Lawyer marketing strategies: narrow, or stay general

There are 2 strategies available to an individual attorney and everything else is tactics: build a name in one narrow area, or stay general and stay available. The first takes years and does not transfer. The second is reversible on any Monday. In Houston the two ends of that choice sit 13 times apart on click price.

Last updated: 5 August 2026

Our prices, so they are not at the bottom of the page: Practice Sprint $1,450, build tier $2,900. Fixed, published, no minimum term, and never per inquiry or per matter.

What are the two strategies, actually?

Be findable for one thing, or be available for many. Almost nobody chooses; most attorneys drift into the second and describe it as the first.

The narrow strategy attaches the attorney's name to a single kind of matter. Everything published is about that matter type, the biography leads with it, the other practice pages stop being maintained, and over years other attorneys begin sending that work across.

The general strategy means staying reachable for whatever a community brings — the neighbor with a lease question, the client from a probate matter whose son has been charged. It is how most sustainable small practices run, and its weakness is that it produces no search position worth having, because nobody searches for an attorney who handles several things.

The failure mode is claiming the first while running the second: eight practice areas listed, and a biography saying the attorney focuses on one. A stranger reads that as a general practice, and an answer engine reads it as nothing in particular.

What does the search data say about narrowing?

That narrowing into a cheap area is cheap, and narrowing into an expensive one is a decision about money rather than about reputation.

Measured 3 August 2026. The dataset treats family and divorce as one category. The two ends of that list differ by about thirteen times.

That ratio does not measure which work is worth more. A click price is what other firms will pay to be seen by one person, so the expensive end tells you who is already there. Narrowing into personal injury in Houston means competing in the most contested category in the dataset; narrowing into employment in the same city means a category with 3,600 searches a month at $8.79.

As arithmetic, not a forecast: $1,450 at the Houston employment price is 164 clicks bought from Google directly; at the injury price it is 12.

What does narrowing cost that nobody prices?

Two things, and the second is the one that surprises people.

The matters you turn away. A narrow position only works if it is held. An attorney who publishes as an employment specialist and then takes a road traffic matter because a friend asked has not narrowed; they have added a sentence to a website. Holding it means declining work in the years before the referrals arrive, which is the period when the practice can least afford to.

The direction referrals travel reverses. A general attorney is somebody other attorneys send difficult work to and receive nothing back from, because there is nothing specific to send. A narrow attorney becomes a destination, and gains somewhere to send everything outside the specialty. That is usually a good trade, and it is not really a marketing consequence — it is a change in the practice's position inside its own profession.

We cannot tell you which area to choose. That answer is in the firm's own record — which matters were profitable, which were referred out, which the attorney would take at two in the morning — and search volume cannot see any of it. A position chosen from a click price alone has been chosen from the wrong evidence.

Why is the decision asymmetric?

Because one direction takes years and the other takes a Monday.

Staying general and later narrowing is straightforward: stop maintaining the other pages, rewrite the biography, publish about one thing. The cost is time, and the practice keeps running throughout.

Narrowing and later broadening is not the mirror image. A reputation for one matter type is held by other people — the attorneys who send that work, the former clients who describe you that way — and it does not transfer when the attorney decides to change. The published pages can be rewritten in an afternoon; what people say when your name comes up cannot. The narrow strategy is a commitment with a slow build and a slow exit, and that asymmetry, rather than any figure on this page, is why the decision deserves a quarter of thought.

When is staying general the right answer?

When the whole market for the narrow thing is too small to live in.

Narrowing assumes there is a pool, and in some city and practice combinations there is not much of one. Columbus real estate runs 320 searches a month, Boston probate 520, Indianapolis probate 530, all measured 3 August 2026. Half of 320 is a small number.

Three conditions where general is the better position:

• The demand floor. If the category in your city runs in the hundreds rather than the thousands, a narrow position will not fill a practice on its own.
• A personal rather than professional referral base. Work arriving from a community or a family network is not organized by practice area, and narrowing does not improve that flow.
• The attorney does not want to do one thing. That is a career decision before it is a marketing one, and a practice built on a matter type its owner dislikes is a bad practice with good rankings.

What does the work consist of, in order?

Four steps, and the first one is not ours.

1. The position, decided by the attorney, from the practice record rather than from any figure on this page. Written in one sentence.
2. The biography rewritten to lead with it, in the first person, with facts a reader can check.
3. The pages for the chosen area, one for the matter type and one each for the two or three questions asked before instruction — what it costs, what happens first.
4. The other areas demoted, not deleted: short reassurance pages for people already sent to you, saying what it costs and what happens first, and nothing else.

That is the whole build, deliberately small: a narrow position expressed across forty pages is not narrow.

What this does not do: it produces no matters this quarter. Movement shows at three to four months, a fair judgment at six to nine, and month one is a build month. If the practice needs work now, paid advertising is the conversation and we do not manage ad spend. We do not fix what happens after somebody calls either. US lawyer advertising runs through ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted differently in each state, so the fee is for the work by scope and time.

What this is worth where you are

In Houston, 3,600 people a month search for an employment attorney, and Google charges around $8.79 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 pages are missing from your site, and what 40 suppliers charge.

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Where should I read next?

Once the position is chosen, the execution pages start here: marketing a law firm strategies.

If the chosen area is employment: employment lawyer marketing.

On the identity that sits above the position: law firm branding.

On reaching people who already know you: lawyer email marketing and lawyer social media marketing.

Frequently asked questions