I need to grow a new practice area
The firm has decided to do something it has not done before, or to take seriously something it has only dabbled in: employment, private client, commercial property, family. There is a fee earner, perhaps a lateral hire, and no clients yet. This page is the twelve-month plan for building a practice area from nothing to self-sustaining, with the decision you should make before spending a pound.
A new practice area is the one marketing problem where the firm has no history to rely on: no rankings, no reviews, no past clients, no referrers who think of you for it. Everything has to be built, and the order matters.
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Before anything else: which kind of practice area is it?
The plan depends entirely on how clients find a solicitor for this kind of matter. Get this wrong and the firm spends a year marketing in a place its clients never look.
Employment disputes, family breakdown, criminal defence, personal injury, housing, immigration. The client has a problem today, searches for it today, and instructs within days. Nobody referred them; they picked from a results page.
Plan: search first. Matter pages, local presence, paid search from month two to buy time while organic builds. Reviews matter enormously. Referrals come later.
Wills and probate, conveyancing, commercial property, business sale and purchase, settlement agreements. The client knows they will need a solicitor, compares several, and often asks someone first: an accountant, an IFA, an estate agent, a friend.
Plan: search and referrers together. Price transparency and published fees decide more than rankings. The referrer network is half the plan, not an afterthought.
Corporate, commercial contracts, employment for employers, IP, regulatory. Clients are businesses with an existing adviser; they move when the adviser disappoints or when someone they trust recommends a change. They rarely search cold.
Plan: the partner’s visibility, not the firm’s rankings. Thought leadership, LinkedIn, events, a modest search presence for the few terms that convert. Patience: eighteen months, not twelve.
The twelve months, in order
This is the sequence for a searched-for practice area, which is the most common case and the one where marketing carries most of the weight. The other two kinds use the same stages with the emphasis shifted towards the people sections.
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Month 1Decide and prepare
Write down what success is, and what you will stop at
How many files a month would make the practice area self-sustaining? What is the average fee? What can the firm afford to spend before the first file arrives, and for how long? Most new practice areas fail not because the marketing did not work but because the firm lost its nerve in month five, which is exactly when a searched-for practice area is about to turn. Decide now what month five will look like so nobody panics when it does.
Then the unglamorous foundations: the fee earner’s profile written properly, the SRA Transparency pricing page if the matter requires one, the enquiry handling agreed, call tracking in place, and the question “which matters within this area do we actually want?” answered. “Employment” is not a practice area. “Unfair dismissal and settlement agreements for employees in Greater Manchester” is.
You know this month worked if: there is a one-page plan with a number, a budget, a review date and a named person responsible, and the fee earner has blocked two hours a week for marketing for a year. -
Months 1 to 3Build the pages
One excellent page per matter, not one page for the practice area
A new practice area has no authority, so it cannot rank for the broad terms yet. It can rank for the specific ones: the matter plus the place, the particular question, the situation a client types at midnight. Five to eight matter pages, each written with the fee earner, each answering what that client needs to know, each with the fee earner’s name and face, published in the first ninety days.
Resist the urge to publish thirty thin pages. Google’s guidance on scaled content has been explicit since 2024 and a new section of a site that appears overnight with templated pages is exactly what it describes. Eight real pages outrank thirty hollow ones, and they keep doing it. The content writing page sets out how we work with a fee earner to produce them.
You know this stage worked if: the pages are indexed, Search Console shows impressions for the matter terms by the end of month three, and the fee earner would be happy for a client to read every one. -
Months 2 to 12Buy the gap
Paid search while organic catches up
Organic search for a new practice area takes six to nine months to produce files. The firm cannot wait that long with a fee earner on salary, and it should not: a tightly built paid search campaign on the specific matters, in the specific places, sends the first enquiries within weeks and tells the firm which matters convert before the organic pages have had a chance to.
