California Stopped Being a Normal Lead Market on January 1, 2026
For about fifteen years, buying legal leads worked the same way in every state. You picked a vendor, agreed a price, plugged a webhook into your CRM, and the only real question was whether the leads answered the phone.
California doesn't work that way anymore. If you are buying personal injury leads California firms can actually sign, the binding constraint is no longer price or volume — it is who carries the regulatory exposure. And the reason is easy to miss, because it happened while the federal rules were moving in the opposite direction.
Two rulebooks moving in opposite directions. The federal consent standard relaxed through 2025 while California tightened — and SB 37 put the exposure on the buying firm.
↓ Federal — Loosening
The consent rules everyone braced for never arrived
January 24, 2025
The Eleventh Circuit vacated the FCC's one-to-one consent rule in Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC, days before it would have applied, holding the agency exceeded its authority.
August – September 2025
The FCC declined to appeal, reinstated the prior prior express written consent standard, and formally deleted the vacated language.
January 2026
The broader “revocation-all” requirement was pushed from April 2026 out to January 31, 2027.
↑ California — Tightening
The biggest advertising overhaul in over a decade
October 11, 2025
SB 37 signed and chaptered. Amends B&P Code §§ 6153, 6155, 6157, 6157.2, 6158.4, 6158.5 and 6158.7, and creates § 6156.5 for joint advertising.
January 1, 2026
Effective. “Advertisement” now reaches landing pages, intake funnels, call-center scripts and SMS. Ads must name a responsible attorney and a bona fide office location. No outcome guarantees. No unverifiable performance claims.
Enforcement, ongoing
Consumer complaint to the State Bar → 21 days to find substantial evidence → if the ad isn't withdrawn, a civil action carrying $5,000 to $100,000 per violation, weighted partly on the defendant's net worth.
A vendor whose California compliance posture is “the one-to-one rule got struck down, we're fine” is telling you something useful: they haven't read SB 37. The federal floor moving down did nothing to California's ceiling.
Read the Statute Twice
The Part Most Vendors Won't Tell You: § 6155 Binds the Buyer
Business & Professions Code § 6155 has been on the books for decades, and most out-of-state vendors treat it as somebody else's problem. It isn't. The statute says no entity may operate for the direct or indirect purpose of referring potential clients to attorneys unless it is certified by the State Bar — and that no attorney shall accept such a referral.
The prohibition runs in both directions.
§ 6155 runs in both directions. An uncertified referral arrangement exposes the vendor and the attorney who accepts the referral.
Step 1
The Vendor
Generates or aggregates a claimant inquiry and routes it to a matching firm.
Step 2
The Routing
Under Jackson, the referral is complete the moment the claimant is directed or sent — no legal judgment required.
Step 3 — Exposure Lands Here
Your Firm
§ 6155 bars the attorney from accepting. SB 37 puts ad-content liability on the participating lawyer, not the vendor or the platform.
In Jackson v. LegalMatch.com (2019) 42 Cal.App.5th 760, the First District held that a referral occurs when an entity directs or sends a potential client to an attorney. The Supreme Court denied review in March 2020. When the State Bar then sued LegalMatch, it alleged that the lawyers who accepted the referrals had violated § 6155 too. That case settled in 2022 without a published ruling on the attorney-side question — so the point has never been definitively litigated. But SB 37 has now written “certified lawyer referral service” into the responsible-party disclosure, which is a fairly loud signal about where enforcement attention is heading.
No Matching
We deliver inquiries, not recommendations
We generate first-party inquiries from claimants who initiated contact after an injury. We deliver the inquiry. We don't tell the claimant which firm to hire, we don't rank firms, and we don't curate a shortlist. The distance between “here is an inquiry” and “here is the lawyer for you” is the distance Jackson turned on.
Named Consent
Consent captured to the buying firm
Every California lead carries prior express written consent identifying your firm, with a TrustedForm or Jornaya certificate showing the exact page, the exact language and the timestamp. We capture consent as though one-to-one were still in force, because the federal floor moving down doesn't lower California's.
Revocation
Opt-outs honored across every channel
Per the FCC rules effective April 11, 2025, revocation by any reasonable means on any channel is honored within the 10-business-day window. Any opt-out signal suppresses the record on our side and is passed straight through to you.
