Fall is one of the busiest and most productive times of year for law firm marketing and business development. People are back from summer vacations, conferences and events are picking up, clients are thinking about what they need to accomplish before year-end and firms are starting to make decisions about their priorities and budgets for 2027.
There’s also still a meaningful amount of time left in the year, which makes this a good point to look at what you’ve done so far and where you want to put your energy during the next few months. Maybe there are clients you want to spend more time with, prospects who need follow-up, lawyers or practices that could use greater visibility or marketing initiatives that have been sitting on the list for months. It’s also worth looking at what has worked this year so you can spend more time on the activities that are actually leading to conversations, strengthening relationships and creating opportunities.
For most firms, the answer isn’t adding a long list of new projects to an already busy fall. It’s being more intentional about where you spend your time and focusing on the marketing and business development activities that support the firm’s priorities and the clients, prospects and relationships that matter most. With that in mind, here are 10 areas I’d focus on this fall.
Link to 1. Review What’s Actually Working 1. Review What’s Actually Working
Before adding more to your marketing plan, take a good look at what you’ve already done this year and what has actually produced results. Review your website analytics, LinkedIn performance, email marketing, events and webinars, media placements and other marketing activities, but don’t get too caught up in the biggest numbers.
A LinkedIn post with modest reach may have been seen by an important client or prospect. A webinar with 40 attendees may have been much more valuable than one with 200 because the smaller group included exactly the people your lawyers wanted to reach. An article published months ago may still be attracting website traffic or giving a lawyer something useful to send to clients and prospects.
Talk to your lawyers as part of this review because the numbers only tell part of the story. Ask which marketing activities have helped them start conversations, what they’re hearing from clients, where they’re seeing opportunities and what kind of support would be most useful during the rest of the year. Use all of that information to decide what deserves more of your time this fall and what may not need to continue.
Link to 2. Build Your Fall Content Around What Clients Care About Right Now 2. Build Your Fall Content Around What Clients Care About Right Now
One of the easiest ways to come up with better content ideas is to pay attention to what clients are already asking about. What questions keep coming up in meetings? What developments are affecting their businesses and industries? What are lawyers explaining repeatedly to different clients? Those conversations can tell you a lot about what your audience actually wants to hear from you.
You can also get much more mileage out of a strong idea than many firms realize. One substantive topic can become an article, several LinkedIn posts, a short video, a webinar, an email to a targeted group of clients and prospects and talking points lawyers can use in their own conversations. You don’t need to keep coming up with completely new ideas every week when you already have good material that can be used in different ways.
Fall also gives you natural opportunities for year-end and forward-looking content. Think about what clients need to know or do before December 31, what developments lawyers are watching for 2027 and what companies may want to have on their radar as they start planning for next year. The strongest content is timely, useful and connected to the issues your clients are dealing with right now.
Link to 3. Give Your Website a Fall Checkup 3. Give Your Website a Fall Checkup
Law firm websites have a way of becoming outdated without anyone noticing. A lawyer changes roles, someone receives an award, a practice expands, a lateral joins, an old board position remains on a bio for three years and suddenly the website no longer reflects what the firm actually looks like today.
Take some time this fall to review your most important lawyer bios, practice and industry pages and other high-traffic areas of the site. Make sure they include current experience, matters, articles, speaking engagements, awards and other information that helps someone understand what the lawyer or practice actually does.
Lawyer bios deserve particular attention because they’re often among the most visited pages on a law firm website. Someone who lands on a bio should quickly understand what that lawyer does, who they work with and the experience they bring to the kinds of matters a prospective client may need help with.
Your website also matters beyond the people who visit it directly. Search engines and AI tools use the information available online to understand lawyers, firms, practices and experience, which makes accurate and substantive website content even more important. Your site should reflect the firm you are today, not the firm you were several years ago.
Link to 4. Take a Closer Look at Your Most Important Client Relationships 4. Take a Closer Look at Your Most Important Client Relationships
Fall is a great time to spend more time on your existing clients, especially before formal year-end planning begins. Start by looking at what has happened with your most important clients during the year. Which matters has the firm handled? Which lawyers and practices have been involved? What has changed at the client itself?
Leadership changes, acquisitions, financings, expansions, new products, regulatory developments and other business changes can all create reasons to reconnect and may also point to ways the firm can be more helpful.
Then look at the relationships themselves. Who at the firm knows the client and who at the client knows the firm? Is the relationship concentrated with one partner or one contact? Are there other lawyers who would be useful for the client to know based on what’s happening in its business?
This kind of research can make client team meetings much more productive because the conversation becomes less about reviewing what everyone already knows and more about where the relationship could go next. It can also help identify opportunities to broaden relationships across both organizations so the connection with the client isn’t dependent on one or two people.
