How to Run a 90-Day Test With a New Legal Lead Vendor

Personal injury and workers’ compensation cases take time to sign and longer to resolve. A claimant who is contacted this week may not sign for several weeks while they finish treatment, gather documents, or think it over. That means judging a new vendor on the first two weeks of leads is usually a mistake: the leads that will eventually sign have not had time to do so, and the early numbers are too small to mean much.

A structured 90-day test solves both problems. It gives leads time to move through intake, and it produces enough volume to see real patterns. It also forces a firm to set up the tracking it needs to evaluate any vendor, which pays off long after the test is over.

Before launch

Most of the work in a good test happens before the first lead arrives. The goal is to make sure that when results come in, they reflect the leads rather than differences in how they were handled.

Write the criteria

Document the screening criteria for each practice area in the test, separated into hard disqualifiers and preferences. Share them with the vendor in writing so there is no ambiguity about what was bought. See what makes an MVA lead qualified and what makes a workers’ comp lead qualified.

Agree the replacement policy

Put the replacement policy in writing before launch: what counts as invalid, how to report it, and what the remedy is. Without it, invalid leads distort the test results and create disputes.

Set up delivery and tagging

Configure delivery into your CRM with source tagging, so every lead from the test is attributed to the vendor. Without attribution, it is impossible to separate the vendor’s results from everything else your intake team is handling.

Fix the intake process

Use the same script, the same response-time target, and the same follow-up cadence for every lead in the test. If intake practices change halfway through, you will not know whether changes in results came from the leads or from the process.

Set a budget and volume cap

Choose a budget you can afford to lose if the test fails, and cap volume so that leads do not arrive faster than your team can handle them. A test that overwhelms intake will produce misleadingly poor results.

What to track

Five figures cover most of what a firm needs to evaluate a vendor. Each points to a different part of the process.

Day 30 checkpoint

At thirty days, it is too early to judge sign rate, but contact rate and invalid rate are already meaningful. If contact rate is low, check your own response time before blaming the leads, since slow follow-up is the most common cause. If invalid leads are high, review with the vendor which criteria are failing and whether the screening questions are being applied as agreed. Small adjustments at this stage can save the test.

Day 60 checkpoint

By sixty days, sign rate is starting to take shape, and decline reasons are the most useful thing to review. If your team is declining leads for the same reason repeatedly, that reason should probably become a screening criterion. If volume is too thin to measure, loosening a preference, such as expanding the target counties or widening the accident date window, may help.

Day 90 decision

At ninety days, compare cost per retained case against your target and against the other channels your firm uses. Then make one of three decisions: scale the vendor up, adjust the criteria and run another test period, or stop.

Keep in mind that some leads from the test will still be signing after day 90. Allow for that lag when you make the decision, and revisit the final numbers a month or two later to see whether the conclusion still holds.

Frequently asked questions