Attribution
Every page names a responsible attorney
Each California landing page in the funnel names a responsible attorney or firm and a bona fide office location, as SB 37 requires. No anonymous funnels. No virtual-office addresses standing in for a real place of business.
§ 6156.5
Written joint advertising agreement first
Where a joint arrangement applies, there's a written § 6156.5 agreement allocating content responsibility, withdrawal procedure and lead allocation — signed before a single lead is delivered, not after a complaint arrives.
Retention
Creative and scripts archived 12+ months
Every ad, script and page version is archived for at least a year and available on request. If the Bar ever asks what a claimant saw on the day they filled out a form, you'll have the answer in an afternoon rather than a month.
We are not your ethics counsel and this page is not a legal opinion. Run our structure past your own compliance attorney before you buy. But you should be able to hand them something concrete — and most vendors cannot give you that.
The Screening Field Nobody Else Runs
Prop 213 Can Strip 78% Out of a Clean File
Here's a scenario every California PI attorney has lived. A rear-end collision on the 405. Clear liability, favorable police report, the claimant treated for four months with a chiropractor and an orthopedist. On paper it's a $55,000 case.
Then you learn the claimant's own policy lapsed eleven days before the crash.
Under Civil Code § 3333.4 — Prop 213, the Personal Responsibility Act voters passed in 1996 — an uninsured owner or operator recovers no non-economic damages whatsoever. No pain and suffering. No emotional distress. No disfigurement. No loss of consortium. It applies even when the other driver was entirely at fault, and there is no exception for a short, unintentional lapse.
What's left is a medical-specials case, and Howell v. Hamilton Meats (2011) 52 Cal.4th 541 already caps those at the lesser of amounts paid or incurred and reasonable value.
Now consider what that means when you're buying. A vendor that doesn't ask about the claimant's own coverage is selling Prop 213 files into your pipeline at full exclusive price. You'll sign them. You'll work them for six weeks. You'll find out at the records stage. Motor vehicle collision leads in California carry this field on every record we deliver.
The field that decides the file. Claimant-side coverage on the date of loss is screened at intake, before the lead is ever priced or delivered.
Case Value Teardown
Same facts. Same liability. Same treatment. The only variable is whether the claimant carried coverage on the day of loss.
Insured Claimant$55,000
Economic
Non-Economic — Recoverable
Economic damages (medical specials, wage loss) plus pain and suffering, emotional distress and loss of enjoyment.
Civ. Code § 3333.4 applies
Uninsured Claimant$12,000
Economic
Barred — No Recovery
Economic damages survive, capped by Howell. Everything else is gone, regardless of fault.
Exceptions we flag at intake — these keep the case alive
Passenger in the uninsured vehicleEmployer's vehicle — duty to insure was theirsPrivate property collisionAt-fault driver convicted of DUI — § 3333.4(c)
The 2025 Repricing
What SB 1107 Did to California Case Values
On January 1, 2025, California's minimum auto liability limits went from 15/30/5 to 30/60/15. First increase since 1967, delivered by SB 1107, the Protect California Drivers Act, which passed in 2022 with a three-year runway.
The bodily injury floor doubled. The property damage floor tripled. UM/UIM minimums moved to match the 30/60 bodily injury limits. For a plaintiff practice, that is not a footnote.
1967 – 2024
15/30/5
Unchanged for 58 years. Minimum-limits files often didn't justify the intake hours.
Jan 1, 2025 — Current
30/60/15
$30K per person / $60K per accident / $15K property. Every in-force policy has now rolled up at renewal.
From Jan 1, 2035
50/100/25
The next scheduled step-up already written into the statute.
Minimum-limits files are worth working again
Firms that set an intake floor to screen out likely 15/30 cases are now screening out cases worth double. If your criteria haven't been revisited since 2024, they're mispriced against the current statutory floor.
Date of loss is now a pricing input
A June 2024 collision and a June 2025 collision sit under different statutory floors, and both are still inside the two-year window under CCP § 335.1. We stamp date of loss on every lead and can weight your buy toward post-SB-1107 losses.