Link to 5. Make More of Your Fall Conferences and Events 5. Make More of Your Fall Conferences and Events
Conference season can take up an enormous amount of time and money, and too many firms still approach conferences by registering lawyers, booking flights and hoping something useful happens once everyone gets there.
There’s a lot you can do before the event to make that investment more worthwhile. Review attendee and speaker lists when they’re available and identify clients, prospects, referral sources and other people your lawyers want to see. Research the companies and individuals who matter most and help lawyers make plans before everyone’s schedules fill up.
Marketing and BD teams can make this much easier by giving lawyers a manageable list of people to focus on along with useful background information. Nobody needs a 50-page briefing book they won’t read on the plane. Give them what they need to walk into the conference knowing who they want to see and why.
And don’t let everything end when the conference does. Find out who your lawyers met, what they discussed, what follow-up they promised and whether there were issues or themes that came up repeatedly. Those conversations can lead to personal follow-up, introductions, LinkedIn connections, additional meetings and new content ideas. A conference can continue generating opportunities long after everyone gets home if there’s a process for following up.
Link to 6. Strengthen Your Email Marketing 6. Strengthen Your Email Marketing
With so much attention on social media, AI and other newer marketing channels, email can sometimes feel less exciting. But it remains one of the most direct ways for law firms to stay in front of clients and contacts, particularly when what you’re sending is relevant to the person receiving it.
Use the fall to look at the health of your email lists and the way you’re communicating with them. Update contact information, remove obvious duplicates and look at how contacts are segmented. Not every person in your database needs every client alert, event invitation or firm announcement. More targeted lists can make your communications much more useful.
Also look at what you’re sending and how it’s performing. Which subject lines are getting people to open emails? Which topics are generating clicks? Which programs are getting registrations? Are there practices sending too much while others barely communicate at all?
This is also the time to start organizing year-end communications before December arrives and everyone suddenly wants to send something at once. Find out which practices are planning year-end updates, 2027 outlook pieces, webinars, client events or other content and start coordinating those efforts now.
Link to 7. Find More Ways to Showcase Your Lawyers and Practices 7. Find More Ways to Showcase Your Lawyers and Practices
There are many more ways to make your lawyers visible than publishing another client alert or posting that someone spoke at a conference. Think about how you can help people get to know what your lawyers actually know, the work they do and the perspectives they bring to their clients.
Lawyer Q&As, practice spotlights, short videos, podcasts, event recaps, client-focused explainers and substantive posts around speaking engagements can all help. New partners and laterals can also be introduced in ways that go beyond announcing that they joined the firm. Explain what they do, the clients and industries they know and how their experience adds to what the firm can offer.
LinkedIn is particularly useful here because your lawyers have their own networks and relationships that are often different from the audience following the firm page. The firm can create and amplify content, while lawyers can add their own perspectives, share relevant posts and engage directly with people they know.
Not every piece of content needs to be long or highly produced. A thoughtful LinkedIn post from a lawyer about something they heard or discussed at an industry conference can tell people much more about their knowledge than a formal post announcing that they attended it.
Link to 8. Look for Cross-Selling Opportunities Based on Client Needs 8. Look for Cross-Selling Opportunities Based on Client Needs
Cross-selling can quickly become awkward when the conversation starts with what the firm wants to sell instead of what the client may actually need. A better place to start is with what’s happening in the client’s business and where those developments may create issues that extend beyond the work the firm currently handles.
Look at your major clients and compare the work you’re currently doing with what has changed at those companies. An acquisition, expansion into a new market, new executive hire, financing, regulatory development or other business event may create needs involving lawyers or practices the client doesn’t currently know.
Marketing and BD teams can help connect those developments to relevant experience elsewhere in the firm and identify relationships that could make an introduction more natural. Client teams can be especially useful for this because they bring together people who see different pieces of the relationship.
Give those meetings some structure by providing current information about the client, recent firm activity, relationship information and relevant business developments. That gives lawyers something substantive to discuss and keeps the focus on where the firm can be more useful to the client.
Link to 9. Help Your Lawyers Strengthen Their Individual Brands 9. Help Your Lawyers Strengthen Their Individual Brands
A law firm’s brand is closely connected to the visibility and reputations of its lawyers. Clients hire lawyers they know, trust and associate with the issues they need help solving, which means individual lawyer visibility deserves to be part of the firm’s broader marketing strategy.
Fall gives lawyers plenty of reasons to become more active. They can update their LinkedIn profiles, share useful content, comment on posts from clients and people in their networks, reconnect with contacts and follow up with people they meet at conferences and events. They can also identify a few topics they want to become better known for and create content around those areas consistently.
