24 Areas of Focus for Law Firms in 2024

2023 was a successful but challenging year for me, my firms, and seemingly the entire legal community. While two of my three firms have had record years cumulatively booking over 2,900 paid consultations, acquiring over 1,400 family law clients, it felt like there was a new challenge waiting around every corner. Growing my family law practice to one of the largest in the country with over 100 employees and six new hires starting on January 3rd, I constantly have a lot on my plate. 

Regardless of your role within your company or size of practice, you probably feel the same. I hate to tell you this, but that doesn’t go away, it simply changes forms. This list of 24 things to be thinking about for your law firm isn’t meant to overwhelm, it’s shared to showcase the variety of topics requiring thoughtful consideration to run a successful practice. I’ve been fortunate to build a team of subject matter experts and leaders to help me but that hasn’t happened overnight and there’s many ways to build a high performance team. Working with contract workers, outside vendors, and internal hires are all options but know this, you can’t do it alone. 

1. Vision setting: creating a compelling vision for your firm is critical for attracting and retaining talent. Gaining alignment from every member of your team allows each employee to contribute to your shared goals.
2. Executive leadership: if you are working in your business and not on it, you’re not leading it as effectively as you could be. If your goal is growth, that must be your focus while delegating case work to associates. 
3. Mental health: I just shared a Reel about how I’ve never seen mental and emotional strain impact the legal community like I did in 2023. You need to be proactive to maintain you and your team’s personal well being.
4. Recruiting: everyone on my team’s understand that we are constantly recruiting every position even if we are not actively hiring so that we have a pipeline of prospective candidates when we are looking to hire.
5. Professional development: this is a powerful investment not just for yourself, but your team. Giving team members the opportunity to advance their skillsets will benefit your law firm in many ways.
6. Intake and sales: has been a major focus of mine lately especially with our clients. An ineffective intake and sales process will totally derail your marketing efforts and waste your advertising budget. 
7. Billing models: I’m a firm believer in the billed and collected model that runs bi-weekly. This keeps AR manageable and clients accountable so my team isn’t wasting time chasing down owed money. 
8. Forecasting and budgeting: thanks to years of data my CMO, Brent Harkins, has put together a reliable formula for us to know exactly what we need for clients, consults, and leads and how much we should be spending to acquire each. Your business needs to understand this in order to operate.
9. Mobile-first website: after nearly seven years Google updated how they crawl, index, and ultimately rank websites which is now based off of the mobile experience of your website, make sure yours is optimized using their free insights tool.
10. SEO: as I just mentioned your website needs to be optimized for search and the technical side is just one component. You need to EEAT! Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. There’s A LOT that goes into this so hire experts to do it for you as it’s one of the best ways to generate leads.
11. CRM: managing your leads and nurturing them effectively is critical. Having a system that can organize and automate complex user journeys is a necessary investment for law firms of every size. 
12. B2H: Business to Consumer (B2C) has been around for decades but recently evolved into Business to Human (B2H). Your firm needs to create a compelling story that resonates on a personal level with prospects now.
13. Content strategy: the shotgun approach of posting a random blog on your website, social media post, and YouTube video that have nothing to do with each other is a waste of time, you need a cohesive content strategy.
14. Long form content: with Google’s emphasis on helpful content, a 200 word FAQ isn’t going to cut it. You need to be creating content that is providing true value by going in-depth on topics showcasing your legal expertise. 
15. AI: 2023 was the year AI really broke onto the scene but we’ve been using it for years. How your firm uses it is what will differentiate you from your competition in 2024. 
16. Video: as mentioned with B2H, connecting on a personal level with prospective clients is critical and video is one of the best ways to do that. This can be done in the form of both short-form content on social media and longer videos posted to YouTube and your website.
17. Google: what more can I say…Google dominates the web from search results and YouTube to their new(er) AI platforms of Bard and Gemini. This is one of the most powerful companies in the world for a reason.
18. Social media: while there have been many flash-in-the-pan social platforms in recent years like Threads, Clubhouse, and Lemon8, TikTok has amassed a large and deeply engaged user base validating this as a legitimate marketing channel for law firms to consider. 
19. Google Business Profile: one of my favorite platforms because it’s FREE and a great tool to generate phone calls through local search results. Make sure your law firm’s profile is optimized!
20. Google Local Services Ads: is a double edged sword but a necessary component of your marketing mix. The pro is that it is the top position of Google’s search result page but the con is that the targeting is limited.
21. Google Paid Search: is the best platform for highly targeted ad placement leveraging household income and demographic targeting coupled with negative keywords to provide qualified leads.
22. Email & SMS: having a system to automate email and text communications was already highlighted, having compelling messaging that connects and guides prospects to take the next step is just as important.
23. Reviews: establishing your firm’s credibility is most effectively done by having actual clients share their experience for all to see. The added benefit is that if shared on Google, it can improve your local search results as well.
24. Referrals: an attorney’s favorite lead source. Having a reliable and consistent referral source is worth it’s weight in gold so what if you cultivated more? Think who those people could be and foster that new relationship.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by this, don’t. Find singular areas to exert your focus and efforts, improve that, then move to the next. Take this as an opportunity to evaluate where you might have some easy wins then go out and get them. If you need help, my team is always available as well.