Buying Personal Injury Leads? Watch This NOW

If you're buying personal injury leads, you're out of business — you just don't know it yet.

That's not a hot take. It's already law. California's SB 37 and Colorado's SB 25-174 are going after the lead-gen vendors that have been running garbage ads under your name for years. And more states are coming.

Here's why buying leads is quietly killing your firm — and the simple fix that builds a moat around it: run your own Facebook and Instagram video ads. We're getting our clients sub-$2,000 signed MVA cases doing exactly that.

Chapters:
0:00 — If you buy leads, you're out of business
0:18 — California SB 37: what it actually bans
0:52 — Colorado SB 25-174: buying/selling leads is now illegal
1:47 — How lead-gen companies hold you hostage
2:32 — Why your cost per case keeps climbing (supply & demand)
3:16 — Problem #1: they inflate your costs
3:59 — Problem #2: they cheapen your brand
4:39 — Problem #3: they steal your audience
6:15 — "But they work" — the rebuttal
6:57 — The fix: run your own video ads
7:17 — Sub-$2,000 signed MVA cases (25–30 firms)
7:59 — Build a moat while the industry crumbles
8:12 — Want us to run it? Let's talk

Resources:
→ California SB 37 explained: https://webris.org/sb-37-attorney-advertising/
→ Colorado's lead-gen ban explained: https://webris.org/colorado-lead-generation-ban/
→ Book a call: https://webris.org/get-started/

All I do is help personal injury firms sign more cases with paid ads. Subscribe for more.
#personalinjury #lawfirmmarketing #legalmarketing #facebookads

