When it comes to picking a law firm, most prospects don’t have time to window shop online for the perfect fit. They want counsel they can trust — fast.
Understanding how prospects behave is crucial for law firms looking to attract new clients online. If your brand is not one of the first to show up in organic search results or the increasingly common AI-powered summaries at the top of the page, also known as search generative experiences (SGE), your firm will struggle to stand out from the crowd.
In this article, we’ll discuss the six actions you need to take to keep your brand top-of-mind and at the top of search engine results, allowing you to win more clients with less stress.
1. Create an online brand presence that will survive next-gen AI-powered search engines
Search engines remain a critical piece of getting your law firm’s brand in front of prospects. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of people looking for legal help use a search engine in the process. With the emergence of AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT/SearchGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, which return sourced answers instead of links, it will be more important than ever to create optimized content and track this new lead source.
The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is two-fold: to position your firm as the go-to solution for search engines on a topic and to position your firm as the go-to solution for people looking for legal help. Creating optimized content today requires you to understand how traditional search and AI-powered search engines work, your clients’ search behavior, and keywords your ideal clients are using.
"The top three organic search results capture 68.7% of clicks, while the top ad gets just 2.1%." - First Page Sage
For example, if your firm specializes in worker’s comp cases and you know people are searching “Do I have a worker’s comp case?”, you could create content that answers that question. Prospective clients — and Google — will be drawn to your brand.
How law firms can improve their SEO
- Improve Google My Business and legal directory listings with the right keywords to boost visibility.
- Leverage long-tail keywords and local search terms to capture high-intent leads.
- Identify which PPC keywords are driving clicks and calls using Call Tracking and Form Tracking.
- Optimize website content based on real client search trends and trends from client conversations (e.g., “What do I do after a car accident?”).
2. Generate PPC campaigns that win more clients and keep you from wasting the marketing budget to win more clients
Pay-per-click advertising remains a critical piece of the brand awareness puzzle for law firms. But the high cost-per-click for each lead (the legal industry always ranks as one of the most expensive) makes it a high-risk, high-reward channel. In our 2025 marketing outlook for law firms, we found that 25% of firms believed paid search marketing is too expensive to get a good return on investment.
With the right strategies, PPC is a potent tool as long as law firms can optimize their ads and minimize the risks. PPC is not only a vital lead gen channel, but it also allows law firms to protect their brands online from competitors’ ads (aka those who buy ads for your brand name to try and outrank and poach clients searching for your firm).
Hone your keyword strategy with call data
Use AI-powered software to analyze calls and uncover premium keywords — long-tail, practice-specific, and location-specific. This helps tailor your PPC landing pages to the way leads express their needs, ensuring messages resonate effectively.
How law firms can optimize PPC campaigns
- Bid on branded PPC keywords to ensure competitors don’t take potential clients searching for your firm.
- Target local search terms for your campaigns (e.g., “best personal injury lawyer in [city]”) to attract high-intent leads.
- Use call summaries and call highlights to see what phrases your clients are using so you can identify keyword trends.
- Review your keyword match type to refine how broad or precise your ads are on Google.
3. Respond first to increase conversions
Speed wins clients. If you can only do one thing to boost your firm’s growth, it should be fixing slow response times. According to research, 78% of customers go with the first company to respond. That’s tough for many 9-to-5 law firms, as many prospective clients call outside of those hours, up to 97% in some cases.
Tracking lead response times is an important metric, and most firms track their successful conversions. But to understand the true impact of missed calls, firms need to track how many clients (and how much revenue) they’re losing because of them. In our 2025 marketing outlook for law firms, we found that 50% of law firms cannot estimate how many clients they lose due to slow responses.
How law firms can improve their speed-to-lead:
- Reduce missed calls and ensure every inquiry gets a fast response with the help of an AI receptionist.
- Use Call Tracking’s automated follow-ups (texts, emails) for missed calls so prospects know you’ll be in touch.
- Adopt time-saving AI-powered call assistants like Convert Assist to automatically track follow-up tasks and generate email responses automatically after every call.
4. Build trust with prospective clients through social proof
When making important decisions — say, choosing a lawyer — people want to be as confident as possible in their decisions. But in a world where every law firm’s website claims to have the “best” attorneys, it’s easy to see how clients struggle to truly gauge whether a lawyer is good or not.
