Last time, we explored why corporate legal buyers now expect consumer-grade experiences. Today, the harder question: how do you demonstrate the quality of your thinking without revealing the specific insights that clients pay for?
The Fundamental Problem
For decades, legal services operated on a relationship-first model: you knew someone, they vouched for a firm, and expertise was taken on faith until proven through direct engagement. Today’s corporate buyers want to evaluate expertise before committing to a relationship. They want proof before promises.
This creates a paradox. Too little detail, and prospects can’t evaluate competence. Too much detail, and you’ve given away billable advice or revealed strategic thinking to competitors. The firms solving this are creating what we might call “proof of thinking”—demonstrations of how they approach problems that showcase judgment without crossing into free consulting.
The distinction matters. An employment practice that shares a framework for evaluating remote work policy risks demonstrates expertise. Analyzing a specific company’s policies is free consulting. One builds credibility; the other undermines your business model.
Why Measurement Fails
Legal marketers struggle with measurement because they’re applying demand generation metrics to a referral-based business model. The more relevant question isn’t “How many leads did we generate?” It’s “How effectively does our digital presence validate the referrals we’re already receiving?”
This is harder to measure but more strategically important. A general counsel receives your firm’s name from three different sources over six months. When they finally have a need, your digital presence either reinforces those referrals or undermines them. You’ll never see the ones you lost—they validated you out of consideration before you even knew they existed.
The Partner Objection
The biggest obstacle isn’t technical—it’s cultural. Partners who built careers on relationship-based business development often view consumer marketing approaches as unnecessary or unprofessional.
The reframe that works: This isn’t marketing innovation; it’s client service. Today’s corporate counsel expects the same clarity and accessibility in their professional relationships that they experience everywhere else. Firms that fail to meet these expectations aren’t losing marketing opportunities—they’re failing to serve clients in the way those clients prefer to be served.
That simple reframe changes the conversation from “Should we do this?” to “Can we afford not to?”
The Competitive Reality
Here’s what’s happening in the market: Firms that communicate more clearly are winning on accessibility, not necessarily merit. A prospect might conclude that Firm A and Firm B have comparable expertise, but if Firm A made that evaluation easier, they get the engagement.
As more firms adopt these approaches, baseline expectations continue to rise. What feels like a competitive advantage today becomes table stakes tomorrow. The firms moving now have a window before consumer-grade communication becomes the industry standard.
From Gatekeeping to Guiding
The required cultural shift is from controlling information until clients engage to becoming more generous with insights while maintaining clear boundaries around actual legal counsel. This isn’t natural for professions built on specialized knowledge and exclusive relationships.
Consider what this looks like in practice: An employment practice publishes a decision tree for evaluating the risks associated with remote work policies. They’re not providing specific advice for any individual company’s situation, but they’re demonstrating that they understand the key variables. That’s the framework of thinking made visible without revealing the application.
The shift is from assumption-based communication (“they should understand our value”) to evidence-based communication (“here’s how we demonstrate our value”). From relationship-dependent credibility (“trust us because you know us”) to competence-dependent credibility (“trust us because you can see how we think”).
The Strategic Opportunity
The real opportunity isn’t choosing between traditional relationship marketing and consumer-grade communication. It’s recognizing that both must work together in a market where expertise is assumed, relationships matter enormously, and clarity increasingly determines who gets the opportunity to compete.
Firms that figure this out will capture more value from existing referral networks while building foundations for new types of client relationships. They’ll also be better positioned as legal procurement becomes more sophisticated and systematic.
But there’s a limited window. Right now, these approaches still differentiate. The firms making this transition deliberately are gaining ground on those waiting to see how it plays out.
What This Actually Requires
Three philosophical shifts matter more than any tactical playbook:
Start with what prospects need to know, not what you want to tell them. The question isn’t “How do we describe our capabilities?” It’s “What do sophisticated buyers actually need to understand to make good decisions?”
Show your thinking, not your results. Instead of case studies listing outcomes, demonstrate how you think about the problems prospects face. Let the quality of your judgment speak for itself.
Lower barriers to understanding, not barriers to entry. You’re not trying to make hiring you easier—you’re trying to make evaluating you easier. That’s a crucial distinction that keeps partners on board.
What Matters Now
The shift toward frictionless experiences isn’t a trend—it’s a structural change in how corporate buyers make complex purchasing decisions. They expect clarity, accessibility, and the ability to evaluate expertise on their own timeline. The question isn’t whether law firms should adapt. It’s whether they can do so without losing what actually differentiates them.
The firms that figure this out won’t be the ones with the best technology or the flashiest websites. They’ll be the ones who understand that demonstrating sophisticated thinking and building trusted relationships aren’t competing priorities. They’re the same priority, expressed differently for a market that now demands both.
That’s the real opportunity: proving your expertise is worth engaging while making it easier for the right clients to reach that conclusion.
Lynda Decker leads a team at Decker Design that focuses on helping law firms build differentiated brands. This post was originally published on Lynda’s LinkedIn newsletter, Marketing without Jargon.
Header image: Getty Images for Unsplash+
The post The Wisest Birds Show Up, Not Off appeared first on PRINT Magazine.