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Unpopular opinion for personal jury law firms. If you are buying leads, you're out of business. You just don't know it yet. And the reason why I say that is not just another podcaster making wild claims. It's actually based on bills that are being passed. California SB37, January 2026 passed. I'll give you some bullet points on what that bill said. It makes bans misleading or deceptive claims about a lawyer's skills, experience, or record, requires every ad to disclose a real office and who's behind it, the attorney. And it actually pins legal liability for the ad's content on the advertiser and lets consumers sue. That's one that came out in California this year. And really, what that's going at is going after lead generation vendors that are making crazy claims on behalf of law firms to generate leads, really in the per, let's just call it what it is. It's in the personal injury car accident space. That's California SB 37. June 2026, Colorado signed into bill SB26174. Give you the bullet points on this. It makes buying or selling legal leads a deceptive trade practice. It bans any third party for a client's contact info or case details, bans paying any third party for a client's contact info or details, and it carries civil and criminal penalties. So this one is much more aggressive. And states are waking up, and you can look these up. These are on the internet. Law firms and consumers are getting it together and saying enough. Attorney advertising on social media, on digital has gotten out of control. The messaging is egregious. It doesn't represent your law firm. It doesn't represent your brand. It doesn't represent your integrity. It doesn't represent how you want to build a business anymore. And I get it, you do it because you're like, it works. Like I'm getting signed cases, Ryan, at a reasonable cost, but it's eroding the ground that you're standing on. Like your industry is not going to be around for very much longer if this type of stuff happens. And when I saw SP37 come out, I was like, Yeah, I because I have been talking about this for years. I've been talking about how lead generation companies are the bane of your existence. They're holding you hostage. They're taking your money, they're putting it into their own ad campaigns with their own logos, their own brands. They're getting all those valuable impressions. They're getting in front of all those people where people are spending so much time, then they're generating leads, they own the contact info, they own the data, and they're selling them to you and they're holding you hostage. And over time, they keep ratcheting up the price on you. And it's a drug that you can't get off of, especially when you're buying a lot of them. So these companies are destroying the industry, but you're paying them to do it. You are funding them to do it. And it's a huge problem. And I'm so happy that these things are coming into play because change needs to happen and it needs to happen fast. Because I mean, how many of you out there, raise your hand while you're watching this video, have seen your CPA rise over the last three years continuously? It's because there's so much money flooding into the ecosystem. It's not like that many more car accidents or slip and falls are happening. There's so much more money flowing into it that it's inflating the cost. So if you ever do your own Google or your own Facebook or your own marketing, right? It's based on what's called CPM. That's cost per impression, cost per thousand impression. It is a simple supply and demand marketplace. The more advertisers are pumping money into the system, the higher the cost for that audience goes. So when these lead generation companies over the past two years have started spending hundreds of millions of dollars coming from law firms, like you're paying them to do this, it is inflating the costs. So if you want to try and do your own marketing, it is inflating the costs and driving up the cost, and the economics of your business are out of whack. I hear it all the time, like Ryan, I can't pay more than $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 for an MBA case. And that number keeps on going up. And they tell me all the time I'm losing money, I'm losing money. I'm like, what do you want me to do? Stop buying leads. This is happening because this is a self-fulfilling process, right? I don't know if that's the right thing to say, but like it's because you're paying for this and it's inflating the cost and it's just gotten out of control. But I think more importantly, number two, is that this really cheapens your service, right? When you are allowing these lead generation vendors to put out messaging with egregious claims that are not true, right? Like I see ads all the time that it's like, hey, use this AI calculator to find out exactly what your car accident claim is worth, even if you're not at fault. No. So, like what they're doing is they're using that because nobody's holding them accountable. Like, you would never run that ad. You would never run that messaging because you know it's not true, and that's not how you want to be represented. But they're doing it because they're not attached to a law firm, they're not attached to any sort of bar being reprimanded. So they run it and it makes you look cheap. It just does, right? Like the term ambulance chaser, I see it on ad comments all the time on these types of ads. Like, that is not how you want to be represented. That's not how the industry should be represented. You are providing a valuable service. I know this because I've been in a car accident. My mother-in-law's been in a car accident that she wasn't at fault. And insurance companies are the worst. You're not the worst. Insurance companies are the worst. They don't want to pay, they take our money every single month and refuse to pay us anything for it. So you provide an extremely valuable service. But when the messaging is wildly off-brand, it's not a good look. It's not a good look for you, it's not good for the industry, it's just not good for the future of what you're doing. Uh, and number three, like I said, they're stealing your audience. You're paying them to steal your audience. I know we care about costs per sign case as the most important thing in this industry. I get it. I all I do is work with injury firms. I totally get it. CPA matters. If you don't have the numbers, you're out. Cool. I get it. I'm running a business too. I understand that. But what we're not talking about is the fact that people spend more time scrolling social media than pretty much anything else. It's kind of sad. I mean, it's extremely sad, but it is what it is, right? We we there's nothing we can do about it. So you're allowing these companies to grab all of that brand attention. I mean, how much money is spent on on personal injury billboards and TV and radio? And we're like, yeah, like we don't track that because brand, because brand, because brand, because top of mind, right? Like you wouldn't get it. Like, you don't get it because brand. I'm like, I do get brand because the best way to build brand is to just post on Instagram 10 times a day, every single day, and you will see a palpable increase in brand and top of mind awareness, but nobody does it because it's too much work. And so instead, we're paying these companies to go out and run these ads, get in front of people, and steal all those impressions. They are getting billions of impressions on Instagram and on Facebook. That should be yours, that should be other law firms, right? That should be putting the right messaging out there, talking about how you actually help people, right? And like what to actually do when you get in a car accident and when insurance does deny your claim, right? And how to feel and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. So those three things, I mean, inflating the cost, cheapening the service, and stealing your audience, they're destroying your industry. And like, again, the biggest pushback I get, they work, Ryan. So shut up, right? Like these it works. We're getting leads at a reasonable cost, but yes, you're getting sign cases, but these are single event sign cases. It's not like we're talking about recurrent revenue or multi-event type cases or a business lawyer who signs somebody to do a contract and then signs them to do like, no, that's not how this works. An MVA is a one-time thing. You never meet the person in person. That's just not how it works, and we know it. So the lead generation companies are keeping everything else, right? Like you're getting the money for it, right? And maybe you're making some profit off of which is great, but you're paying them to grow their business, you're paying to make them famous, essentially, and then they just rent your own market back to you. It is an unhealthy relationship that you are shortchanging a little bit of revenue in the short term for massive long-term impacts, and we're seeing that now with why these bills are being passed. So there is a simple solution, and that's just to do it yourself. These lead generation companies are getting almost all of their leads off of Facebook and Instagram advertising. You can do it yourself. It's really not that complicated. You just need to make video, is really what it comes down to. If you are willing to sit with a cell phone in front of your face, recording very simple scripts, five to ten of them per month, I can get you signed cases at a better rate than a lead generation firm. And I would guarantee that if you're willing to do that, because I have 25, 30 clients across the country right now doing it, and we're getting sub $2,000 signed NBA cases. It's not that complicated. Oh, and by the way, they're also getting the additional social media followers from running the ads. They are getting millions and millions and millions of impressions in their local market, right? They're getting their name, their logo, their face. The mobile billboard, man. It's a mobile billboard that actually drives trackable leads in sign cases. It is by far and away the best thing that you can do for your law firm right now. So if you're willing to do that, you're gonna build a moat around your law firm for the next couple of years as this industry continues to crumble from a lead generation point of view. And I'm telling you, this is only the beginning in terms of how many states are gonna start putting this into action because all I do is talk to personal injury law firms, and y'all are all feeling the squeeze. Even the biggest ones, they're feeling the squeeze, the rising CPAs, the garbage leads that are out there, right? All the tire kickers, all the people that don't have a case. If we're actually able to suffocate the lead generation industry, that abundance will flow back into your industry and into your market. And the ones who are ready for it are gonna be the ones that are gonna be first movers and crushing it. So if you're interested, I'm here to have a conversation with you about it. This is all that I do. Uh, we can take a look at your firm who you have, we can talk about some video strategies that can show you some real ad campaigns that are driving sub 2000 signed NBA cases right now. There's a link below this video to schedule a call with me. If not, like and subscribe, and I'll see you in the next video.