A Victorian injury firm we work with was close to pausing its campaign in August 2025. The leads were arriving, 470 of them in the first 90 days, and the principal's view was that the quality was mixed and the volume was more than her part-time intake person could handle. The tracker said something different: the leads that were reached quickly were signing, and the leads that waited were gone. She took the calls back herself, narrowed the campaign to the claim type she knew best, and signed nine clients in the quarter, two of them estimated at around $50,000 each in fees. Her words afterwards: "The quicker we get to them and roll out the process, the quicker they sign."
Every injury firm we have run advertising for has had the same problem in some form, and the fix is a process rather than a budget. What follows is the cadence, the screening script by claim type, the after-hours question, and the tracker that shows a firm where its enquiries are actually dying, built from the lead trackers behind our personal injury accounts. Our earlier piece on building a virtual intake team covers staffing it; this one covers what the people have to do.
Key Takeaways
- Half of first calls go to voicemail. In one Victorian injury tracker, roughly one first call in two was unanswered and about one in five was answered by someone interested. The firm that stops after one attempt loses most of its leads before anyone has spoken to them.
- Three attempts plus an SMS roughly doubles the share reached. Different times of day, a voicemail with the lawyer's name, a text with a question in it. It is the cheapest improvement in injury marketing.
- An injury enquiry not reached in 48 hours has usually spoken to another firm. Injured people enquire with two or three firms; the one that calls first and books on the call signs them.
- Screening belongs on the form and in the first 60 seconds of the call. Claim type, timing, fault, severity, and whether they already have a lawyer. In NSW motor accident work, the firm's own words were "you might go through 30 leads before a good quality one" without it.
- The lawyer answering the phone signs more than the receptionist. Not always practical, always true in our trackers. The compromise is a documented script so the conversion survives delegation.
Where injury enquiries actually die
Every lead in our injury accounts is logged with the time it arrived, each call attempt and its outcome, whether the enquirer engaged, booked, showed and signed, and an estimated value at sign-up. Read across hundreds of rows, the pattern is the same firm to firm.
| Stage | What the trackers show | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiry to first call | The gap ranges from minutes (lawyer on the phone) to the next business day (reception queue). The next-day enquiries convert at a fraction of the rate | The best leads, because the serious claimant enquires with several firms and takes the first good call |
| First call outcome | About half go to voicemail; a fifth answer and are interested; the rest are not interested, busy, or already represented | A firm that logs "no answer" and stops has written off half its spend |
| Second and third attempts | Each attempt at a different time of day reaches a share of the voicemails; three attempts plus SMS roughly doubles the reached rate | Nothing but discipline |
| Screening | A material share of answered calls are not viable: wrong state, time expired, already have a lawyer, psychological-only below threshold, minor injury under the scheme | Lawyer time, if the screening happens in the consult rather than on the form and the first call |
| Booked to showed | Consults booked for "tomorrow at 2" with no confirmation see no-shows; a confirmation text the morning of cuts them | A lawyer's hour |
| Showed to signed | Decided by the lawyer, the matter and the speed of the engagement paperwork | The matter |
Two numbers to hold beside that. The NSW motor accident firm whose intake we built signed 12 matters from 231 qualified enquiries, about one in nineteen, with a form that screens hard before anyone reaches the intake team and a lead-to-matter tracker the firm fills in. The Victorian firm signed nine from 470, about one in fifty-two, with a lighter form and a three-claim-type funnel before it narrowed. Both are good results for their claim types; the difference is almost entirely screening, and both are in personal injury marketing by claim type with the cost per signed client.
The cadence: the first 48 hours
The sequence we build into every injury account. Each step is logged against the lead so the firm can see which step is being skipped.
The firm's objection to this is always capacity, and it is a real objection for a small firm. The answer from the Victorian account is that the capacity problem is downstream of the screening problem: once the form and the first call were filtering properly, the principal had fewer calls to make and more of them were worth making.
The 60-second screening script, by claim type
The first call has one job before any legal conversation: establish in a minute whether this is a matter the firm can act on, and if so, book the consult. The questions change by claim type because the schemes do, and the knock-outs below are the ones that come up most often in our trackers.
| Claim type | The three questions | The knock-outs that end the call politely |
|---|---|---|
| Motor accident (CTP, TAC, MAIB) | When was the accident? Were you at fault, partly at fault or not at fault? Have you lodged a claim with the insurer, and have they made a decision? | Outside the lodgement window; at fault with no other party; under the state's minor injury threshold; already represented |
| Workers compensation | When did the injury happen and is it still affecting work? Has a claim been lodged with the insurer, and what did they say? Are you still employed there? | Wrong state; claim accepted and paid with no dispute; psychological-only below the threshold; already represented |
| TPD and superannuation | Have you stopped work, and when? Do you have super, and do you know which fund? Has a doctor said you are unlikely to return to your usual work? | Still working full time with no medical evidence; already claimed and paid; fund has no TPD cover |
| Medical negligence | What happened, when, and what was the outcome? Have you complained to the provider or the health regulator? Is the harm ongoing? | Outside the limitation period; no lasting harm; the "negligence" is a disappointing outcome without a breach |
| Public liability | Where did it happen and who controls that place? Was it reported at the time? Were you treated? | No identifiable occupier; no record of the incident; minor injury with no treatment |
| Dust disease | What is the diagnosis and when was it made? Where were you exposed, and roughly when? | No diagnosis yet (refer for medical first, keep in nurture); exposure cannot be placed |
Three rules that apply to every row. Ask whether they already have a lawyer in the first thirty seconds, because a surprising share do and the answer saves everyone time. Ask the state they are in before the claim type, because an enquiry from across the border is a referral, not a matter. And never give the legal answer on the screening call; the script establishes the facts and books the consult, and the consult is where the lawyer advises. Our guide to junk leads from Google Ads covers moving as much of this as possible onto the form, where it is free.
