Marketing for Lawyers: How Australian Firms Win More Clients

Most legal clients research online before they call anyone, and they are looking for two things: someone who clearly handles their specific problem, and enough evidence to believe that. Firms that win show up locally for their practice area, answer the questions clients actually have in plain words, and do it within the advertising rules that apply to solicitors. Those rules are less restrictive than most firms assume, but they catch people on one specific word.

Marketing for lawyers is mostly ordinary local marketing with one important constraint bolted on. Here is the constraint first.

The Advertising Rules, Briefly

Solicitors in Western Australia have been regulated under the Legal Profession Uniform Law since WA joined the scheme on 1 July 2022, which means the Legal Profession Uniform Law Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules apply here as they do in New South Wales and Victoria.

Rule 36 is the advertising rule, and it is shorter than most people expect. As summarised by the Queensland Law Society, Rule 36.1 requires that advertising, marketing or promotion connected with a solicitor or law practice is not false, not misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive, not offensive, and not prohibited by law. The Australian Consumer Law sits underneath that as well.

Rule 36.2 is the one that catches firms. It provides that a solicitor must not convey a false, misleading or deceptive impression of specialist expertise, and must not use the words “accredited specialist” or a derivative, including post-nominals, unless they hold that accreditation from the relevant professional association.

The practical trap is subtler than the rule sounds. Describing your firm as “specialists in family law” on a homepage, without holding accreditation, can convey exactly the impression Rule 36.2 prohibits, because the public reads “specialist” as a credential rather than a description of what you happen to do. The safe alternative costs you nothing in marketing terms: say what you actually do. “We act exclusively in family law” or “family law is all we do” is at least as persuasive and makes no claim about accreditation.

While you are auditing, look for guarantees about outcomes, claims about success rates you cannot substantiate, and comparative claims about other firms. Those sit under the false and misleading limbs of Rule 36.1 and under consumer law regardless.

How Clients Actually Choose a Lawyer

Two things are true about legal buyers that shape everything below.

They are usually in the worst week of their year. Someone looking for a family lawyer, a criminal lawyer or an estate dispute solicitor is dealing with something frightening. They are not comparing feature lists. They are trying to work out who seems competent and who will not make them feel stupid for asking a basic question.

They research before they make contact. By the time your phone rings, that person has read several firm websites, formed an impression of each, and probably discounted most of them. What they read decides who gets the call, and the firms with the most impenetrable websites lose without ever knowing they were in the running.

That combination points at an unglamorous conclusion: the single most effective marketing asset a law firm has is a set of pages that answer real client questions in plain English. What actually happens in a property settlement. How long probate takes in WA. What a first appointment costs and what you need to bring. This content ranks well because almost nobody writes it properly, and it converts well because it demonstrates competence better than any claim about competence could.

Reviews carry unusual weight here too, for the same reason they do in dentistry: the service is high-stakes and impossible to sample first. Google says directly that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, alongside relevance and distance. Legal reviews need care around confidentiality, and some clients will never be willing to be identified, but the firms that ask consistently pull well ahead of those that never do.

It is worth being honest about which practice areas this applies to unevenly. A commercial client who has just completed a good transaction will usually review you happily. A family law client at the end of a difficult separation may never want to think about your firm again, however well you acted for them. Criminal clients are unlikely to want their name attached to anything at all. Read the matter before you ask, and never make a client feel that a review is expected of them.

The other thing that separates firms is far less sophisticated than any of this. Most legal enquiries arrive at firms that never respond properly. A person who has finally worked up the nerve to contact a solicitor about something frightening, and hears nothing for two days, does not conclude that you are busy. They conclude you do not want the work, and they ring the next firm on their list. I have seen firms spend real money on marketing while an unattended inbox quietly undoes it. Timing your own response to a website enquiry is free and usually sobering.

What You Can Do Yourself

Where SEO and Google Ads Fit

SEO is the better long-term fit for most firms, because the content that wins is content you are uniquely placed to write. Your practice area pages and your plain-English answers keep working for years, and they compound as you add to them.

Google Ads earn their place for urgent, high-value matters. Criminal defence, urgent family law applications and personal injury are all situations where someone needs a lawyer today, and where a single matter comfortably justifies expensive clicks.

And they are expensive. Legal terms are consistently among the priciest categories in Google Ads anywhere in the world, which has one clear implication: broad targeting is ruinous. Bidding on “lawyer” or “solicitor” will drain a monthly budget on students, people seeking free advice and job hunters before it finds a client. Tight, specific, local terms only, with a solid negative keyword list from day one and a landing page about that exact matter type.

One structural point about legal SEO that firms consistently underestimate. The content that ranks is not the content about your firm. It is the content about the client’s problem. A page titled “Family Law” describing your services will lose to a page titled “How is property divided in a separation in WA” that actually answers the question, because the second one matches what people type and the first one matches what lawyers think about. Your practice area pages still need to exist for the local searches, but the question pages are what bring people in at the point they are still working out whether they need a lawyer at all.

That also happens to be the content most likely to be picked up and quoted by AI-generated answers, which increasingly sit above the search results. Clear question-and-answer structure, plain language and a direct answer near the top are what get a page used that way. It is the same writing that serves an anxious human, which is convenient.

If you want to see how I approach either, that is on the SEO and Google Ads pages.

The Common Mistakes

Writing for other lawyers. A page that reads like a memo signals competence to your peers and loses the client who cannot follow it. Plain English is not dumbing down, it is the whole job.

Using “specialist” loosely. The most common Rule 36 problem, and usually written years ago by someone who did not know the rule existed.

No pricing signal at all. Clients are frightened of open-ended legal costs. A fixed fee where you can offer one, or an honest explanation of how costs work where you cannot, converts far better than silence.

Never asking for reviews. Handled carefully and with consent, they are the strongest trust signal available to a firm that cannot advertise outcomes.

Slow responses. Firms invest in marketing and then let enquiries sit for two days. In a matter someone is anxious about, that gap is the whole decision.

Hiding the people. Legal clients are choosing a person to trust with something serious, and a site with no photographs and no bios beyond admission dates makes that impossible. Partner names and faces are not vanity, they are the thing being bought.

Chasing every enquiry equally. More enquiries is not the goal. Better-matched enquiries is. A firm whose content clearly describes the matters it wants will get fewer calls and convert far more of them, and will spend a great deal less time on consultations that were never going anywhere.

When It Is Worth Getting Help

If your website still describes the firm as specialists and nobody has looked at Rule 36 in five years, the first job is a read-through, and a lawyer in the firm is better placed to do that than any marketer.

After that, it is worth a conversation when you want practice area pages built properly and ranking, when you are spending on ads and cannot tell which matters they produced, or when enquiries are coming in but the wrong sort and you want the marketing to filter better.

If you want a second opinion first, I offer a free 15-minute chat. No pitch, just straight answers. You can also run your site through the free audit, or read how I think about marketing strategy more generally.

Questions Law Firms Ask Me