B2B marketing for law firms: how a business firm reaches the companies it wants to represent
I'm Joshua David Little. I've run my own consulting firm since 2004, I've helped attorneys prepare complex cases for trial, and I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads.
Opening
Say a manufacturer announces a new plant an hour outside your city. Over the next few years, hundreds of contractors, suppliers, and service companies will sign contracts with it, and most of them will want a lawyer to read what they're signing. The manufacturer already has its big law firms. The companies around it mostly don't have anyone yet.
A firm that wants that work can wait for referrals, or it can go introduce itself. Business-law firms have more room to do the second than most law firms, because their clients are companies that buy legal services as a routine part of doing business. They can connect with business owners without soliciting them, and the traditional business-to-business playbook that other B2B industries run works for them too.
The account plan
Start with a short list. Pick an industry your firm knows or a project coming to your region, and list the companies in it that buy the kind of legal work you do. Next to each one, write down what it's likely to need soon: a contract with a prime contractor, a big customer's master services agreement, a lease, its first employees.
Then offer each company something useful before you ask for anything. An industry briefing works well, written by your lawyers for owners in that trade, such as Contracting with a prime: the ten clauses to negotiate. The owner who reads it learns something they needed, and learns which firm taught it to them.
Outreach goes out as written messages, on LinkedIn, by email, or by letter, under the name of one of your lawyers and with that lawyer's sign-off. We write to companies that buy legal services as part of doing business, and your lawyers can send the messages, or we can.
LinkedIn, lawyer by lawyer
LinkedIn is where business buyers, referral partners, and other lawyers already spend their working day. When we read the homepages of 23 business firms the AI assistants named in our research, 16 linked to LinkedIn. A lawyer who only reposts other people's material gives nobody a reason to remember them.
Each lawyer works three groups of people:
- Buyers: the owners and executives who hire the firm.
- Referral partners: the CPAs, bankers, brokers, and insurers who send it work.
- Other lawyers: the ones who send conflicts and work outside their own practice.
For each group, the lawyer posts things that help. A plain-English clause series suits business lawyers well: one contract clause a week, what it means, and when an owner should worry about it. Once a month, the best of it goes out as a newsletter.
In a firm of several lawyers, decide up front whose network is being used, who gets credit when a conversation becomes a client, and what you'll count, so nobody is guessing later.
Posting twice a week is the first thing to slip when a deadline moves. So we write drafts for each lawyer from their own work and their own conversations, keep the calendar, and make posting a matter of reviewing and approving. If you'd rather keep that work inside the firm, I'll train someone on your team to run the drafts and the calendar, and review the work as it goes out.
It takes patience. When I started posting every day on LinkedIn, it was months before anything I wrote broke through. Those months were when LinkedIn learned who I was and who would want to see my posts, and everything after was built on them.
Events and co-hosting
A webinar or event co-hosted with a company that serves the same clients puts your lawyers in front of an audience someone else has already earned. One LinkedIn ad we saw in our research showed a privacy-software company and a defense attorney co-hosting a webinar on what a business should do in the first days after a privacy demand letter lands. A pairing like that lets each side reach people the other already serves.
One co-hosted webinar a quarter with one partner is a realistic rhythm for most firms. Talks work too, at chambers of commerce, industry associations, Rotary clubs, and church groups, each built for the room, and each ending with a resource the audience can sign up for, so the people in the room become people you can keep helping. And the conferences in your clients' industry are where the buyers already gather.
When a big project comes to town
Back to the plant. When a big project or a new industry comes to your region, move early. Publish pages on the contract questions local companies will face. Build an account list of the contractors and suppliers who will bid for the work. Offer them a briefing such as Doing business with [the project]: the contract questions local contractors ask.
The companies at the center of a project like that arrive with their law firms. The hundreds of smaller companies around it are the ones a regional business firm can win, and the best time to reach them is before anyone else has.
One firm, many states
If your lawyers practice in several states, give clients in each state a page written for them, with the lawyer who serves that state and the law that applies there. A Google Business Profile needs a real office, so add one for each office you actually have.
The proof behind the outreach
The first thing a company does after your message lands is look up your firm and the lawyer who sent it. Your website, your lawyers' LinkedIn profiles, the pages that answer the questions they're facing, and your reviews all have to back up what the message said. If they don't, a good message reads like any other cold pitch.
I believe the traditional business-to-business approach to business development is going to be around for a long time. As more of marketing moves online, the personal side counts for more, and outreach backed by credible pages gets the benefit of both.
Joshua David Little is a Fractional CMO for law-firm owners and the founder of Aquila Law Firm Marketing. He has run his own consulting firm since 2004, and has done hands-on work helping attorneys prepare complex litigation for trial in family law, medical malpractice, personal injury, and unjust enrichment cases. He ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads.