Articles nobody was looking for
"Five things to know about divorce" answers nobody's actual question. The person reading at midnight wants to know what happens to the house, or whether they can stop the move, or what to do before tomorrow's meeting.
/ Blogs and situation pages
A page for every situation your clients are in
A situation page answers one person's problem in the words they'd use to describe it: a parent whose ex wants to move the children to another state, or a founder whose biggest customer just sent a 40-page contract with unlimited liability. Search engines and AI answers draw on pages like these, and each one leads the reader to a resource.
What you get
- Your clients' situations, listed and ranked by what they're worth to you
- One page for each, written for the person in it
- Your lawyer's review on every page
- A matched resource at the end of each page
- A monthly check of whether AI answers name your firm
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. I write for the way people now ask for help: in full sentences, about their own situation.
/ Why most law firm blogs don't bring in clients
Posts written for a keyword, about nothing anyone is going through
Another firm's page answers the question
When we described people's situations to Google's AI, the firms it named usually had a page about that exact situation. If that page belongs to the firm across town, that firm gets named.
Posts that end with "call us"
A reader at the research stage isn't going to call yet. A post that offers nothing else loses them, along with everything it took to get them there.
/ What it costs you
Thin pages give people and machines too little
A page that says a little about everything doesn't give a person much to engage with, and it doesn't give a machine enough to cite. The more specific the page, the more it helps the person reading and the more reasons an AI answer has to match your firm to the person asking. That's what I call Context Marketing, and situation pages are where it starts. The more of this specific material a firm builds, the better its other marketing works too, because the ads, the posts, the referrals, and the follow-up all have something real to point to.
/ How Aquila writes situation pages
Situation pages, step by step
List the situations
From your practice, your consultations, and the questions your clients bring in, we list the situations your firm handles and wants more of, and rank them by what they're worth to you.
Write one page per situation, for the person in it
In their words, answering their question first: what's happening, what their options are, and what to do next. The questions people type into search engines and AI tools shape each page, because people want answers to the problem in front of them.
Say who handles it
When we asked, AI answers told people choosing a lawyer to look for experience in their exact kind of case and to find out who would personally handle it. Each page names the lawyers at your firm who do this work and what they've done.
Use your state's law and courts where they apply
Your lawyer checks the law on every page before it goes up.
Add video where it helps
Short videos of your lawyers answering the question on the page, planned, written, directed, and edited by us, and approved by you.
End every page in one resource
A guide, checklist, or tool matched to the situation, with a short form to get it and follow-up after. The reader gets help today, and your firm gets to keep helping while they decide.
Check every month whether AI answers name you
Every month we ask ChatGPT, Google's AI, and Gemini your clients' questions and report who was named and why.
Keyword blogging vs. situation pages
/ Two ways to write a law firm blog
Keyword blogging
Pick a keyword, write a few hundred words around it, publish on a schedule, and report traffic.
Situation pages
Pick a situation your firm wants more of, answer it fully for the person in it, end in a resource, and report sign-ups, consultations, and signed clients.
/ What's included
What situation-page work looks like inside an engagement
What your firm gets
- The list of situations worth a page, ranked
- The pages, planned and written by us
- A matched resource offered on each page
- Video planned, recorded with you, and edited
- A monthly check of whether AI answers name your firm
What your firm gives
- A lawyer's review of every page for accuracy
- Answers to the questions only a lawyer at your firm can answer
- What you know from your own cases, so each page reads true to life
- Access to your website
How it ties into the system
Situation pages are where the Client Magnet System's content does its work: they show what your firm knows, bring people in from search and AI answers, and lead each reader to a resource. They're also what your SEO and AI search work is built on. As your Fractional CMO, I decide which situations come first.
By practice area
/ What situation pages look like in your practice
Family law
A parent who wants to move out of state with the children. A spouse hiding money. A custody fight that keeps escalating. Each one is its own page, written for the person living it.
Business law
A partner taking money out of the company. A 40-page contract from the company's biggest customer, with unlimited liability buried on page 31. A key employee leaving for a competitor with the client list.
Estate planning and probate
Blended families and second marriages. A family business passing to the next generation. A parent who owns property in two states.
Personal injury and medical malpractice
A crash with a commercial truck. A fall at a store. A bedsore in a nursing home. A diagnosis that came too late.
Elder law
Pages written for the adult children who are usually the ones searching, about a parent's care, money, and the decisions they're facing.
Mass tort
"Do I qualify?" and "Is this lawsuit real?" pages for your firm's own cases.
Firms serving Spanish-speaking clients
Situation pages in Spanish, so your clients find answers in their own language.
/ What we found when we asked the AI
The firms the AI named usually had a page for that exact situation
We asked Google's AI the questions people ask about their own situations, across family, business, malpractice, and injury law. The firms it named usually had a page about that exact situation, sometimes over firms with far more reviews. When ChatGPT showed where a firm's name came from, it was often the firm's own page on the person's situation.
On the paid side, I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads. It was built around a resource people actually wanted, and over 20% of the people who clicked it signed up.
FAQ
Do blogs still work now that people ask AI?
Specific pages do. In our research, the firm pages AI answers drew on were usually about the person's exact situation. A blog of situation pages works in search and in AI answers at the same time.
Who writes the pages?
We plan and write them. Your lawyer reviews every page for accuracy before it goes live and answers the questions only someone at your firm can.
How many pages do we need?
As many as there are situations your firm wants to win. We start with the ones worth the most to you and add more each month.
Will this get us named by ChatGPT?
In our research, a page for the exact situation is what most of the named firms had in common, so it's where we start, and the monthly check shows you what changes.