Digital marketing for law firms in 2025

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Posted by Dan Hodges, head of account management at Legal Futures Associate Conscious Solutions

Hodges: Consumers want to see transparent information from law firms

When we use the phrase ‘digital marketing landscape’, what we’re talking about is the environment in which your marketing efforts are received.

While you can almost certainly use the same tactics that you used in 2024 to some degree of success, the online space that your marketing strategies will target is bound to some serious change, so it’s up to you to follow these trends.

Of course, some things will remain the same. The importance of social media and content marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO) marketing, and the critical need for a clean, easy-to-navigate, and well-branded website will all prove vital, just as they did last year.

But taking advantage of these upcoming changes is where your firm can show off its thought leadership and ability to keep pace with the rapidly changing world of digital marketing.

We’ve looked at past trends and researched the future to put together a list of what will be important in digital marketing for law firms in 2025. Our prediction includes:

• The normalisation of AI-generated content;
• The increased use of predictive analytics;
• Ultra-targeted campaigns;
• Video marketing;
• The rising importance of Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T);
• Campaigns built around voice technology;
• DIY AI and home-grown tools;
• The importance of trust and transparency;
• Platform reputations affecting your strategy; and
• The popularity of employee-generated content.

Normalisation of AI-generated content

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly used to create content across industries, including law firms. This trend will only rise as AI becomes more advanced and integrated into commercial practices, including law firms.

This has seen it begin to assist with writing blog posts, summarising the law, creating social media content and copywriting.

According to MarketingTech, about 50% of people last year could spot AI-generated copy. The changing landscape of AI means that we can expect to see that number go down, and given the time- and cost-saving principles behind integrating AI into your digital marketing, it’s better to get ahead of the curve.

The increased use of predictive analytics

AI in 2025 can also be used to predict what clients want and where they’ll be. Predictive analytics can anticipate their online behaviour, which firms can use to prepare solutions and services in advance, tailored to their needs and ready to circulate on the most opportune platforms.

This will not only cut down on wasted efforts in the wrong services and wrong clientele demographics, but it will likely improve customer satisfaction when you successfully advertise yourself.

Ultra-targeted campaigns

This one sort of follows on, but the use of algorithms to tailor marketing messages will exponentially increase in 2025. This will likely let law firms further personalise their online presence, such as producing targeted ads and tailoring their website experiences.

Video marketing

Wyzowl gathered some statistics which suggest that 89% of businesses will be using video as a marketing tool in 2025. Almost all (95%) of video marketers recognise that it’s an important part of their digital marketing strategy, showing that once it’s being used, videos make an overwhelming impact.

Moreover, 87% of marketers believe that video marketing delivers a positive return on investment, whilst 73% of consumers prefer to learn about a product or service through video format.

In the era of TikTok and Instagram reels, your firm must be as tech-savvy as the rest.

The rising importance of Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (or E-A-T)

Google is predicted to continue focusing on E-E-A-T when determining search rankings. It is a key part of Google’s search quality evaluator guidelines, which are a component of the ranking factors humans use to determine the quality of your web page.

Indeed, 80% of online users abandon a page if they find it inaccessible, highlighting how important it is to follow these principles.

E-E-A-T doesn’t affect all content equally. It’s most impactful when searching for something where incorrect or untrustworthy advice could be disastrous. For example, E-E-A-T is important when clients search for ‘how to manage child arrangements’ or ‘how to keep my home in a divorce’.

Your E-E-A-T will be ranked on: expertise, or the level of skill you have in a particular field; authoritativeness, or how you represent your expertise and the evidence of your reputation; and trustworthiness, based on the legitimacy of your page and the information on it.

It will become increasingly important this year. Information that could have real-life consequences must be accurate and backed up by reputation, so the importance of your ‘about us’ page, testimonials, team pages, backlinks and accreditations will only increase.

While you may not place much stock in this content, it’s vital to consider the impact that it’s likely to have on prospective clients.

Campaigns built around voice technology

This applies to both voice search and AI-generated voices. Voice technology is developing, and voice search use has seen a massive increase over 2024. HuddleCreative reports that the most common use of voice search technology is to find local businesses and nearby services.