Keep it narrow. Exact and phrase match on the matters chosen in month one, the towns the firm serves, a landing page per matter, and conversion tracking on calls and forms from the first day. The campaign’s job is to be profitable on its own and to pay for the practice area’s first year; the data it produces is the bonus. Budget falls as organic rises; by month twelve it should be a third of what it was in month three. Our paid search work for law firms is built this way.
You know this stage worked if: the first instruction arrives by the end of month three, and by month six the cost per instruction from paid search is below the fee on the matter. -
Months 2 to 6Tell people
Existing clients and the firm’s own referrers
The firm already has the cheapest source of a new practice area’s first clients: everyone who already trusts it. Past and current clients of other departments, the accountants and IFAs and estate agents who send the firm work, the other departments’ fee earners who have been turning this kind of matter away for years. None of them knows the firm now does this unless someone tells them.
A letter or email to clients, personal rather than a newsletter. A short note to every referrer, from the partner who knows them, with the new fee earner’s name. An internal briefing so reception and every fee earner knows what the new practice area takes and who to pass it to. A LinkedIn post from the fee earner, and one from the managing partner. This is a few days’ work, and it usually produces the first files before the search campaign does.
You know this stage worked if: at least one instruction has come from a referrer or an existing client who was told, and reception can name the fee earner without looking it up. -
Months 3 to 8Earn authority
The guides that make the pages rank
Matter pages rank when the site around them shows real expertise in the subject. That means two or three long, serious guides on the questions clients research before they instruct, written with the fee earner, kept up to date, and worth linking to. For employment: a guide to settlement agreements, a guide to the tribunal process, a guide to what a dismissal is worth. Each one earns search visibility of its own, sends readers to the matter pages, and gives the firm something to send a referrer or a journalist.
Alongside: the fee earner’s profile on the Law Society’s Find a Solicitor and any relevant directories, membership of the specialist association for the area, and a handful of mentions in the regional press or the trade press where a lateral hire or a new department is news. Not link-building in the old sense, which Google penalises; the ordinary visibility of a real practice.
You know this stage worked if: the guides are getting organic visits by month eight, and at least one matter page has reached the first page for its matter-plus-place term. -
Months 4 to 12Build proof
Reviews and results, from the first file onward
A new practice area’s weakest point is that it has no proof. The firm’s reviews are for conveyancing; the new fee earner has no client who can vouch for them. From the first concluded matter, ask: a Google review from every satisfied client, requested by the fee earner personally at the end of the matter, and an anonymised case summary for the matter page. By month twelve the page should carry a dozen reviews and three or four short case studies that could only have been written by a firm that does this work.
Reviews must be earned, never incentivised or written in-house; since April 2025 the DMCC Act makes fake reviews an offence and the SRA has its own view of misleading publicity. The reviews page in this section covers how to ask properly.
You know this stage worked if: a prospective client reading the matter page can see a named solicitor, recent reviews for this kind of work, and a case like theirs. -
Months 6 to 12Review and rebalance
Judge it on the numbers written down in month one
At month six: files per month, cost per file by channel, which matters are converting, and whether the organic pages are showing up. At month twelve: the same, against the self-sustaining number. If paid search was profitable from month three and organic is now producing files, the practice area has worked, and the budget shifts from buying enquiries to compounding them. If the first file never came, the question is the month-one decision, not the marketing: was this the right practice area, in the right place, with the right person?
You know the year worked if: the practice area is producing files at or near the number set in month one, from at least two channels, with a cost per file the fee supports.
A new practice area does not fail in month twelve. It fails in month five, when the pages are built, the ads are running, the organic traffic has not arrived, and a partner says “this isn’t working”. The plan exists so that nobody says it.
The six ways it usually goes wrong
We have watched firms launch practice areas well and badly. The bad ones share a short list of causes, and none of them is “the market wasn’t there”.
A single “Employment Law” page, a press release, and nothing a client searching for their actual problem can find. The firm is invisible to everyone who needs it and visible to nobody who does.
The new fee earner arrives with a reputation and a following and the firm takes four months to publish a profile. Their old clients search for them, find the old firm, and stay there.
