They say
“Our cases take years, so attribution cannot work.”
We say
It is the reason it has to be done this way. A file covering four years can see what no advertising platform can, because it is not trying to report on a window.
For Filevine
The case that settled this year was signed two years ago.
Export resolved cases from Filevine, upload the intake records that produced them, and rank marketing on fees recovered rather than signups.
No API key Nothing to install in FilevineNothing to install No card requiredNo card
CloseRev reads a Filevine export of resolved cases — the client's phone or email, the fee recovered and the resolution date — and matches it against the intake records that produced the signup, often years earlier. Plaintiff work has the longest and most extreme revenue distribution in this catalogue: most cases are modest and a few carry the firm. Cases with no traceable intake are reported as Direct / Unknown.
Last checked against Filevine's own documentation on September 24, 2026.
The gap
You spend heavily on intake and judge it on cost per signed case, because waiting two years for the real answer is not something any reporting tool offers.
Filevine sees
What was sold, to whom, and for how much.
no shared row
Your ad account sees
The click, the keyword, the call, and what each one cost.
The file
What the export needs in it.
Three things carry the match: who, how much, and when. Anything else is optional and only changes how the report can be sliced.
- Needed
Client phone or email
On the client record the case belongs to. Intake is overwhelmingly telephonic in this practice, so the phone number is the key that matters most.
- Needed
Fee recovered
The firm's fee rather than the gross settlement. Gross flatters case types with high costs and makes a channel producing expensive litigation look better than it was.
- Needed
Resolution or disbursement date
When the case resolved or the fee was disbursed. Either works; disbursement ties to cash and resolution ties to the legal outcome.
- Optional
Case type
Auto, premises, medical, mass tort. Fee distributions differ so sharply between them that a blended figure is close to meaningless.
Step by step
Getting the file out of Filevine.
Written for somebody with Filevine open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export resolved cases with fees
One row per case with a client contact detail, the fee and a date. Look for the export listing resolved matters with their financial outcome.
-
Use the firm's fee, not the gross recovery
Gross settlement counts money that went to liens, experts and costs. Two channels with identical gross can differ enormously in what the firm actually kept.
-
Export intake records
Call tracking, the intake platform, television and radio response logs, marketplace and lead vendor files. Contact detail plus the source.
-
Go back as far as the files allow
Two to four years is normal for this work. This is the catalogue's clearest case for exporting everything you have rather than a convenient window.
-
Upload both
The join runs on the phone number, normalised, and the report separates the few large fees from the many small ones rather than averaging them.
What comes back
The page Filevine cannot show you.
Revenue by channel, the count of sales behind each figure, and an honest bucket for the ones nobody could trace. Sample figures, from the worked example on the Personal Injury page — not from a Filevine account.
Traced to a channel$640,00064% of $1,000,000
Sales matched20 of 31high confidence only
Average sale$32,000per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 14 | $470,000 | |
| Meta Ads | 3 | $80,000 | |
| TV & radio | 3 | $90,000 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 11 | $360,000 |
Unmatched sales stay in Direct / Unknown. They are never spread across the paid channels to make the total look better.
The argument
What changes when the case and the ad share a row.
A handful of cases carry the year, and averages hide them
Fee outcomes in plaintiff work are not normally distributed and not close to it. A large share of the year's revenue can come from a very small number of cases, and the rest of the docket roughly covers costs.
Any metric built on an average — cost per signed case, average case value, cost per lead — is therefore describing the part of the business that does not pay for itself. It is not a rough guide, it is a systematically misleading one.
Matching fees back to sources shows which channel produced the cases that mattered. That is frequently not the channel producing the most signups, and the gap between those two rankings is the whole point of doing this.
Cost per signed case is the metric everybody uses and it is measuring the wrong end
Signed cases arrive within weeks, which makes them countable, reportable and optimisable. Fees arrive years later, which makes them none of those things without a file like this.
So intake spend gets optimised toward whatever signs cheaply, and the channels that sign cheaply are systematically the ones producing weaker cases. The optimisation works exactly as designed and moves the firm in the wrong direction.
Reading fees per pound spent, per source, is the only version of this question worth answering. It requires patience and a long file, and nothing else.
Case type is where the distribution actually lives
An auto case, a premises case and a medical malpractice case have different cycles, different costs, different fee structures and different ceilings. A firm running several is running several businesses.
Marketing is bought against case types deliberately — different keywords, different creative, different vendors — so attributing without the case type throws away the dimension the spend was organised around in the first place.
Where the export carries it, the report splits on it, and a channel that looked mediocre overall is frequently excellent in one type and poor in another.
Referral fees and co-counsel are revenue too
Cases referred out still earn the firm a fee, and cases referred in cost one. Neither looks like the standard flow and both are real money attached to a client who came from somewhere.
Left out of the export, the sources that mainly produce referable cases will appear to produce nothing. Included, they rank properly.
Where the export distinguishes referral fees from fees earned on cases worked, keep the distinction — they have very different margins and the marketing decisions that follow differ accordingly.
Fair questions
“Filevine already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“We judge intake on cost per signed case.”
We say
Everyone does, and it optimises toward cheap signups. Fees per pound spent frequently ranks the sources differently.
They say
“We cannot share case information.”
We say
None is asked for. A contact detail, a fee and a date — no case facts, no medical records, no documents, nothing privileged.
No. It reads a file you exported; no credential to your firm's account is held.
Resolved cases with a client contact detail, the fee and a date.
The firm's fee. Gross counts money that went to liens and costs and flatters expensive case types.
As far as you have. Two to four years is normal here and a short file will mislead.
Yes, and you should. Fee distributions differ so much between types that a blended figure means very little.
If you capture response — a tracked number, a distinct landing page — then yes, on the same axis as digital.
Include the referral fee. Otherwise sources producing referable cases appear to produce nothing.
Include them at zero. A source producing cases that do not pay should rank accordingly.
Yes, on fees recovered rather than on their own reporting, which is usually the comparison a firm most wants.
Direct / Unknown, and never attributed to whichever campaign happened to be running when the case resolved.
A contact detail, a fee and a date, plus a case type if you include one. No case facts, no medical records, no documents, nothing under privilege. Encrypted in transit and at rest, isolated to your firm's workspace, deleted with the import.
Fees by source and by case type, the concentration of those fees rather than an average, and everything unmatched kept visible.
By trade
Trades that run Filevine.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
- Personal InjuryWhich channels produced signed PI cases?
- Law FirmsWhich ads produced cases you actually signed?
- Workers' CompensationWhich channels produced signed comp cases?
- Criminal DefenseWhich channels produced retained defence matters?
- Employment LawWhich channels produced fee-earning employment matters?
Other systems
Also worth reading.
Running more than one system, or comparing? The method is the same and the columns are not.
Closed-sales file CasePeer Personal injury firms Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file Clio Law firms on Clio Manage and Clio Grow Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file PracticePanther Small law firms billing hourly Closed-sales file What to export
All 60 systems 
Filevine and the other product names and logos on this page belong to their owners and are shown to identify the software a file comes from. CloseRev is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and connects to none of them: it reads a file you export.
Start today
Two exports, and you will know.
Nothing to install in Filevine, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.