How Can My Law Firm Attract More of the Cases I Want?

When your reputation works against you

I spoke with an attorney whose established reputation kept bringing inquiries for a practice area he no longer wanted to grow. He still handled other work. His priorities had moved. He wanted the marketing to reflect that.

That changes the whole assignment. A campaign bringing more of the old work looks successful in a report while moving the firm further from where it wants to be.

Which case types should the marketing prioritize?

Be specific enough that whoever works on your website can make real decisions.

Personal injury is not an answer. Vehicle accidents, dog bites, premises liability, those are answers. A general practice can keep handling several areas while choosing one or two to actively grow.

Capacity is part of this. Which attorneys handle the work? Which locations can you realistically serve? Which languages can your staff support? What do you want more of, and what are you already getting plenty of?

These are business decisions for the attorneys. Marketing follows them, it does not make them.

When the attorney told me which cases he wanted, I said:

“This makes things, you know, much, much easier because it's always better when you more narrow and not broad and you know exactly what type of cases you want.”

Why narrow beats broad

A clear target gives us a way to judge every recommendation. If a proposed article brings in people the firm has little interest in representing, we should be able to explain why it belongs in the plan at all.

Without that, everything looks defensible and nothing is accountable.

Does your website emphasize what you want to grow?

Start with the homepage, the navigation and the practice area pages. Can a visitor with one of your priority matters find a relevant explanation quickly? Does the page name the attorney or team who handles it? Does it say what happens after they contact you?

If your highest-value practice area sits three clicks deep behind work you are trying to wind down, the site is arguing against you.

Does your content answer the questions those clients ask?

This is why I ask attorneys, or someone senior on their team, for short explanations. What do people ask on the first call? What are they confused about? What does the firm need to know before deciding whether it can help?

Those answers become the pages that attract the right matters, because they are written for a specific person in a specific situation rather than for a keyword.

Does the site explain communication and language support?

For a lot of clients this decides the call. If your staff speaks Russian or Spanish, say so where someone will actually see it. An about page nobody visits does not count.

Say who the client will actually speak to, and how often. Uncertainty about that is one of the most common reasons people keep shopping after they have already found a firm they like.

Is your intake set up to catch the cases you want?

Most firms measure the form and stop there, when the follow-up is where the case is won or lost. Find out how fast the first call goes out, who makes it, what they ask, and what happens to an inquiry that arrives on a Friday evening.

Then make sure someone is recording why a matter was declined. That list tells you more about your marketing than any ranking report.

Measure accepted cases, not inquiries

Inquiries, consultations and accepted matters are three separate numbers. A campaign can triple the first and do nothing to the third.

Report on accepted matters by source and by case type. When those numbers exist, the argument about whether the marketing works stops being an argument.

Frequently Asked Questions