If motor vehicle is the whole of your practice rather than one line in it, our California MVA leads page covers collision supply specifically — vehicle types, UM/UIM posture, commercial carrier flags, and MVA-only pricing.
Full California Injury Book
Every California Injury Vertical We Generate Personal Injury Leads For
Most vendors selling “personal injury leads” in California are selling collision inquiries with a broader label on the box. If premises liability is 30% of your book, that vendor has nothing for you.
We generate across the full California injury book, and the qualification fields change by vertical because the statutes do. These are the California personal injury leads we produce in volume, with the screening that actually decides whether each one is a case.
Premises Liability & Slip-and-Fall
Grocery, retail, restaurant, apartment common areas, parking structures. The variable that decides the file isn't the fall — it's who owned the floor.
California is a strict liability state under Civil Code § 3342 — no one-bite rule, no need to prove the owner knew the dog was dangerous. Liability is usually easy. Collectibility is the question.
Screened at intake
Owner identificationOn owner's property vs. at largeAnimal control involvedHomeowner's / renter's coverage
Wrongful Death
Two years from date of death under CCP § 377.60. A claimant who isn't a statutory heir isn't your client no matter how good the facts are, so we establish standing before the lead ever reaches you.
Screened at intake
Relationship to decedentOther § 377.60 statutory heirsDate of deathCause / responsible party
Catastrophic Injury
Traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, amputation, severe burns, permanent disfigurement. Highest-priced inventory we carry and the tightest volume — we don't manufacture supply that isn't there.
Defective consumer products, machinery, and vehicle component failures. Whether the claimant still has the product is often the difference between a case and a story.
Screened at intake
Product identificationManufacturer if knownProduct retainedDate of purchase
Negligent Security
Assaults at apartment complexes, hotels, bars and parking structures. These cases live or die on foreseeability, so prior-incident evidence is captured before delivery rather than discovered later.
Motor vehicle is also generated in volume across California, but that vertical has its own qualification set and its own pricing — see California MVA leads for collision-specific supply. And if you want mixed-vertical delivery — say, 60% motor vehicle, 25% premises, 15% dog bite — we set the ratio at the account level and hold it. Most firms run a mix. Most vendors can't deliver one.
Field-Level Transparency
What's Actually Inside a California PI Lead
Most vendors describe a lead as “name, phone, email, brief case description.” That's a contact record, not a case. Here is every core field on every California injury lead we deliver.
Identity & Contact
Full name
Mobile number
Email address
ZIP code
Preferred language (English / Spanish)
Best time to reach
Incident
Date of loss
County and city
Incident type
Location type — public roadway, private property, commercial premises, residential
Attorney-represented — scrubbed before delivery, not credited after
Already spoke to adverse carrier (Y/N)
Gave a recorded statement (Y/N)
Duplicate check against your prior 180 days
Compliance
TrustedForm or Jornaya certificate URL
Consent timestamp
Originating page URL
Consent language captured verbatim
IP address and user agent
That public-entity flag earns its place on its own. A claimant hurt by a city vehicle in Long Beach, or on a defective sidewalk in Sacramento, has a six-month administrative claim deadline under Gov. Code § 911.2 that has nothing to do with the two-year statute under CCP § 335.1. Firms lose those files by treating them like ordinary injury cases for the first ninety days. It costs us nothing to ask the question at intake, and it has saved buying firms entire cases.
Published Ranges, Not “Contact Us”
PI Leads California: Pricing and the Math You Should Run
We publish ranges. Firms that won't quote until you're on a call are usually pricing you, not the market. Here is what PI leads California-wide actually cost in 2026, by delivery model.
