Why your law firm needs a smarter digital strategy to remain competitive

Law firms are at a turning point. Clients expect commercially savvy, accurate and proactive service, and seamless digital experiences to match. But many law firms still treat their websites like static brochures for clients. The client experience of your website isn’t matching the service they are receiving.

Despite rising pressure to do more with less and navigate increasingly complex regulations, most firms are underutilizing the digital tools already at their fingertips. Tools that could help lawyers connect with engaged clients, reduce non-billable hours, surface new opportunities, and deepen relationships.

Your website isn’t just a shop front, and if you treat it like that you’re limiting your client’s experience.

Skip ahead:

• Static websites just won’t cut it
• Shifting from a digital brochure to a strategic engine
• Empowering marketing and business development teams to drive growth
• Getting partners on board
• Three ways to get started
• Put your platform to work and compete smarter
• Are you ready to decide?

Most law firm websites are well-stocked with content, but that’s no longer enough. Few are designed to convert interest into action, uncover insights for business development, or engage clients in meaningful ways.

It’s not just about what tools you have, but how they work together. When websites, CRMs, and email platforms operate in silos, your firm misses the chance to deliver the kind of seamless, relevant digital experience clients now expect.

That’s where a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) comes in. It is designed to connect your digital tools, unify data, and help marketing and BD teams move from content producers to strategic drivers.

Done right, your website could be your hardest-working business development asset.

Firms today are navigating a perfect storm of economic volatility, regulatory pressure, geopolitical uncertainty, and growing talent challenges. At the same time, clients expect faster, more relevant digital interactions. A shift in thinking is required. Marketing and BD teams need to understand the full potential of their data and tools and their stakeholders need to be shown the bottom line benefits.

Adding data-driven intelligence into every part of the client journey is a way to create a more effective digital strategy.

When treated as a strategic engine, your website can do far more than publish insights, bios, and press releases. It can:

• Personalize experiences for different industries, clients, and personas to build trust, improve relevance, and make every digital interaction feel more tailored and efficient.
• Surface search insights on what clients are actually looking for so you can align your content strategy with real-time demand and emerging client needs.
• Capture behavioral signals that indicate commercial intent to help your teams understand who’s ready to engage, and on what areas of law.
• Connect digital activity to pipeline potential to help marketing and BD teams identify revenue opportunities, decreasing non-billable lawyer BD and marketing time, while increasing revenue opportunity.

This is how your digital presence becomes one that supports smarter client engagement, reduces non-billable effort, and turns everyday interaction into opportunity.

The tools are already there. It’s time to use them well.

Marketing and BD teams are often under-leveraged, stuck in reactive mode, delivering last-minute requests, producing outputs, and managing logistics instead of driving strategy.

The problem isn’t a lack of capability. It’s a lack of connected insight.

With a digital strategy where your website, CRM system, and email platform work together, your marketing and BD team can start operating as a strategic growth engine.

They can bring hard data into partner conversations such as: which clients are repeatedly engaging with content on a particular area of law, which industry specific content is trending upward, and which prospects have gone cold. This data immediately provides context on the clients that partners need to spend time with and the areas they’re interested in exploring. With the right data, you can expand relationships and revenue opportunities, and protect your most valuable relationships with your key clients. If the data in your DXP (the data behind your website, CRM and email platform) shows that the General Counsel (GC) at your largest client isn’t engaging as much with you across the board, your partners better pay some attention to that relationship.

Data driven connected insight could be the difference between winning or losing the opportunity to advise a client on their next big deal or dispute. Or the difference in whether your most valuable contact instructs you again, or your biggest competitor.

Take this example: a BD Manager walks into a partner meeting with a shortlist of clients who’ve engaged heavily with the firm’s recent insights, clicking on articles, attending a webinar, and downloading a guide on a timely topic like ESG, data privacy, or an upcoming major regulatory change. That data prompts a focused outreach: “Let’s set up a check-in to see how they’re preparing for the upcoming reporting requirements.” Suddenly, it’s not just business development. It’s timely, proactive, and personalized client care.

This kind of insight enables teams to flag cross-sell opportunities, tailor follow-ups, and support fee earners with outreach that’s efficient. Instead of reacting to requests, they become trusted advisors who drive pipelines with precision.

