How to Sell Mass Tort Leads: Campaigns and Retainers

The short version

A mass tort is litigation where many claimants bring related claims over the same product, exposure or event. Lead generation for it is campaign-based: each campaign has its own qualifying criteria, its own window, and an end.

Most sellers here offer exclusive leads and live transfers, and several describe screening claimants to each campaign’s criteria. A few go further and sell signed retainers, with the qualifying facts already documented.

The criteria come from the litigation and the firms running it. Your job is to collect the claimant's answers accurately and pass them on, not to decide who qualifies, and never to help anyone produce an answer that fits.

The line that matters most in this vertical

Mass tort campaigns pay well for claimants who meet criteria, which creates obvious pressure to produce claimants who appear to meet them. Coaching answers, suggesting dates or diagnoses, filling gaps on a claimant's behalf, or screening in anyone whose own answers do not fit is dishonest toward the firm and the court process, and it is how lead companies and the firms they supply end up in serious trouble. Collect what the claimant says. Record how you asked. Pass it on unchanged.

How a mass tort campaign works

Understanding the lifecycle is the whole job, because every commercial decision (what to build, how fast to scale, when to stop) depends on where in it you are.

The litigation emerges

Claims over a product, drug, device, exposure or institutional failure begin to consolidate. Firms start building claimant inventory, and demand for qualifying claimants appears.
Criteria get defined

The firms running the litigation set out what a qualifying claimant looks like: what they used or were exposed to, over what period, what happened to them, what documentation supports it. These criteria originate in the litigation itself and in the firms' own judgment, not in anything a lead company decides.
The campaign opens

Firms start buying against the criteria. Early on, the criteria may be the least well understood by everyone involved, so confirm them in writing with each buyer before you spend.
Criteria can tighten mid-campaign

As firms learn which claims hold up, requirements can narrow: tighter date ranges, more documentation, additional screening questions. Claimants who qualified last month may not qualify this month. Contracts should say explicitly what happens to records already delivered when criteria change.
The campaign closes

Filing deadlines pass, inventory targets are met, or the litigation resolves. Demand stops, sometimes with little notice. Whatever traffic asset you built for that campaign is worth nothing the day after, which is the defining commercial risk of this vertical.

What this lifecycle means for you

Mass tort is not a business you build once. It is a series of campaigns, each of which has to pay back its own setup cost inside its own window. Treating it as a permanent channel is how sellers get caught holding spend on a closed campaign. Keep setup cost low, move fast when a campaign opens, and never assume next quarter looks like this one.

What you are actually selling

The qualifying work in mass tort is substantial and specialized, so check which rung each buyer buys at before you build.

Product	What the firm receives	On seller sites in this market
Web lead	Form submission with screening answers and consent record	Offered by most sellers, typically as exclusive real-time leads
Qualified lead or live transfer	Screened against the campaign's criteria by phone	Most sellers offer live transfers, and several describe screening to each campaign’s criteria
Signed retainer	Claimant who has signed a representation agreement	Offered by a few sellers, one describing signed plaintiffs for active litigation
Retainer with records	Signed claimant plus the supporting documentation the campaign requires	The most work: records retrieval is its own operation. One seller describes signed retainers with health care disclosures

The rung you can reach determines which buyers you can sell to: a buyer who wants retainers with records will not take form fills.

How it differs from motor vehicle accident work

	MVA	Mass tort
Demand	Ongoing	Campaign-based, with an end date
Criteria set by	Each firm's preferences	The litigation, then the firms, and they change mid-campaign
What most sellers offer	Exclusive real-time leads and live transfers	Exclusive leads and live transfers screened to campaign criteria; a few sell signed retainers
Speed pressure	On each lead: the first call can decide who signs	On the campaign window
Qualifying work	A handful of screening questions	Detailed history, dates, documentation, often records retrieval
Main risk	Rising traffic cost	Campaign closing, or criteria tightening under you
Payment	Per lead or per call	Retainer deals may pay after the firm’s review

The commercial terms that decide whether you make money

Unit price gets the attention, but these terms decide the outcome.

