Content marketing for a law firm: the four publishing roles
A firm's publishing operation needs 4 named people and one queue: a commissioner, an author, a checker and a publisher. Two finished pages a month, each carrying a review date, survives a busy quarter. Four does not. The sign-off loop sets the cadence, not the writing.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
Who commissions a page, and who writes it?
Four roles, and the first one is usually the one nobody holds.
| Role | Who holds it in most firms | What they decide | Time per page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commissioner | Head of the practice area | Which question is answered next, and whether it is worth the hours | 15 minutes |
| Author | The fee earner who answers that question in meetings | The words | 2–3 hours |
| Checker | A supervising solicitor in the same area of work | Whether the statement is right, and whether the fees named are the fees charged | 30 minutes |
| Publisher | Whoever holds the website | Title, internal links, mobile rendering, the review date | 30 minutes |
The commissioner is the role most firms leave vacant, and its absence is why publishing stops. Without somebody choosing the next question, the author chooses it, and a fee earner asked to pick their own topic picks the one they find interesting rather than the one clients ask.
The list the commissioner works from comes out of the matter file, not a keyword tool. Questions answered aloud six times last year are questions typed into Google several hundred times. No supplier holds that list, because no supplier sat in the meetings.
A damaging admission, before anything else: we can only ever be the publisher. We do not check the law, we cannot be the checker, and we will not write in a named fee earner's voice without them. The half hour in the third row is the firm's own and it is the constraint on everything below.
What does the sign-off loop look like in a regulated firm?
Two checks, asking different questions, in a fixed order.
The first check asks whether the statement about the law and the procedure is right as at today. That belongs to a supervising solicitor in the area of work, and it is not a proofread.
The second asks whether the statement about the firm's own fees and scope is right. The SRA Transparency Rules came into force on 6 December 2018 and expect price and service information for specified work types; we checked the position on 3 August 2026. A page that names a fee is part of what the firm publishes about itself, so it passes the same eyes as anything else the firm publishes about its charges.
Which of a firm's services fall within scope is a question for the firm and its own advisers. We build what a firm tells us to publish, and we never say a firm has been made compliant, because only the firm and its COLP can judge that.
The loop, in order: commissioned, drafted, checked for accuracy, checked for fees, published, review date set. Six steps, and only two of them are ours. A page that skips the fourth step and names a fee anyway is the failure worth designing against, because it is the one a client can quote back.
What cadence survives a busy quarter?
Two pages a month, and the arithmetic is about the checker rather than the author.
| Cadence | Author hours a month | Checker hours a month | What happens when the quarter gets busy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 pages | 10 | 2 | The queue stalls at the check and nothing publishes for six weeks |
| 2 pages | 5 | 1 | Survives, because an hour can be found in a bad month |
| 1 page | 2.5 | 0.5 | Survives, and the archive is thin after a year |
Those hours are arithmetic on the per-page figures in the first table, not a measured average of anything. The point they make is the useful part: the author's five hours are five hours of somebody who has already agreed to it, and the checker's single hour belongs to a supervising solicitor who agreed to nothing and is carrying a caseload.
Every publishing programme we have seen fail, failed at the check. The drafts exist. They sit unread because the person who has to read them has a hearing.
There is a second argument for the lower cadence. Across the keyword set we measured on 3 August 2026, 863 of 1,235 searches carry an AI Overview, and 39 of 54 of the money searches do. A page restating what fifty other sites already restated is exactly what a generated summary absorbs without a visit. Fewer pages, each answering a question a client asks before instructing anyone, is the response that still works.
What does the operation cost if we run it?
Published, fixed, and never priced by volume.
| What | Price |
|---|---|
| Price Transparency Pack | £890, ten working days |
| Firm Site | £2,400 |
| Firm Site+ | £4,200 |
| Authority Build | £6,900 |
| Retainer, monthly | £600 · £1,200 · £2,400, no minimum term |
£700 comes off a build taken with six months of retainer. Of 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, twelve published a price at all, five showed only a range, eight claimed a guarantee of some kind, and one offered work with no minimum term.
We never charge per enquiry, per lead or per matter. LASPO 2012 section 56 prohibits referral fees in prescribed legal business including personal injury, and it binds the firm paying as well as the party being paid.
What will the operation not do?
Four things, said now rather than in month four.
- It does not create checking time. If no supervising solicitor has an hour a month, the correct decision is one page a month, not four unchecked ones.
- It produces nothing measurable in month one. Positions move in months three and four; clicks follow in months six to nine.
- It does not fix what happens after an enquiry arrives. Who answers, how quickly, and what gets recorded sit inside the firm.
- It does not include advertising. We do not manage ad spend, so a firm wanting matters inside this quarter should read the paid-search arithmetic elsewhere and buy that instead.
What this is worth where you are
In Leeds, 1,180 people a month search for a conveyancing solicitor, and Google charges around £13.80 for one of those clicks, measured 3 August 2026. We hold the same figures for 52 cities.
The free report gives you yours, plus which of the pages the rules ask for are missing from your site, and what 40 suppliers charge.
Where should I read next?
For the individual version of this — one solicitor publishing under their own name, and who answers for what it says — read lawyer content marketing. This page is the firm's operation; that one is the byline.
Wider than publishing: marketing for a law firm and marketing for lawyer.
On the site the pages are published onto: lawyer web marketing and online marketing for lawyer.
If the question is identity rather than publishing: branding a law firm.
Frequently asked questions
Who should commission pages in a law firm?
The head of the practice area, working from the questions clients actually asked in meetings rather than from a keyword tool. It takes about fifteen minutes a page and it is the role most firms leave vacant, which is why publishing stops.
How many checks does a page go through before it is published?
Two. A supervising solicitor checks that the statement about the law and procedure is right as at today, and whoever owns the firm's price and service information checks that any fee named is the fee charged.
How many pages a month can a firm sustain?
Two, in most firms. Four stalls at the check rather than at the writing, because the checker's hour belongs to a supervising solicitor with a caseload who never agreed to the schedule.
Why does publishing volume no longer work?
Because 863 of the 1,235 searches we measured on 3 August 2026 carry an AI Overview, and 39 of 54 money searches do. A page restating what fifty other sites restated is absorbed into the summary and never visited.
Does the firm or the supplier check the law?
The firm. We can only be the publisher, we do not check legal statements, and we will not write in a named fee earner's voice without them. Which services fall within the transparency rules is a matter for the firm and its own advisers.
What does it cost to have this run for us?
The Price Transparency Pack is £890 over ten working days, the Firm Site £2,400, Firm Site+ £4,200 and the Authority Build £6,900, with retainers at £600, £1,200 or £2,400 a month and no minimum term.
Can you be paid per enquiry instead?
No. LASPO 2012 section 56 prohibits referral fees in prescribed legal business including personal injury, and it binds the firm paying as well as the party being paid, so our pricing is fixed by scope.