Delivery Model
ICC California Range
Typical Lead-to-Signed
Realistic Cost Per Signed Case
Shared form lead (3 buyers max)
$95 – $180
3 – 6%
$1,900 – $4,500
Exclusive real-time PI lead — standard tier
$320 – $550
10 – 15%
$3,200 – $4,800
Exclusive premises liability / dog bite
$240 – $420
8 – 12%
$2,400 – $4,600
Exclusive catastrophic / wrongful death
$600 – $1,200
12 – 20%
$4,200 – $8,000
Live transfer (claimant on the line)
$1,450 – $3,200
25 – 40%
$4,200 – $9,500
Signed retainer, delivered
$2,000 – $3,200
—
$2,000 – $3,200
Pricing for California PI leads across all verticals. Motor vehicle inventory prices inside the standard exclusive tier — see the MVA page for collision-specific rates. California carries a metro premium over national averages: Los Angeles, Orange County and the Bay Area run at the top of every band, while Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton and Modesto run at the bottom. Prop 213-flagged leads are discounted 30–40% or suppressed entirely — your call.
Context from outside our own book: median PI cost per lead on Google Ads reached $325 in 2026, with Meta at $180. Core injury-lawyer clicks passed $150 in high-competition metros — Los Angeles among them — by January 2026, and the most contested terms have been reported above $500 per click. Martindale-Avvo puts collision leads at $200–$400 nationally. CallRail's data shows a lead costing $180 in a mid-sized market running $450+ in a major metro. If a California vendor quotes you $60 exclusive, ask what traffic source produces that — because it isn't paid search.
There is one number that decides whether any lead program works for your firm, and no vendor can tell you what it is. Before you buy California PI leads from anyone — us included — work out your own ceiling. It falls out of your average fee, your sign rate, and the return you need to justify the spend.
Move the sliders. The maximum you can defensibly pay per lead moves with them.
Notice what happens when you drop the sign rate from 12% to 6% — roughly the difference between intake answering in five minutes and intake answering the next morning. Your ceiling halves, and the lead never changed. Intake speed moves cost per signed case more than lead price does. No vendor benefits from telling you that, which is exactly why you should weight it heavily.
Max defensible CPL = (avg fee per signed case × lead-to-signed rate) ÷ target return multiple
Break-Even Calculator
Defaults reflect a typical California MVA practice. Adjust to your own numbers.
Expected fee revenue per lead$1,680
Leads needed per signed case8.3
Your maximum CPL$420
One More Test — Takes Four Seconds
We recently read a widely circulated 2026 benchmark table built on $3.3M of Google Ads and LSA spend across thirteen plaintiff firms. It reported an average cost per lead of $284, a 7% lead-to-case conversion rate, and a cost per signed case of $468.
Those numbers can't coexist. $284 ÷ 0.07 = $4,057.
The published figure was off by roughly nine times. Run the division on every deck you're shown this quarter. It will disqualify more vendors than any reference check.
The Honest Version
Exclusive or Shared — It Depends on Your Intake
Everyone in this industry tells you exclusive is better. That's mostly true and it's not the whole answer.
Exclusive
Default Choice
Buyers per lead1
Typical sign rate10 – 15%
Relative sign rate3 – 5× shared
Cost per lead3 – 5× shared
Contact rates are higher because the claimant isn't fielding four calls in ninety minutes, and they don't start the conversation already annoyed. Buy exclusive unless you have a specific reason not to.
Shared
Conditional
Buyers per lead3 – 5
Typical sign rate3 – 6%
What decides itSpeed
Cost per lead$95 – $180
It's a speed contest. Under two minutes to first touch, twelve hours a day, and shared can produce a competitive cost per signed case. If your intake is a voicemail box after 5pm, shared will produce the most expensive signed cases you have ever bought.
We sell both. We'll tell you which one fits your operation after we ask two questions about your intake — and if the answer is that you shouldn't be buying leads at all right now, we'll say that too.
Statewide Supply, County-Level Filtering
Where We Generate California Personal Injury Leads
We generate personal injury leads California-wide, but depth follows population and incident volume — which means Southern California carries most of it. Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties together account for the majority of statewide crash volume, and Los Angeles recorded more collisions than any other city in 2024 — with 256 traffic deaths.