It’s a shift from execution to high-impact activities and considerably improved client experience.

To make this shift stick, firms need the right champions. That means earning partner buy-in by focusing  your digital strategy around the things that matter the most: winning work, strengthening client relationships, and using non-billable time wisely.

You need helpful dashboards for your digital strategy, but your partners don’t. They need clarity and context. They want to know: Where should I focus my time? Who’s showing signs of interest? What conversations should I be having next?

At the heart of your digital strategy, you should be focusing on providing insight and intelligence that your Partners don’t already know - insight that can add value, not just information or individual data points that have made their way into your digital strategy because of an action taken by that partner. Your digital strategy needs to help your team add value to the business.

When digital tools and their data are connected, marketing and BD teams can deliver those answers. They can hand partners a shortlist of warm leads based on actual engagement, identify timely follow-up opportunities, and take low-value tasks like research or outreach setup off their plates.

This doesn’t diminish the role of partners in business development. It amplifies it, reducing non-billable time and helping them identify the opportunity for conversion.

You don’t need a full replatforming to make your website work harder right from the start. Start small, move with intent, and build momentum.

Here are three actions that lay the groundwork for a smarter digital strategy:

1. Audit your website’s role in business development

Your website is more than a content hub, if it’s set up right. Ask yourself:

• Can it personalize content for different client types or industries when they land on our website?
  If not, consider what you can do, as it’ll drastically improve the experience for your key clients when they visit your website.
• If a client uses the search function on my website, will they find what they’re looking for?
  If you think the answer is no, your clients are probably giving up on your website pretty quickly. Fix your search function and ensure there’s a regular review of search terms and topics on your website. Consider upgrading your search function to conversational search to improve your client’s experience hunting for content on your website.
• Is it integrated with my CRM system or email platform?
  If not, you’re looking at data in silos, and the value you provide to the business could be limited. Click and open rates mean very little unless they’re coupled with data from your website or CRM platform.
• Are insights from site behavior being fed back into BD planning?
  If not, consider how you’re going to analyse data on the content your lawyers publish. It’s likely that at least some time is being wasted publishing content that isn’t used in an insightful or actionable way.

Even a light audit can reveal where quick wins are hiding. If internal resources are stretched, the right external partner can help you bridge the skills gap, so insight doesn’t stay locked in your tools.

2. Define and track BD intent signals

Map out which digital behaviors indicate commercial interest from your key clients. Things like repeat visits, content depth, or topic clustering. Set up alerts, reports, or workflows that help surface those signals and trigger action that can be used to create insight for your partners.

Small steps like these create the foundation for bigger change, and show quick ROI along the way.

3. Elevate the digital experience with a connected platform

Clients don’t want to dig through deep navigation or wait for follow-up emails. They want clear, useful answers immediately. A solution like the Squiz DXP helps you meet those expectations by creating and connecting fast, personalized, and intuitive experiences across your site.

This might include tools like AI-powered personalization, behavior-triggered content, and conversational search (just like the conversations you’d have with ChatGPT, but confined to your website content only), like our Conversational Search feature (powered by Squiz Funnelback Search). Tools like this help you understand what visitors are really looking for and surface that information, while revealing valuable behavioral signals behind the scenes. It helps users get where they need to go, and it helps you understand what’s driving their journey.

The result? A better experience for clients, and smarter signals for BD and marketing.

Your next major matter might already be in the works, but you could also be missing numerous other opportunities where signals can only be surfaced through a smarter digital strategy. Law firms that treat their website as a strategic asset, not a publishing platform, will unlock more value, faster. And those that integrate their digital tools and act on client signals will be able to provide their partners with insight previously unconsidered, and a strategic edge over the competition.

It doesn’t take a massive transformation to get there. It starts with better use of what you already have. Your aim is to provide greater value to your stakeholders through your digital strategy, and to increase revenue opportunity while simultaneously decreasing non-billable time. Your website can be far more than a shop front.

We know that exploring new platforms can seem complex. That’s why we’re here to make it easier. Our team can help you assess where your digital strategy stands today and show you how to activate the full potential of your website with Squiz DXP.

To book a consultation with one of our experts, click here.