But the real reason you need social proof — reviews, testimonials, word-of-mouth, etc. — stems from the fact that people distrust lawyers inherently. Only 16% of Americans rate lawyers’ honesty and ethical standards as “high” or “very high. That’s why 30% of prospective clients skip searching and turn to family and friends for attorney recommendations.
Law firms can overcome the poor perception of the industry through online social proof. That can be positive online reviews on Google and Yelp or real-world success stories on your website. Google reviews are particularly powerful, as Google My Business is the second-highest source of conversations for law firms behind paid search, accounting for 25% of call volume, according to insights from 1.1M aggregated and deidentified calls. Without social proof, prospects might see your firm as new and inexperienced, or worse, unethical and untrustworthy.
How law firms can build trust with prospects
- Feature success stories on your website, highlighting real client wins.
- Create a "Why Clients Choose Us" page showcasing testimonials and common legal pain points you solve.
- Use social media to share before-and-after client experiences demonstrating your impact.
- Encourage happy clients to leave reviews on Google and legal directories.
5. Put the client experience at the center of your brand
For many of your prospective clients, retaining an attorney’s services is new and fraught with emotion. Delivering a great client experience through the entire client journey is critical to assuage their fears and win their trust.
Read our playbook for law firms to learn how to convert leads faster.
Unfortunately, many law firms fall short. Studies show overwhelmingly negative experiences for prospects: 70% of secret shoppers couldn’t easily understand the process of hiring a law firm, while 73% had a bad experience during intake and wouldn’t recommend the firm. With so many conversations happening every week, it can be hard to see the whole client experience picture, unless you have the right processes and technology to monitor for negative experiences.
How law firms can improve client experiences
- Capture every lead with AI-powered voicemail transcripts and call tracking — even when the office is closed.
- Identify at-risk clients by flagging negative keywords like "dissatisfied" for immediate follow-up.
- Ensure smooth call routing so leads get to the right person without delays.
- Simplify the intake process with easy-to-follow steps on the website and FAQs on your site about the legal process.
- Train staff using real client calls and feedback to improve communication and intake efficiency.
"85% of law firms use call recordings primarily to improve the client experience, making it their top reason for adoption." - CallRail
6. Make it easy for happy clients to become your biggest advocates
If your firm has nailed the client experience and managed the case well, you’ve probably got a satisfied and trusting client out there. While most law firms say “Goodbye” to clients when the case is closed, the smart ones say “Stay in touch.” That’s because it is 5 to 10 times more expensive to find a new client than to retain an existing one.
A good relationship with past clients pays dividends by driving repeat business and referrals. Insights from our call data revealed that 43% of the leads we analyzed for law firms were returning clients, while 15% came from personal referrals — meaning a staggering 58% of law firms’ business stemmed directly from satisfied clients.
How law firms can turn new clients into loyal advocates
- Follow up with past clients to maintain relationships and encourage referrals.
- Make it easy for satisfied clients to refer others through email and social media prompts.
- Offer value-adds like free legal guides or newsletters to stay top-of-mind.
- Develop a loyalty or referral program rewarding past clients for recommending your firm.
Make the case for improving your firm’s brand awareness
Brand is more than first impressions and search rankings. It is every touchpoint between your firm and the world at large, especially prospects and clients. The work of building your brand spans the entire client journey, from the first Google search ad to the last gavel in a closed case.
By addressing the above six steps, you can ensure your law firm gets its brand in front of the right prospects as efficiently as possible. With insights from CallRail’s Call Tracking and AI-powered Premium Conversation Intelligence™, you’ll be able to see everything from big-picture trends in your client experience down to tiny signals in your client conversations that inform your content creation and keyword bidding.
Get started with a 14-day free trial of CallRail.
Disclaimer: This content uses information based on aggregated and deidentified data and is provided for informational purposes only. To ensure the privacy of our business customers and comply with applicable data protection regulations, the analysis and insights presented herein are derived solely from deidentified data, excluding any sensitive or protected information as defined by privacy laws and regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA. This report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of market trends without compromising individual privacy. Any reliance on the information presented in this report is at the user’s own risk, and we disclaim any liability for decisions made based on this report.
