, and slip-and-fall), a TV buy through a media agency, and a referral marketing partnership. Total monthly spend: $200,000.

Her reporting process took about 12 hours per week. She pulled lead counts from each vendor's portal, matched them against intake records in their case management system, and calculated cost per lead for each source. On a good month, she could also calculate cost per signed case — but only if intake had properly tagged every lead's source, which happened maybe 70% of the time.

Here's what her monthly report typically showed:

• Vendor A (digital agency): 320 leads, $85 CPL, $28,000/month spend
• Vendor B (direct lead provider): 410 leads, $54 CPL, $22,000/month spend
• Vendor C (digital agency): 280 leads, $107 CPL, $30,000/month spend
• Vendor D (direct leads): 590 leads, $41 CPL, $24,000/month spend
• Vendor E (direct leads): 370 leads, $68 CPL, $25,000/month spend
• Vendor F (TV): ~200 attributed leads, $185 CPL, $37,000/month spend
• Vendor G (referral partnership): 150 leads, $227 CPL, $34,000/month spend

On paper, Vendor D was the star. Lowest cost per lead. Highest volume. Sarah had actually increased Vendor D's budget twice in the past year based on these numbers.

The Turning Point: Connecting Cost Per Case to Settlement Data

When Sarah's firm implemented a revenue intelligence platform, the first thing that changed was attribution. Every lead was automatically tagged to its source — no manual matching, no 70% accuracy rate. Within two weeks, Sarah had clean cost-per-signed-case data for every vendor going back six months.

The cost-per-case numbers told a very different story than cost per lead:

• Vendor D — the cost-per-lead champion at $41 — had a cost per signed case of $4,800. Only 5 of every 100 leads converted to a signed case.
• Vendor C — which looked expensive at $107 per lead — had a cost per signed case of $1,340. One in eight leads converted.
• Vendor G — the most expensive on a CPL basis at $227 — had a cost per signed case of $1,135. Referral leads converted at nearly one in five.

That was eye-opening. But the real revelation came 90 days later, when settlement data started flowing into the platform.

Settlement Data Changed Everything

Sarah could now see average settlement values by vendor for cases that had closed in the prior 12 months. The pattern was stark:

• Vendor D's casesaveraged $38,000 in settlement value. After attorney fees and case costs, the firm's net was roughly $12,500 per case.
• Vendor C's cases averaged $95,000 in settlement value. Net to firm: approximately $32,000 per case.
• Vendor G's cases averaged $142,000 in settlement value. Net to firm: approximately $48,000 per case.

Vendor D — the one Sarah had been scaling up — was producing the lowest quality cases by a wide margin.

The Reallocation: $40K per Month, Moved in One Decision

Armed with cost-per-case and settlement data, Sarah presented a vendor reallocation plan to the managing partners. For the first time, she wasn't arguing from gut instinct or cost-per-lead rankings. She had a full financial picture: acquisition cost, conversion rate, and revenue per case by source.

The plan was straightforward:

• Reduce Vendor D's budget by $16,000/month (from $24,000 to $8,000) — keep only their highest-performing campaign
• Eliminate a low-performing campaign within Vendor A that was spending $9,000/month with almost no signed cases
• Reduce Vendor E's budget by $15,000/month (from $25,000 to $10,000) — similar pattern to Vendor D, just less extreme
• Increase Vendor C's budget by $20,000/month (from $30,000 to $50,000) — high conversion, high settlement values
• Increase Vendor G's budget by $20,000/month (from $34,000 to $54,000) — best cost-per-case and settlement outcomes in the portfolio

Total spend stayed at $200K per month. The partners approved the plan in one meeting. Sarah later told us it was the fastest budget approval she'd ever received. “When you show them the actual numbers — not lead counts, but dollars in versus dollars out — there's nothing to debate.”

The Results: 18% ROI Improvement in One Quarter

Three months after the reallocation, the numbers told the story:

• Total lead volume dropped by 22% — from roughly 2,320 leads/month to about 1,810. This scared Sarah initially, but the intake team actually welcomed it.
• Signed cases increased by 11% — from an average of 68 per month to 75. Higher quality leads converted at higher rates.
• Average case value increased by 14% — because the reallocated budget was flowing to vendors that produced higher-severity, higher-value cases.
• Overall marketing ROI improved by 18% — measured as net revenue per marketing dollar spent.
• Intake team efficiency improved— fewer junk leads meant more time spent on leads that actually converted. The intake manager reported that her team's morale improved noticeably.

The firm was spending the same $200K per month. They were getting fewer leads. And they were making significantly more money.

What Sarah Would Have Missed Without Settlement Data

This is the part that matters most. If Sarah had only tracked cost per lead — which is what 80% of PI firms rely on — she would have continued scaling Vendor D. That vendor looked like the best performer by a wide margin on a CPL basis.

If she had tracked cost per signed case but not settlement outcomes, she would have caught the conversion problem with Vendor D but might have missed the case quality gap between vendors like C and G. A vendor with a $1,340 cost per case and a $95,000 average settlement is a completely different investment than a vendor with the same cost per case but a $45,000 average settlement.

The full picture — cost per lead, cost per case, and revenue per case — is what turns marketing data into a financial decision. Without all three layers, you're optimizing with incomplete information.

The Broader Pattern: This Isn't Unusual

Sarah's story isn't exceptional. In our experience working with PI firms, the vendor that looks best on a cost-per-lead basis is the worst performer on cost-per-case roughly 40% of the time. That's not a rounding error. That's a structural pattern in how lead vendors price and deliver leads.

Low-CPL vendors often achieve that price point by delivering higher volume, lower-intent leads. They cast a wider net. That drives their cost per lead down but pushes conversion rates — and case quality — in the wrong direction.

The firms that track cost per case consistently find that their optimal vendor portfolio looks very different from what cost-per-lead data would suggest. Some vendors need more budget. Some need less. Some need to be replaced entirely. But you can't make those decisions without the data.

What This Means for Your Firm

If you're managing $100K or more per month in lead generation spend across multiple vendors, there is almost certainly a reallocation opportunity hiding in your data. The question is whether you can see it.

Cost per lead is a starting point, not a finish line. Cost per case gets you closer to the truth. And settlement data — the final layer — is what turns marketing reporting into a revenue decision.

Sarah didn't need to spend more. She didn't need to add new vendors. She needed to measure what was already happening and act on what the data showed her. That one decision — reallocating $40,000 per month based on cost-per-case and settlement data — produced an 18% improvement in marketing ROI without changing her total budget by a single dollar.

The data was always there. She just needed a system that could connect all of it.