01
Los Angeles
Personal injury leads Los Angeles — deepest inventory, top-of-band pricing
02
San Diego
PI leads San Diego — strong premises and MVA mix
03
San Jose
Personal injury leads San Jose — Santa Clara County venue
04
San Francisco
PI leads San Francisco — high pedestrian and premises volume
05
Fresno
Personal injury leads Fresno — lower-band pricing, steady supply
06
Sacramento
PI leads Sacramento — frequent public-entity flags
07
Long Beach
Personal injury leads Long Beach — LA County venue
08
Oakland
PI leads Oakland — Alameda County venue
09
Bakersfield
Personal injury leads Bakersfield — Kern County, lower band
10
Anaheim
PI leads Anaheim — Orange County, premium band
Consistent Supply
Stockton · Riverside · Santa Ana · Irvine · Chula Vista · Fremont · Santa Clarita · San Bernardino · Modesto · Moreno Valley · Fontana · Oxnard · Huntington Beach · Glendale · Ontario · Elk Grove · Corona · Lancaster · Palmdale · Salinas
Available on Request
Hayward · Garden Grove · Oceanside · Rancho Cucamonga · Sunnyvale · Escondido · Pomona · Roseville · Visalia · Torrance · Pasadena · Fullerton · Concord · Clovis · Thousand Oaks · Vallejo · Victorville · Berkeley · Santa Rosa · Simi Valley
Leads are filtered by county of loss, not claimant residence, so your venue assumptions hold. Los Angeles County routes personal injury matters through dedicated PI departments with their own filing and scheduling practices — check current local rules, they've been revised more than once. If your firm only appears in specific counties, we restrict delivery to those. Spanish-language supply is a standing request we can fill — California's largest legal advertising networks were built on Spanish-language TV for a reason, and most digital-only vendors have almost no bilingual inventory. Ask.
Screened Before Delivery
California Case Timing Your Intake Needs to Know
Every one of our California personal injury leads is date-screened against the deadline that actually governs it — which in California is not always the obvious one.
Case Killer
6 mo
Administrative claim against a public entity
Gov. Code § 911.2
2 yr
Personal injury and wrongful death
CCP § 335.1 · § 377.60
3 yr
Property damage
CCP § 338
3 / 1 yr
Medical malpractice — whichever is earlier
CCP § 340.5
Pure comparative negligence
Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804. Recovery is reduced by the claimant's percentage of fault and never eliminated. A claimant who is 70% at fault still holds a 30% case — which is a genuine reason California lead volume converts better than the raw numbers suggest, because files that a modified-comparative state would bar outright remain viable here.
Medical damages under Howell
Howell v. Hamilton Meats & Provisions, Inc. (2011) 52 Cal.4th 541. Past medicals are the lesser of amounts paid or incurred and reasonable value. Billed-charge boards don't survive. Which provider the claimant treated with, and on what payment posture, changes what the file is worth — so we capture it.
Treatment doesn't pause the two-year clock. Neither does negotiating with the carrier. Filed means physically filed with the Superior Court. Minors are tolled to age 18 under CCP § 352, with the government-claim exception still applying.
We'd Rather Lose the Sale Than the Renewal
Who Shouldn't Buy California PI Leads From Us
Five situations where selling you personal injury leads California-side would be the wrong call. If any of these describe your firm right now, fix the underlying thing first — the leads will still be here.
Your intake can't answer inside five minutes during business hours
Every benchmark in this market, including ours, collapses on first-touch speed. Fix intake, then buy. Buying leads to paper over an intake problem is the most reliable way to conclude that lead buying doesn't work.
You want shared leads without a dialer and dedicated intake staff
You'll lose the speed contest and pay for the privilege. Three to five firms receive the same record at the same second. Without the infrastructure to win that race, shared is the most expensive product on our menu.
You're planning to test with 10 leads
Ten leads at a 12% sign rate is an expected 1.2 signed cases, which tells you nothing about the program and everything about variance. The realistic minimum for a readable signal is 50 leads over 30 days.
Counsel hasn't reviewed your California advertising posture since January 1, 2026
SB 37 changed the responsible-party disclosure requirements for landing pages your firm's name appears on. Sort that first. We can hand your ethics counsel our structure documentation, but we can't audit your existing campaigns for you.
You need volume tomorrow at any price
Exclusive California inventory is capped by county. When Los Angeles is allocated, it's allocated — and we'll tell you that rather than quietly converting you to shared and letting you discover it in the reporting.
From Call to First Lead
How Delivery Works
Median time from availability call to first delivered lead is about a week, most of which is your CRM, not our setup.