What happens when criteria change. If the firm tightens requirements, are records you already delivered still billable? Get the answer in writing before you start, because criteria can change mid-campaign.
Clawbacks and rejection windows. A retainer deal may let the buyer reject a retainer after review, well after delivery. A long or uncapped clawback window means revenue you have already spent against can be taken back. Negotiate a cap and a deadline.
Who pays for records retrieval. It is slow and it costs real money per claimant. If the campaign requires documentation, establish who funds and performs the retrieval before agreeing a price.
When you are paid. Retainer deals can pay after the firm’s review rather than at delivery, which is a longer cycle than selling leads against a balance the buyer has already funded. Where you can, have the buyer fund a balance up front, and settle acceptance timing and the clawback window as carefully as you settle price. The mechanics are in the agency model guide.

Provenance matters here because a claimant whose consent or origin cannot be evidenced is a problem inside live litigation rather than merely a bad lead. A few buyers that take publisher traffic in this market require documented traffic sources or consent disclosures on forms, and one excludes aggregators, co-registration networks and resold lists.

Plan to pass the claimant's details and screening answers exactly as given, a consent record showing what the claimant was shown and agreed to (such as a third-party consent certificate), a delivery timestamp, the traffic source, and for retainers a record of the signing process itself. Keep call recordings where your buyers and your own counsel advise you to.

This page does not state what any rule requires. The rules are published by the FCC and FTC, and TCPAWorld tracks changes. The documentation guide sets out what buyers ask for.

Common mistakes

Treating a campaign as a permanent channel. Building a large fixed-cost operation around one campaign leaves you exposed the day it closes.
Scaling spend before the first retainers are accepted. Acceptance, not delivery, is the signal your screening actually matches the criteria. Scaling before you have it multiplies a mistake you have not found yet.
Agreeing an uncapped clawback window. It leaves revenue you have already spent open to being taken back, with no end date.
Letting screeners coach claimants. It corrupts the record the firm relies on, it can be detected, and it ends the business. Script the questions neutrally, record how they were asked, and audit your own call floor for it.
Loose supplier diligence. Buying mass tort traffic from publishers you have not vetted means inheriting their capture and consent practices into live litigation.
Depending on one buyer. A campaign buyer can pause, hit an inventory target or change criteria at any point. One buyer means stretches with nowhere to place qualified claimants, and several buyers bidding beats one buyer at a flat price.
No written criteria. If the qualifying criteria are not written down and version-dated, you cannot prove a delivered record met the criteria that were in force when you delivered it.

Frequently asked

What is a mass tort lead?

A person who may qualify as a claimant in litigation where many people bring related claims over the same product, exposure or event. Most sellers in this market offer exclusive leads and live transfers screened to a campaign’s criteria, and a few sell signed retainers with the qualifying work already documented.

What is the difference between a mass tort lead and a class action lead?

They are different litigation structures. In a class action a representative group litigates on behalf of everyone affected; in a mass tort each claimant has their own individual claim, which is why firms build inventories of individually signed claimants. How any particular litigation is structured is a question for the firms running it.

How much do mass tort leads pay?

No published figure is meaningful: a raw form fill and a signed retainer with supporting records are very different products, and prices can move through a campaign's life. Ask buyers what they pay for your exact product in the current campaign, and work out your floor from cost using pay-per-lead pricing.

Who sets the qualifying criteria?

The litigation and the firms running it. They derive from what the claims require and from the firms' own judgment about which claims hold up, and they can tighten as a campaign progresses. A lead company's role is to ask the criteria questions accurately, record the claimant's own answers, and deliver them unchanged.

What happens if a campaign closes while I am running traffic?

Demand stops, sometimes with little notice, and the campaign-specific assets you built lose their value immediately. This is the structural risk of the vertical. It is managed by keeping per-campaign setup cost low, having more than one buyer and more than one campaign, and treating every campaign as something that must pay back inside its own window.

Can I sell mass tort leads without a call operation?

Yes. You can sell form fills to companies that run their own qualifying operations, and most sellers here offer exclusive web leads. Most also offer live transfers, though, so without a phone operation you reach a narrower set of buyers. One route is to start as a generator supplying a qualifier, then build qualifying capability once a campaign has proven out. Juiced distributes web leads; calls need separate call tracking.

From Juiced

Running several campaigns and several buyers?

Juiced is lead distribution software for companies that sell leads. You set the fields on each campaign’s lead type, so the screening answers travel with the lead. Buyers fund a wallet, set filters and caps, and bid above your minimum; the highest bid wins each lead in seconds, delivered by webhook into a CRM, email or text.

See how Juiced handles legal leads

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