This doesn’t mean every lawyer needs to become a prolific LinkedIn poster. Some will be comfortable writing articles and posts, while others may be much better on video, podcasts, webinars, panels or in-person events. Build around what they’re good at and what they’ll actually continue doing.
This is also where business development coaching can make a difference. Help lawyers identify the people they want to know better, the relationships they want to strengthen and the activities they can realistically commit to over the next few months. A smaller number of consistent activities is much more useful than an ambitious plan that gets abandoned after two weeks.
Link to 10. Start Your 2027 Planning Before December 10. Start Your 2027 Planning Before December
December is a difficult time to suddenly start thinking strategically about the following year. By then, calendars are packed, people are trying to finish client work, budgets are being finalized and the holidays are competing for everyone’s attention.
Start those conversations now. Talk to practice and industry leaders about their priorities for 2027 and what they’re hearing from clients. Review client activity and financial information. Look at which industries and practices are growing, which relationships deserve more attention and which marketing programs have generated meaningful results.
Start building your 2027 content and events calendar as well. Map major industry events, conferences, regulatory dates, awareness months, firm milestones and other recurring opportunities that can inform content throughout the year. You don’t need to know every article you’ll publish next June, but having the major dates and themes in one place will make planning much easier.
Fall is also a good time to look closely at the marketing budget. Which sponsorships were worthwhile? Which conferences led to meaningful conversations? Where did you spend money without seeing much value? Where could additional resources make a difference next year? Starting these conversations now gives you more time to make thoughtful decisions instead of rushing through them at year-end.
Link to Make the Next Few Months Count Make the Next Few Months Count
It’s easy to get to this point in the year and start thinking that anything you didn’t get to can wait until January. But there are still three months left in the year, and that’s a lot of time to make progress on your marketing and business development efforts.
Use the fall to reconnect with the client you haven’t talked to in a while, follow up with the person you met at a conference, reach out to the prospect who went quiet, publish the article that’s been sitting in draft form or spend more time helping a lawyer become known for an area that’s important to their practice. Look at the ideas that have been sitting on your list all year and decide which ones are still worth doing.
You can also use these next few months to do more of what’s already working. If an event led to great conversations, keep those relationships going. If certain content is resonating with clients, create more around that topic. If a lawyer is gaining traction on LinkedIn, help them build on it. If there’s an important client where the firm could have a stronger relationship, spend more time on it now instead of automatically putting it on next year’s plan.
A lot can happen between now and the end of December. The relationships you strengthen, the conversations you restart and the opportunities you follow up on now can lead to work this year and well into 2027. And when January does arrive, you’ll have relationships and opportunities already in motion instead of starting from scratch.
Link to Your Fall Marketing and Business Development Checklist Your Fall Marketing and Business Development Checklist
Here are some of the things I’d put on your list between now and the end of the year:
- Review this year’s marketing and business development activities and identify what’s actually working.
- Talk to your lawyers about what they’re hearing from clients, where they’re seeing opportunities and where they need more support.
- Build your fall content around the questions and issues clients are dealing with right now.
- Update important lawyer bios, practice pages and other key areas of your website.
- Review your most important client relationships and identify where there may be opportunities to strengthen or expand them.
- Prepare more strategically for fall conferences and events, including who your lawyers want to meet and how they’ll follow up afterward.
- Review and clean up your email lists, improve segmentation and start planning year-end communications before December.
- Find more ways to showcase your lawyers and practices through LinkedIn, articles, videos, podcasts, speaking engagements and other content.
- Look for cross-selling opportunities based on what’s happening in your clients’ businesses and where the firm can be more helpful.
- Help lawyers strengthen their individual brands and become more visible with the clients, prospects and referral sources they want to reach.
- Start talking with practice and industry leaders about their priorities for 2027.
- Review your 2026 marketing budget and identify the events, sponsorships and other activities that were worth the investment.
- Map out major 2027 conferences, events, content opportunities and important dates before the year-end rush.
- Go back to the marketing and business development ideas that have been sitting on your list and choose a few that you can realistically get done before the holidays.
You don’t have to tackle everything on this list. Pick the areas that make the most sense for your firm and the lawyers you’re supporting, and use the next few months to make progress on them. There’s still plenty of time to reconnect with people, strengthen important relationships, create more visibility and follow up on opportunities before everyone disappears for the holidays.
And a lot of what you do now will carry into next year. A conversation you restart in October may turn into a meeting in November and work in January. An article you publish now can continue working for you months from now. A relationship you spend more time on this fall may become much more important in 2027. That’s why I wouldn’t write off the rest of the year. There’s still a lot you can do with it.
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