Step 01
Availability check
You tell us counties, case types, monthly volume, and whether you want Prop 213-flagged leads. We tell you what's actually open. Some counties are allocated and we won't pretend otherwise.
Step 02
Terms and compliance
Month-to-month, no annual lock-in. Where a joint arrangement applies you get a written § 6156.5 agreement identifying responsible attorneys, office locations, content approval, withdrawal procedure and lead allocation — before delivery starts.
Step 03
Integration
Webhook, direct CRM push, email or SMS. Filevine, Litify, Lawmatics, Clio Grow, HubSpot, and anything with an open endpoint. Median setup is 48 hours.
Step 04
Real-time delivery
Exclusive leads land inside 90 seconds of form completion, with the consent certificate attached. Duplicates and attorney-represented records are scrubbed before they reach you, not credited after.
Step 05
Replacement
Wrong number, no incident, outside your county, duplicate, or already represented — flag within 72 hours and it's replaced. No arbitration, no quarterly reconciliation, no credit memo you have to chase.
Step 06
Weekly reporting
Delivered, contacted, qualified, signed, and cost per signed case. If your cost per signed case is drifting the wrong way, we'll raise it before you do.
Availability Is County-Capped
Tell Us Which Counties You're Short On
We'll tell you what's actually open, what it costs, and what your cost per signed case should look like at your current sign rate. If the numbers don't work for your firm, we'll say so on the call rather than after the invoice.
Enough volume to produce a readable sign rate, short enough that you're not committed to a program you haven't measured. Month-to-month either way, whether you buy California PI leads in one county or statewide.
✓ Exclusive to one firm — never resold or recycled
✓ Prop 213 coverage status on every motor vehicle record
✓ Public-entity flag for the six-month § 911.2 deadline
✓ TrustedForm or Jornaya certificate attached to every lead
✓ Written § 6156.5 agreement before delivery begins
✓ 72-hour replacement window, no arbitration
By submitting, you consent to be contacted by InjuryCaseClaims.com regarding your inquiry. This does not constitute a binding agreement. All information is handled securely and confidentially.
California PI Leads FAQ
The Questions Firms Actually Ask
Compliance, pricing, screening and delivery — the things firms ask before they buy California PI leads. If yours isn't here, ask on the call. We'd rather answer it before you buy than after.
Yes, with real caveats that don't exist in most states. California Rules of Professional Conduct 7.2 permits a lawyer to pay the reasonable costs of advertising. But B&P Code § 6155 prohibits an uncertified entity from referring clients to attorneys and prohibits attorneys from accepting such referrals, and Jackson v. LegalMatch.com (2019) 42 Cal.App.5th 760 held that a referral occurs the moment an entity directs or sends a potential client to a lawyer — no legal judgment required. The practical distinction is between buying advertising that generates inquiries and buying a matched referral. We're structured on the advertising side of that line. Confirm your own arrangement with California ethics counsel.
SB 37 was signed October 11, 2025 and took effect January 1, 2026. It amends B&P Code §§ 6153, 6155, 6157, 6157.2, 6158.4, 6158.5 and 6158.7 and creates § 6156.5. It expands “advertisement” to cover landing pages, intake funnels, call scripts and SMS; requires ads to name a responsible California-licensed attorney, firm or certified lawyer referral service and disclose a bona fide office location; bans outcome guarantees and unverifiable performance claims; and creates a consumer-initiated enforcement path carrying statutory damages of $5,000 to $100,000 per violation. If your firm advertises in California in any channel, including through a vendor, it applies to you.
The participating attorney and firm. Media outlets and ad platforms are expressly excluded from being treated as advertisers for content purposes. In a joint advertising arrangement under § 6156.5, every participating firm must sign a written agreement accepting liability for the content, and one non-compliant ad can expose the whole group regardless of who bought the media.
It depends entirely on the model, and it's unsettled. SB 37 is aimed at uncertified services operating in the gray area, and it wrote “certified lawyer referral service” into the responsible-party disclosure. Any vendor whose model resembles matching and routing should be getting counsel on certification. Ask any California vendor directly how they've analyzed § 6155 and whether they've sought certification. A vendor without a clear answer is a vendor you're absorbing risk for.
