Law Firm Business Development & Marketing
What the ABA's 2023 Marketing TechReport Still Tells Us
By Sagar Pratap SinghPublished Last updated
ABA's 2023 survey found only 15% of firms let prospects book a consultation online. What it shows about marketing ownership, basics and social media, and what has changed since.
Full issue
The ABA's 2023 Websites & Marketing TechReport describes a profession that treated marketing as something lawyers fit in between matters, and the newer data says little of that has changed. The tools arrived much faster than the habits. The firms pulling ahead give marketing a named owner, get the basics right, and answer inquiries fast.
2023 feels like a long time ago. ChatGPT was only starting to appear in legal circles. That's exactly why the report is useful: it is a clean snapshot of how firms marketed themselves just before AI arrived, which makes it a fair baseline for asking what has actually moved.
Ownership: marketing sits with whoever has time
The 2023 survey found website management split almost evenly between outside consultants (24%), a single lawyer (21%) and marketing staff (20%). Among solos, 60% had one lawyer managing the site and 72% wrote their own content. At firms of two to nine lawyers, 40% relied on outside providers. That's a function without a clear owner.
The 2024 edition adds a telling self-assessment: solos and small firms rated their marketing confidence at 2.7 out of 5, larger firms at 3.3. For most small firms the lawyer doing it all is not a phase; it's the structure. The answer isn't automatically an agency. It's one named person, even part-time, accountable for pipeline, with an hour a week to review what came in and from where.
Basics: the gaps were plumbing, not strategy
The 2023 numbers that stay with me are about fundamentals. 87% of respondents' firms had a website, down from 94%, and only 65% of solos did. Only 15% let a prospect book a consultation online, and 81% offered no live chat. 74% said their site was mobile friendly, but 20% didn't know, and 48% didn't know whether it used SSL. A lawyer who can't say whether the site works on a phone won't know which channel produced last month's cases either.
Some of this recovered. In 2024 website presence rose to 90% and solos to 70%. But social media as a marketing tool fell to 80% from 89%.
Social: presence is not pipeline
Of lawyers with a professional social presence in 2023, 87% were on LinkedIn, and 83% of firms with a presence used it. LinkedIn remained the primary platform in 2024 at 76%. One-third of firms had a blog. The pattern I see across firms is profiles that exist and posting that doesn't. You don't need reach. You need to be findable and consistent, sharing how you solved real problems within the ethics rules.
What changed is AI; what didn't is responsiveness
The real shift since 2023 is AI adoption. The ABA's 2024 survey found 30.2% of attorneys' offices using AI-based tools; Clio's 2025 Legal Trends Report puts AI use at 79% of legal professionals. Yet the ABA's own 2024 conclusion is that law firm marketing remains "largely human-driven."
Responsiveness is where the old habits show. Hennessey Digital's 2025 study of 1,333 firms found a 13-minute median reply to web leads, and 26% of firms never replied at all. New software sits on top of an intake process nobody owns.
What to do this week
- Name an owner. One person, one hour a week, accountable for where new matters come from.
- Check the plumbing. Open your site on a phone, confirm HTTPS, and add online booking if you offer consultations. Google your firm and fix any inconsistent details.
- Trace your last ten matters to source. Referral, search, directory, social or AI. Repeat monthly; in a quarter you'll know what works.
- Turn one client story into a post. With permission and anonymised, explain the problem and how you solved it.
Marketing doesn't have to feel like selling. It has to feel like trust being built, consistently.