Six months of silence while the pages mature, then a decision that “the website isn’t bringing anything in”. The gap was predictable and paid search exists to fill it.
Reception does not know the firm does employment work and says so to callers. The conveyancing team keeps referring employment enquiries to the firm down the road, because they always have.
Marketing a new practice area needs the person who will do the work: two hours a week for pages, guides, referrers and reviews. A fee earner who is immediately full of billable work from elsewhere cannot give it, and the practice area never gets the expertise only they can supply.
The established conveyancing department produces forty files a month and the new one produces four, so the new one is “failing”. Month four of a new practice area is not comparable to year twenty of an old one; it is comparable to the plan.
If the practice area came with a person
A lateral hire changes the plan in one way: there is a reputation to transfer, and a short window in which to do it. The clients and referrers who knew the fee earner at the old firm will search for them by name in the first three months. If they find a profile, a phone number and a page that says what the fee earner does now, some of them follow. If they find nothing, or the old firm’s page, that following is lost.
So the first week, not the first quarter: a full profile page with photograph, specialisms, notable work in general terms and direct contact details; the fee earner’s LinkedIn updated and a post announcing the move; a note to the referrers the fee earner is allowed to contact; and the profile submitted to the directories that listed them before. Respect any restrictive covenants in the old contract and the SRA’s position on client confidentiality, and do what is permitted quickly.
The rest of the plan then runs as above, but with month one’s “tell people” stage first and loud, because it has a deadline the other stages do not.
- Day 1
- Profile page live with photo, specialisms and a direct line
- Day 1
- LinkedIn updated; announcement post from the fee earner
- Day 2
- Managing partner’s post; firm news page; regional press if relevant
- Day 3
- Notes to permitted referrers and contacts
- Day 4
- Directories and Find a Solicitor updated
- Day 5
- Google Business Profile lists the practice area; brand search for the name checked
Questions firms ask about launching a practice area
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How much should we budget for the first year?
Work backwards from the fee. If a file is worth £3,000 and the practice area needs ten files a month to sustain itself, the marketing has to produce 120 files in the year at a cost the margin supports. For a searched-for practice area, most of year one’s spend is paid search in months two to nine plus the pages and guides; it should be set from that calculation rather than from a round number.
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Can we do this with the existing website?
Usually, if the site is sound. A new section with its own matter pages, the fee earner’s profile and the guides sits inside the existing site and benefits from its authority. A site that is itself weak, slow or carrying a spam history will hold the new section back, and the practice area becomes the reason to fix it.
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Should the new practice area have its own brand or website?
Almost never. A separate site starts with zero authority, splits the firm’s reviews and reputation, and doubles the work. The exception is a consumer brand deliberately kept apart from a commercial firm’s identity, and even then the firm’s site should link to it openly.
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What if the fee earner is not a partner and has no profile to speak of?
Then build one. A solicitor three years qualified with a photograph, a clear specialism, a published guide and a dozen reviews is more credible to a client than a partner with none of those things. The practice area’s profile is built from the fee earner’s, so the fee earner’s comes first.
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How soon will we know if it is going to work?
Paid search tells you within three months whether the matters convert and at what cost. That is the early signal. Organic search tells you at six to nine months whether the practice area can sustain itself without buying every enquiry. Set both dates in month one.
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Can you run the whole plan?
The marketing parts, yes: the pages, the paid search, the guides, the reviews process, the measurement. The parts only the firm can do, telling clients and referrers and giving the fee earner time, we will plan with you and chase. A first conversation is about which kind of practice area it is and whether the plan above fits.
Tell us about the practice area
Which area, which matters, where, who is doing the work and when they start. We will come back with the plan for your kind of practice area, the number it should be judged on, and a view on whether the first file is achievable by month three.
- A short conversation about the practice area, the fee earner and the firm’s expectations.
- A written twelve-month plan, with the month-one decisions set out for the partners.
- If you want us to run it, a start date. If not, the plan is yours.