Personal injury leads California-wide price by delivery model, not by a single number. Shared form leads run roughly $95–$180. Exclusive real-time PI leads run $320–$550, with the wider market band at $200–$800. Live transfers run $1,450–$3,200. Delivered signed retainers run $2,000–$3,200. California carries a metro premium — Los Angeles, Orange County and the Bay Area sit at the top of every band. For reference, median PI cost per lead on Google Ads reached $325 in 2026, and core injury-lawyer clicks passed $150 in high-competition metros.
$3,200–$4,800 all-in for exclusive California PI leads when intake answers inside five minutes. Shared leads range wider — anywhere from $1,900 to well past $4,500 depending entirely on how fast your intake moves. Calculate it as total lead spend divided by signed cases and track it monthly, not quarterly.
10–15% lead-to-signed on exclusive real-time leads with fast intake. 3–6% on shared. 25–40% on live transfers. The dominant variable is first-touch speed, not lead price. A firm that answers in two minutes will beat a firm that answers in two hours while paying the same per lead.
Prop 213 — Civil Code § 3333.4 — bars an uninsured owner or operator from recovering any non-economic damages in a motor vehicle case, even when the other driver is entirely at fault. No pain and suffering, no emotional distress, no disfigurement. There's no exception for a brief lapse in coverage. Since non-economic damages are usually the majority of settlement value in a soft-tissue case, a Prop 213 claimant can be worth a fifth of what the file looks like on intake. We screen coverage status on every California motor vehicle lead.
No. A passenger injured while riding in an uninsured vehicle can still recover non-economic damages — the bar reaches owners and operators. Other exceptions: the vehicle belonged to the claimant's employer, the collision occurred on private property, or the at-fault driver was convicted of DUI under Veh. Code §§ 23152 or 23153. We flag each of these.
30/60/15 since January 1, 2025 under SB 1107, the Protect California Drivers Act — $30,000 bodily injury per person, $60,000 per accident, $15,000 property damage. That replaced 15/30/5, unchanged since 1967. UM/UIM minimums match the 30/60 bodily injury limits. The next increase is January 1, 2035, to 50/100/25. In practice the bodily injury floor on every post-2025 California collision is double what it was.
Two years from the date of injury for most personal injury and wrongful death claims under CCP § 335.1. Three years for property damage under CCP § 338. Three years from injury or one year from discovery, whichever is earlier, for medical malpractice under CCP § 340.5. And six months to present an administrative claim against a public entity under Gov. Code § 911.2 — that one is short enough to lose cases on, which is why we flag public-entity involvement at the lead level.
Every lead carries prior express written consent naming the buying firm, with a TrustedForm or Jornaya certificate capturing the page, the consent language and the timestamp. The FCC's one-to-one consent rule was vacated by the Eleventh Circuit in Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC in January 2025 and formally removed in September 2025 — we capture consent to that standard regardless, because California's requirements didn't move with the federal floor. Revocation is honored across all channels within the FCC's 10-business-day window per the rules effective April 11, 2025.
Only if you have a California-licensed attorney of record who will appear, and a bona fide California office location to disclose under SB 37. If you're planning to sign California cases and refer them out, tell us up front — the § 6155 analysis on a referral-out arrangement is different, and we won't structure it for you without your ethics counsel in the room.
No. Month-to-month, cancel with notice. We'd suggest a 50-lead, 30-day test before scaling, because smaller samples don't produce a readable sign rate.
Wrong number, no incident, wrong county, duplicate, or already attorney-represented — flag it within 72 hours and it's replaced. Attorney-represented and duplicate records are scrubbed before delivery, so those should be rare.
Narrower Need?
One Vertical, Not the Whole Book
This page covers the full California injury book. If you only buy one vertical, these pages carry the screening criteria and pricing specific to it.
California PI You Are Here
All California injury verticals — premises, dog bite, wrongful death, catastrophic, product, negligent security and motor vehicle.
Buying across several states? Say so on the call. California's screening criteria differ enough from other markets that a single blended order tends to underperform — we'd rather quote them separately and let you compare cost per signed case state by state.
