For many law firms, marketing in 2026 feels harder than it used to — not because firms lack talent or expertise, but because the market has fundamentally changed.
Discovery is digital. Competition is louder. Clients are more skeptical, more informed and less patient. And the tactics that once worked in isolation no longer compound the way they used to.
The firms that will win in 2026 aren’t chasing every new channel or trend. They’re building clarity, adopting an editorial mindset and putting systems and technology in place to ensure consistency.
Recently, the authors of this post, Michelle Calcote King of Reputation Ink and Jordyn Cordner of Strategic Technology Solutions, presented a webinar on what’s actually changing and what law firms should prioritize now. Here’s a recap of our discussion and a video of this session:
Law firms are no longer competing for website clicks or referrals alone. They’re competing to be the source AI systems trust enough to reference, summarize and recommend. That’s a fundamental shift.
Search engines and AI-driven answer tools don’t just point users to links; they assemble responses. They decide which firms and attorneys get named, how they’re described and in what context they appear. In that environment, visibility is no longer about being the loudest. It’s about being the clearest and most credible.
In this environment:
At the same time that we’re seeing headline-grabbing mergers creating larger, more geographically expansive firms, the legal market itself hasn’t consolidated in the way those headlines suggest. In fact, it’s splintered.
While the top of the market grows through mergers:
The result is a market with more players, more overlap and more noise, not fewer.
Mergers may simplify firms’ internal platforms, but from a client’s perspective, they increase choice, complexity and competition. Clients aren’t choosing from “Big Law vs. everyone else” anymore; they’re evaluating a crowded field of credible options across firms, boutiques and adjacent providers.
That’s why clarity, positioning and consistent visibility matter more now than at any point in the past.
Transparency is now table stakes. Clients want to understand:
Credibility comes from proof, not adjectives. Speed isn’t about rushing; it’s about responsiveness, process and confidence. Firms that meet these expectations feel easier to hire. And easier almost always wins.
Algorithms increasingly favor people over brands. Individual voices outperform institutional firmwide messaging.
As organic reach declines, firms don’t win by marketing more as a brand. They win by empowering attorneys to consistently and authentically show up as credible, helpful experts.
Legal marketing has never produced clean, last-click attribution, and it still doesn’t. But accountability has increased.
Firms are expected to show:
The goal isn’t false precision. It’s directional confidence. In other words, it’s about showing that the firm is becoming more visible, credible and relevant in the markets it wants to win, and that those signals are moving in the right direction.
Before worrying about tactics, every firm needs the fundamentals in place.
Positioning has always been difficult for law firms, especially those built in an era when geography, proximity and in-person relationships did much of the work. That context no longer exists.
Clients now evaluate firms digitally, earlier and across geographies. Without physical proximity or personal introductions, firms must clearly articulate:
For larger firms, this requires layered positioning:
As firms grow, positioning becomes less about differentiation and more about coherence, consistency and control.
Your website is no longer just a marketing asset. It’s a discovery engine for both human buyers and AI systems deciding who is surfaced, summarized and recommended. A law firm website now serves two audiences at the same time:
The same principle applies to both: clarity beats cleverness.
If a prospective client can immediately understand:
AI systems can, too.
AI doesn’t infer expertise the way humans do. It extracts meaning from structure. Clear headings, logical organization and topic-focused pages make it easier for AI to:
This is where semantic organization matters. Instead of organizing content around internal departments or generic practice names, effective firms organize around:
The goal isn’t more pages. It’s clearer signals.
Practice pages are no longer background information. They are often the moment of evaluation.
A strong practice page helps a client immediately self-identify:
That means reducing legal jargon and increasing specificity. So instead of: “We provide comprehensive employment counseling…,” say: “We advise multi-state employers on wage-and-hour compliance, workplace investigations and high-risk terminations.”
Attorney bios are heavily used by AI systems to:
This requires a mindset shift, from education and credentials first to reputation and relevance first. Credentials still matter, but they shouldn’t do all the work. Bios should clearly answer:
Expertise needs to be explicit, not implied.
Authority signals (media mentions, Chambers rankings, speaking roles, awards) are no longer decorative. They’re functional. They should appear:
These signals help both clients and AI systems connect your expertise to real-world validation.
Consistency has always mattered. What’s changed is the consequence of inconsistency.
Historically, inconsistency was a brand problem. Today, it’s a credibility and visibility problem.
AI will create a single narrative about your firm, whether you intend it or not, pulling from your website, media coverage, bios and social content. The question is whether you shape it.
Consistency doesn’t mean uniform language. It means:
The goal isn’t eliminating variation. It’s eliminating confusion.
2026 rewards firms that think like publishers, not firms that post when they have time. One good article doesn’t create authority. A body of work does.
AI favors depth and consistency. Clients expect perspective, not just updates. Editorial thinking reduces waste and turns effort into assets.
The hub-and-spoke model is a way to organize thought leadership so it compounds over time, rather than appearing as disconnected pieces of content.
This approach mirrors how publishers build credibility: one strong idea, expressed consistently across multiple formats.
