I’ve audited a few law firm insights sections now. The pattern is the same every time.
Two thousand pages. One per cent of total traffic. Podcasts in single-digit views. Videos in the dozens.
In one large firm I audited recently, the numbers were these. The insights section had 2,631 indexed pages. Over a five month period it accounted for 1.3% of total page views. The US version of the same site fared worse, at 0.6%. Podcast pages: 215 views in five months. Videos: 48 views in five months.
The firm produces this content because it has historically been told that thought leadership is good for the brand. The CMS allows new pages to be added with very little friction, so over time the section grows. The marketing team reports on it because page count is easier to count than page quality.
But the user research, when anyone bothers to do it, says the same thing every time.
What clients actually use law firm websites for
Across every persona exercise I’ve run with a law firm — and I’ve now done this with three — the same priorities surface, in roughly the same order.
People want to know what services you offer.
They want to know which sectors you work in.
They want to read the lawyer biographies of the person they’re going to be working with.
They want to find your contact details.
That’s the list. Reading articles, downloading thought leadership, listening to podcasts and watching videos all sit below those four. Often well below. In some research, articles barely register at all.
This isn’t an argument that thought leadership is worthless. It’s an argument that most law firm thought leadership is being produced for a different audience than the one that’s reading it.
Who is the insights section actually for?
The honest answer in most firms is: it’s for partners. It exists because partners want their names attached to articles for credibility, for directory submissions, for personal brand, for internal politics. The marketing team produces the articles because the partners ask for them. The articles get published because the CMS allows them to. The insights page count grows because there’s no incentive to take old articles down.
None of which is wrong, exactly. Partners do need credentials. Directories do reward published content. Personal brand does matter for senior fee earners.
But the place these articles live shouldn’t be the firm’s main website. They should live on the partners’ LinkedIn profiles, where they actually generate distribution and engagement, with backlinks to the firm if needed. They should be attached to the lawyer’s bio page, not given their own indexed URL. They should be written for an audience that exists, not as currency in an internal economy.
Three options for what to do instead
Option one. Move the bulk of the existing insights to the lawyer bio pages. Each article gets attached to the author’s profile. The dedicated insights URLs get 301 redirected to the bio. The CMS has fewer indexed pages, the bios get richer and the partners still get their byline credit.
Option two. Create a smaller, curated insights section with maybe twenty pieces of strong, current thinking. Treat it as a magazine, not an archive. Old articles get pruned, not preserved. The marketing team has a defensible answer to the next partner who asks “where’s my article?”: it’s on your bio page, where the readers are.
Option three. If the firm has a real audience for content (regulatory updates, legislative briefings for in-house counsel, that sort of thing), invest properly. Email lists, dedicated landing pages, segmented content for different audiences, real distribution. But only do this if you’re willing to commit the budget. Half-hearted thought leadership with no distribution is the worst of both worlds.
The economics question
The question worth putting to your leadership team isn’t “should we have an insights section?” It’s “what is our insights section costing us, and what is it returning?”
The cost is real. Editorial time, design time, partner time, agency hours, hosting, indexing, CMS load, reporting cycles. Add it up across a year and most law firms are spending mid five figures on a section that drives 1% of their traffic.
If that section was a campaign, you’d kill it.
It’s worth at least asking why it isn’t.
See the full case study – How a mid size regional UK law firm grew online enquiries by 190% without rebuilding their website