Twenty-five law firm marketing ideas, ordered by effort

This week: the foundations

• Search for your own firm

  Type the firm’s name and each partner’s name into a search engine and an AI assistant, as a referred client would. Write down everything that is wrong, missing or out of date. That list is your first plan.

• Claim and complete your business profile

  Fill in every field of your search engine business profile: categories, hours, services, photographs. It is the single most visible local listing a firm has.

• Complete your legal network profile

  Find the firm on Global Law Lists and other legal listings, correct the details, and add practice areas and lawyers. Incomplete profiles are passed over.

• Make your details match

  The firm’s name, address and phone number should be identical everywhere. Small differences confuse search engines and clients alike.

• Put contact details on every page

  A phone number that can be tapped and a visible email address, at the top of every page on a phone screen.

• Ask every new client how they found you

  Record the answer on the matter. In a year you will know where your work really comes from.

• Rewrite your one-sentence description

  Who you act for, what you handle, and where. Use it on the home page, in profiles and in every biography.

This quarter: the website

• Give every practice area its own page

  Written for clients: the problem, how you help, who leads the work, how to get in touch.

• Rebuild the lawyer profiles

  Admissions, languages, representative work where permitted, publications and a recent photograph. These are often the most-read pages on a firm’s site.

• Answer the ten questions you hear most

  One clear page each. These are the questions people type into search.

• Write one definitive guide

  Pick the procedure your clients ask about most and write the best explanation available. Keep it current.

• Fix speed and mobile use

  Test the site on a phone on mobile data. If it is slow or awkward, fix that before writing anything new.

• Add structured data

  Machine-readable details about the firm, its offices and its lawyers help search engines and AI assistants describe you correctly.

• Add a page for foreign lawyers

  If you take cross-border work, explain how you work as local counsel and whom to contact.

This quarter: reputation

• Set up a compliant review request

  Where your bar allows reviews, ask satisfied clients at the close of a matter. Never offer anything in return.

• Reply to every review

  Briefly, courteously, and without confirming anything confidential.

• Plan your ranking submissions

  Choose the rankings and practice areas that matter to your clients, note the deadlines, and begin collecting matters and referees now.

• Thank every referrer

  Promptly and personally. Tell them the outcome where confidentiality allows.

• Tell referrers what you do not do

  A contact who knows exactly when to think of you sends better work.

This year: continuing work

• Publish on a schedule you can keep

  One thorough piece a month is better than a burst of four and then silence.

• Comment when the law changes

  A short, accurate note on a new statute or judgment, published quickly, is read by clients and journalists and is cited by AI assistants.

• Speak and teach

  Seminars for clients, sessions for industry bodies, lectures at a law school. Put the materials on your site afterwards.

• Send a useful email update

  A few times a year, to people who asked for it, about changes that affect them. Not a firm newsletter about the firm.

• Take part in your community and your bar

  Committees, pro bono work and local sponsorship build the reputation that everything else rests on.

• Review the numbers each quarter

  Enquiries by source, and which became matters. Stop what is not working and do more of what is.

Before you publish anything

Check your bar or law society’s rules on advertising, testimonials, claims of specialisation and client confidentiality. They differ between jurisdictions, and the firm, not its supplier, is responsible for complying.

Keep a simple record of who approved each page and when. It takes a minute and settles most questions later.

What to skip

• Buying links, followers or reviews.
• Thin pages copied across many city names.
• Channels you cannot keep up. An abandoned account looks worse than none.
• Awards that any firm can obtain by paying.
• Anything a client would be embarrassed to learn you had done.