Effective firms:
Clients trust human signals more than corporate ones. In complex firms, attorneys are how the brand becomes specific, just as publishers rely on trusted bylines and contributors (think Ezra Klein of the New York Times or Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal).
Lawyers have always mattered in marketing. What’s new is how they’re evaluated: earlier, digitally and without the firm present.
The first impression used to be a meeting. Now it’s content. Thus, attorneys must shift their focus from building one-on-one relationships to building one-to-many relationships through public relations and thought leadership.
Referrals no longer close deals. They open evaluation windows. Prospects verify:
Thought leadership doesn’t win RFPs, but it gets firms invited. Familiarity and proof increasingly separate finalists.
Reporters aren’t looking for firm announcements, résumés or generic commentary. Instead, they want clear explanations, speed and reliability, practical interpretation and business and regulatory context.
Small and mid-sized firms often outperform larger ones because they’re closer to the work and faster to respond.
Authority compounds over time:
Most law firm marketing fails not because of bad ideas, but because it’s treated as a series of projects rather than a system.
A system includes:
Given how the market is changing — AI-driven discovery, shrinking organic reach, earlier client evaluation and increased pressure to demonstrate ROI — many traditional marketing approaches simply don’t hold up in 2026. Yet we still see firms repeating the same missteps. These are the marketing mistakes that are most likely to limit impact in the year ahead.
When firms spread themselves across too many platforms, nothing compounds. Effective firms choose a small number of channels where:
They focus there first, build momentum and expand later once it’s working. Reach should be earned through repetition and results, not diluted by overextension.
Subject-matter expertise is essential. However, content strategy and execution are separate skills. When attorneys are left to write alone:
The most effective firms pair attorneys with editorial support, so expertise is captured, shaped and amplified without burning lawyers out.
Branding is not your logo, color palette or website design. Your brand is:
Visual identity supports the brand, but it can’t substitute for clarity, positioning or authority.
Creating content is only half the job. Without distribution:
Many firms still approach marketing as:
These create spikes, not traction. The firms that win treat marketing as:
In the increasingly virtual marketplace, potential clients are discovering, vetting and comparing law firms via digital channels more than ever before. While referrals and face-to-face opportunities still play an important role in client acquisition, law firms must be future-forward with technology in order to keep their marketing engine running.
According to Integris, 44% of clients would pay more for a law firm with modern technology. This figure is based on client experience and its correlation with technology — law firms using outdated systems, unreliable equipment or legacy CX features aren’t able to provide the availability, communication and streamlined experience clients need.
Law firms tend to lag in modernizing technology, and those that prioritize it can leverage this against competitors in the exceedingly crowded legal marketplace, especially as clients increasingly prioritize modern technology.
Modernizing your law firm’s IT helps you:
“App sprawl” happens when a law firm uses many separate applications but only a fraction of their features, and the data between those tools isn’t connected. For example:
When law firms have app sprawl, it’s usually followed by related issues with lower marketing productivity and poor security practices:
Cutting back on your application stack helps move the needle toward more productive, sustainable marketing initiatives. You can work with your IT team, partner, or MSP to evaluate your current applications’ features and identify alternatives that balance training and time costs, manage multiple apps and fit your business needs and budget.
Law firms that suffer a cyberattack may face backlash, sanctions and reputational damage. Because search engines prominently feature AI summaries and clients increasingly use AI tools to find and vet service providers, law firms must consider how AI processes information about them online.
In the event of a cyberattack or breach, your law firm will have a duty to disclose the information. Whether you handle the matter internally or acknowledge it publicly, these issues often end up in the press.
Once your law firm’s name is attached to a credentialed and trusted source, AI will prioritize those search results in forming its information about you, and it is likely to include the incident in its summaries. It can be difficult to overcome that association.
Today, clients are more aware of cyber risk than ever, and many people fall victim to both large- and small-scale cyberattacks, including leaked credentials, scams and impersonations, phishing emails and text messages and malicious QR codes.
Because the general public now knows the full extent of the risk, they are seeking service providers they trust with their personal information (such as your law firm) to stay ahead of these threats and keep them safe. To do so, law firms need a robust, proactive cybersecurity approach.
Only about one in three law firms has an incident response (IR) Plan, a documented playbook for what happens when a cyberattack occurs. When trust between client and law firm is fractured by a data breach, how you respond can make all the difference in repairing the relationship. To formulate an appropriate response, your firm will need to act quickly and efficiently, relying on the IR plan to guide you through the tumultuous aftermath of a breach.
Clients want a timely, competent, confident and informed response in the event of the breach, including:
A well-practiced incident response plan, along with proactive cybersecurity, helps ensure your law firm has these answers, instilling the trust and authority clients need from their legal team.
The firms that will win in 2026 won’t be the loudest or the busiest. They’ll be the clearest and most consistent. They’ll adopt an editorial mindset, empower attorneys as educators and build systems that compound credibility over time.
To do so, firms should leverage modern, secure technology that supports consistent marketing efforts, enables outstanding client service and bolsters their reputation as industry leaders.