Who should make the calls
Every injury tracker we run shows the same thing: the lawyer answering the phone signs more than anyone else. In the Victorian account the sign rate moved when the principal took the calls back from a part-time team member; in the NSW account the principal's video is the ad and his intake team books for him, and the enquirers arrive having already heard his voice.
| Who takes the first call | Sign rate in our trackers | When it works |
|---|---|---|
| The lawyer who will run the matter | Highest | Small firms, high-value claim types, first 90 days of a new campaign while the script is being written |
| A trained intake person with the script and a booking calendar | Close to the lawyer, if the script is followed and the consult is booked on the call | Most firms, most of the time |
| Reception, between other duties | Lowest; calls go to the next day and screening happens in the consult | Only with a call-back standard and the script |
| An external intake service | Variable; good ones with the firm's script and claim-type knock-outs perform; generic ones book everyone | Firms with volume and after-hours demand; see the virtual intake piece |
The practical version for a growing firm is the second row, with the lawyer on the first calls for a month while the script is written from what actually gets asked, and then handed over with the tracker still visible to the lawyer.
After hours
A large share of injury enquiries arrive outside business hours: the worker on a night shift, the parent after the children are asleep, the Sunday evening after a bad week. The Monday morning voicemail queue is where many of them end. Three options, in rising order of cost.
| Option | What it does | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Automated confirmation with a call-back time | The enquirer knows when to expect the call and is less likely to call the next firm overnight | Nothing; it is a form setting |
| Text with a booking link | The after-hours enquirer books their own slot for the morning | A booking tool |
| Live after-hours answering with the firm's script | The 9pm enquiry is screened and booked at 9pm | A service; worth it once after-hours volume justifies it |
The first option is the floor and most firms do not have it. A confirmation that says "we'll call you between 8:30 and 9:30 tomorrow morning" holds an enquirer better than silence, and the tracker shows whether the call happened.
The tracker: the fields that matter
A lead tracker is the difference between an intake opinion and an intake fact. The one behind our injury accounts has these fields, and the firm fills in the ones only it can know.
| Field | Who fills it | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Date and time received | Automatic | Speed to lead, by hour and day |
| Claim type and screening answers | The form | Which claim types and which answers produce matters |
| Call 1, 2, 3 outcome | Intake | Where the cadence is being skipped; what share is ever reached |
| Engaged, booked, showed, signed | Intake, then the lawyer | The funnel, per claim type and per source |
| Lost reason | Intake | Poor fit, no response, chose another firm, not viable: each has a different fix |
| Estimated value at sign-up | The lawyer | Return on spend long before the fees arrive, because injury matters take 18 months to three years to resolve |
| Source and campaign | Automatic | Which ad, which page, which claim type produced the matter |
Read monthly, the tracker answers the only questions that matter: how fast are we calling, how many do we reach, how many are viable, how many book, how many show, how many sign, and what is a signed matter worth by claim type. The firms that know those seven numbers stop arguing about lead quality. Our guide to how to tell if marketing is actually working for a personal injury firm covers what to do with them.
What good looks like
| Measure | Where firms usually start | What the better accounts reach |
|---|---|---|
| Median time to first call | Next business day | Under 15 minutes in hours; confirmation plus morning call after hours |
| Share of leads reached (any answered contact) | 30 to 40% | 60 to 70% with three attempts and SMS |
| Share of reached leads that are viable | Depends on the form; under half with no screening | Over half with form screening and the script |
| Viable to booked | Under half when the booking is deferred | Most, when booked on the call |
| Booked to showed | 60 to 70% | 85%+ with a confirmation text the morning of |
| Enquiries per signed matter | 30 to 50 in motor accident without screening | 15 to 20 with screening; higher for TPD, lower for dust disease |
Those are the ranges from our own accounts, which skew to Meta-sourced injury leads in Australia; Google search enquiries are fewer and further along, and the same cadence reaches more of them. The claim-type economics, including what a signed matter is worth against those ratios, are in personal injury marketing by claim type.
What to do this week
Pull the last 50 enquiries from whatever the firm has, even if it is an inbox. For each, note the time it arrived, when the first call happened, how many attempts were made, whether anyone reached them, and what happened. The pattern will be visible in an hour, and it will usually be one of three things: calls going out next day, one attempt and stop, or everyone booked and nobody screened. Fix that one thing, put the tracker in place, and run the cadence for a month before judging the leads.
If you want us to look at it with you, book a call. We build the tracking and the intake process alongside the advertising for personal injury firms in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide, and for injury firms in the United States and the United Kingdom.
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