Your key search terms and SEO will need to start reflecting the more colloquial and less professional language that people most often speak instead of type. This will involve more sentence fragments (e.g., ‘conveyancing solicitors nearby’) than full sentences (‘Are there conveyancing solicitors nearby who deal with complex property chains?’).

Furthermore, AI can now be used to generate personalised voices that sound and convey emotion in ways tailored to the project at hand. Integrating this into your marketing strategy can engage clients in new senses.

DIY AI and home-grown tools

AI is becoming more user-friendly, with fewer tools requiring knowledge of code or specialised training. AI can be trained to detect the specific tone of voice that you’re aiming for in your copy or to generate custom avatars.

SEMrush reports that ‘how to build AI tools’ was searched 40% more in 2024, with a further increase expected.

For law firms, this means you can expect to see more specialised and accurate chatbots or automatic answers on your website that feel more organic, even echoing your company’s mannerisms and knowing about its history.

Firms are also exploring the use of AI in legal contexts, training it to predict case outcomes or analyse current regulatory frameworks. For instance, City firm Slaughter and May has worked with the University of Cambridge to produce Luminance, an AI system that mimics the work of solicitors to find key findings in documents. Luminance doesn’t even need to be told what to look for.

The importance of trust and transparency

In the Law Firm Marketing Club’s 2024 research, transparent information was one of the top factors that respondents said was important when choosing a firm. This includes upfront and honest information about costs, services, and areas of expertise.

Clients are also sensitive to firms hiding information or answers behind technical legal jargon.

The importance of trust and clarity will only rise in 2025 as total transparency around your costs becomes the norm. Suspiciously evasive or unclear language or websites that hide prices and testimonies buried under drop-down lists will be off-putting.

Platform reputations affecting your strategy

In 2024, we saw the popularity of X, formerly Twitter, swiftly decline. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, X lost 18% of its monthly users and saw a 71% decline in value.

A platform’s reputation is incredibly important, and according to a YouGov survey, negative opinions of X are held by not only 42% of its users but 51% of non-users.

The impact of a platform’s likeability cannot be overlooked. As online trends become more varied in 2025, monitoring social media trends that dictate the popularity and perception of where you circulate your material will be critical.

Firms may want to consider who the primary users of a platform are and how that aligns with their specialities. It is sensible to maintain a good exit strategy on the backburner and not put all of your effort into a single host site.

We use social platforms across the web but select a tailored handful for each client to target their potential demographic. We have to constantly evolve with social media trends to ensure they always have a reliable, agreeable reputation.

The popularity of employee generated content

Employee-generated content will continue to rise in importance going into 2025. In particular, LinkedIn, with a new registration every three seconds, centres employee voices and B2B networking.

Hearing about a firm’s work directly from those who work for it authenticates the experience, and SEO can be built not just into your service pages and landing site, but also into the stories your employees tell, the cases they’re proud of, and how they network. All of these contribute to your firm’s marketing.

Firms are advised to consult their employees and provide training on how to represent themselves positively online, encouraging open discussions around company tone and reputation.

Measuring the success of digital marketing efforts

We expect to see increased use of key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of marketing efforts. Some of the KPIs that we’ll be prioritising include:

• Website analytics, including monitoring the amount of visitors a firm gets, how long they spend on the site, and the bounce rate. You need to track the traffic sources to understand what’s working. Additionally, look at conversation rates (meaning the ratio of website visitors who either become clients or interact with the page more thoroughly, such as filling out a contact form or downloading resource packages).
• Client feedback, which is not passively waiting to hear from a client once the job is finished, but actively circulating surveys and collecting client testimonials. With them, you can ask where clients heard about the firm, showing the impact of digital marketing efforts.
• Lead generation is important because more leads indicate successful marketing. Look at the number of leads generated and their quality, particularly whether they represent your ideal client. It’s also critical to look at how many of these leads convert into clients to ensure that the digital marketing efforts fit seamlessly with the onboarding process.
• SEO is useful to track as it tells you where your website ranks for keywords on results pages. It’s crucial to rank as high as possible.
• Social media metrics, including engagement (likes, comments, shares, reposts) and growth in following and online presence.

According to Grow Law Firm, 81% of people will use the internet to research a law firm with a strong online presence before they reach out, and 74% of them turn to social media first.

The importance of a digital marketing strategy cannot be understated, but having one that is professionally tailored to your firm’s goals is how you’ll stand out amongst the competition.