Referrals carry the firm, and nobody runs them
Accountants, bank managers, and business advisers see your clients' problems early. Too often, they get coffee and lunch from a firm, then nothing to pass along, and nobody records who sends what.
Commercial work arrives through people your clients trust. Make your firm the one they name.
Fractional CMO for your law firm: in-house marketing without the overhead. I build your referral partnerships, your solicitors' presence on LinkedIn, and the pages Google and ChatGPT draw on into one system, measured to the matters you're instructed on.
back in estimated case value³
One of our US client firmsResults from the system
About 75 times its ad spend
Line: back in estimated case value³
I'm Joshua David Little. I've run my own consulting firm since 2004, I've helped lawyers prepare complex cases for trial, and I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads. For a commercial firm, most of that work runs through the people who already send you clients.
/ What UK commercial firms are up against
The work worth most rarely starts with a search
A shareholder falling-out, the sale of a company, a contract that has gone wrong. These are the matters a commercial firm is built for, and an owner living through one often rings someone they trust before they search. So a commercial firm's marketing has to work through the people around the owner first, and still be easy to find when the owner does go looking.
The first matter wins the client, and the rest walk out of the door
A company set-up or a first contract brings the client in. The shareholder agreement, the first employee, the property, and the owner's own will then go elsewhere, because nothing was built to bring that client back.
Plenty of people doing the marketing, and nobody senior deciding it
A firm can have an agency, an assistant, and good software, and still lack someone senior who owns the plan, so the founder ends up as rainmaker, lead solicitor, and marketing department at once.
/ Before any work starts
Which words your clients use, and which firms Google's AI names
Many commercial firms describe themselves differently from the way their clients search. Across the UK, business lawyer is searched about 4,400 times a month, commercial lawyer about 2,900, and corporate lawyer about 2,400, while commercial solicitor gets about 1,300 and business solicitor about 720.¹ Owners also search for the job in front of them: shareholder agreement about 1,000 a month, sell my business about 720, and commercial lease solicitor about 720.¹ Those words decide what your pages are called and which searches are worth paying for, so I look at how clients in your towns search before anything gets built.
Then I put the situations your clients face to Google's AI and ChatGPT. Google's AI answered three business owners' questions and named firms every time.²
- A partner being pushed out of a London limited company was given two firms, one with its phone number, each cited from its own partnership-dispute or business-law page.
- Someone buying a small business in Manchester was given three firms as examples of accredited or ranked practices, a fourth for the small-business fee it publishes, and the SRA register as the way to check any of them.
- A Birmingham company owed £30,000 was pointed first to the Small Business Commissioner as a free route, then shown four firms, rated 4.5 to 4.9 stars, each from its own debt-recovery page.
Many of the firms named were cited from their own page for that situation.
/ How commercial firms win clients
The traditional relationship playbook, with something useful behind it
Business owners buy legal services as a routine part of running a company, so in my experience the traditional business-to-business approach carries more weight in commercial work than in most practices. Owners still instruct people they know. They also look you up before they ring, so what your solicitors say over lunch and what your website says have to agree.
Your solicitors on LinkedIn
Each solicitor writes for the clients and referrers they want, about the matters they handle, so the people they meet can see what they do before and after a meeting.
Material for referral partners
A short note an accountant can send to clients before the year end, or a checklist a business broker can hand to an owner thinking about selling. Your solicitors share it directly and on LinkedIn, and invite partners to co-host an event for the clients you share.
Situation pages
One page for each business situation your firm handles and wants more of, written for the owner living it, so the person searching and the AI answering can both see that your firm does this work.
/ Keep the next matter
A business client brings more than one matter
A company set-up leads to contracts, then a shareholder agreement, then the first employees, then the owner's own will and succession plan. I trace how your clients move from one department to the next, then build the follow-up that brings them back on purpose, so your private client team hears from the business client before a competitor does.
/ The 5 core marketing optimisations most firms are missing
How The Client Magnet System™ systematically optimises and unifies your marketing
Instead of trying to convert visitors directly into clients, we strategically capture their information first so we can follow up and nurture the relationship.
Valuable resources
Create guides, toolkits, and webinars that help prospects understand their legal situation – positioning you as the expert before they ever call.
Strategic capture
Get contact information and permission to follow up by offering something genuinely helpful, not just a consultation request.
Systematic follow-up
Automated emails that continue providing value while keeping your firm top-of-mind during their decision process.
Testing and improvement
Continuously refine what's working through data – not guesswork – so your results keep getting better.
Clear tracking and ROI
Know exactly which marketing activities generate clients and how much each client costs to acquire so we know which platforms to amplify and which need more optimisation.
How each step looks for a UK commercial firm: A guide a business owner would want, such as what to sort out before buying a company or how to handle a shareholder who wants out. A sign-up, so you can keep helping that owner over the months the decision takes. And tracking from the first contact to the matter you're instructed on, and on to everything that client brings you afterwards.
Services that fit
/ What the work includes
Fractional CMO · Senior marketing leadership across every channel and agency.
LinkedIn for lawyers · Your solicitors, visible to the people who refer and instruct.
Referral marketing · Material for each kind of partner, and a record of who sends what.
The referral flywheel · Clients' next matters kept in the firm.
AI search optimisation · Business owners' questions put to ChatGPT and Google's AI, and the pages built for them.
Your own marketing team · Built, trained, and led, if you'd rather keep the work in-house.
/ Results from the system
What this work has produced in the US
One client firm
About 75 times its ad spend back in estimated case value.³
Another client firm
About 11 times its ad spend back in estimated case value, from a campaign built on the Client Magnet System, tracked to the booked consultation.³
Reading for commercial firm owners
Marketing for UK private client firms · Where your business clients' wills and succession plans should go next.
Referral marketing for law firms · Making something useful for the people who share your clients.
B2B marketing for law firms, a US guide · The account plan, LinkedIn lawyer by lawyer, and co-hosted events.
FAQ
Will this work for my practice area?
The system is based on best practices that work across industries, so it adapts to any practice area with customised resources and messaging for your specific clients.
Do you work with UK firms?
Yes. Commercial firms in the UK are part of my work, alongside firms in the US, Canada, and Australia.
Can you get us in front of business owners directly?
Yes, through the people around them first: your solicitors' own networks, LinkedIn, and events co-hosted with the accountants and advisers who share your clients, such as a briefing for their clients on a change those clients will ask about.
We get most of our work by referral. Why change anything?
Keep it. The question is whether anyone runs it: who your partners are, what you give them to pass along, and who sent each client. With a referral-driven firm, I start by tracing where its recent clients came from, so we know which relationships deserve more of your solicitors' time.
Do you work with our existing agency?
Yes. As your Fractional CMO, I lead your agencies towards one goal and hold them to the number that counts. If you like your agency, keep it.
You're based in the US. How does working together run?
Over video. Your assessment and every strategy call after it happen on screen, so the distance doesn't change the work.
What's the commitment?
No long-term lock-in. I build each relationship to last for years, and if the work stops helping, I don't want to keep taking your money.
What does it cost?
The price follows the scope: what your firm needs, and how much of the work my team handles. We agree that scope together once your assessment is done.
¹ Google Ads Keyword Planner, UK, average monthly searches, pulled 4 November 2026.
² Google's AI Overviews, 5 November 2026, for three questions: a partner dispute in London, buying a small business in Manchester, and an unpaid £30,000 in Birmingham.
³ Case value estimated from average case value.