Written by Miriad with AI assistance and checked against the sources at the end. Marketing and office practice, not ethics advice: your state bar's rules decide.
TL;DR: A small firm's marketing plan fits on one page: three goals, four channels, an owner and a weekly time slot for each, and the rule every task is checked against. The sample below, for an illustrative three-person firm, runs on about four hours a week in total. Measure it by asking every new client how they found you, not by follower counts.
Most marketing plan templates for law firms ask for a mission statement, a SWOT analysis and a five-year vision before they get to anything you would do on a Tuesday. A small firm owner fills in the first page, runs out of evening, and the plan goes in a drawer.
A plan that works for a firm of two to ten people starts at the other end: what will we do each week, who does it, and how do we know it is allowed? This article is part of our small law firm marketing guide, and it shows one filled-in example rather than a blank form.
What goes into a small law firm marketing plan?
A small law firm marketing plan needs five things: the goals for the year, the channels you will use, who owns each one, how much time each gets every week, and the rule each task is checked against. Strategy statements are optional. If a line on the plan does not lead to a weekly or monthly task, it can go.
The goals should come from the firm's real situation, not from a template. Two numbers from the surveys help frame them. Clio's 2025 report on solo and small firms, as covered by the press, found 59% name referrals as their top lead source, and put utilization at 27% for solos and 32% for small firms (Canadian Lawyer, 2025). So for many small firms the plan has two jobs: support the referral path, and protect the hours the lawyers actually bill.
That is why the sample plan below is small. Its goals are about the path from referral to intake, and its time budget is set by what the lawyers can spare, not by what a marketing course recommends.
The sample plan: a three-person firm, filled in
The sample plan below is for an illustrative firm: two lawyers handling family law and estate planning, plus one assistant, in a mid-sized town. It uses four channels and about four hours of combined time each week. Every number in it is a planning choice for this example, not a benchmark from a survey.
Example (illustrative, not a real case): Harbor Street Law (a made-up name) has two partners, Ana for family law and Ben for estate planning, and an assistant, Carla. Most new matters come from past clients, two accountants and a family therapist. Their website has one general "Services" page, the Google profile name includes "Top Family Lawyer", and nobody asks for reviews. Their plan for the year:
Goals
- Every new matter's source is recorded at intake.
- Each practice area has its own page, reviewed by the responsible partner.
- Every client gets the same review request at closing.
Channels
| Channel | Owner | Weekly time | Task | Rule check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Referrals | Ana and Ben | 30 minutes | Thank-you notes, quarterly coffee with referrers | No value given for recommendations |
| Google profile and reviews | Carla | 45 minutes | Review requests in closing letters, draft replies | No incentives, no selective asking, no client details |
| Website | Ana and Ben, alternating | 1 hour | One practice area page per month, then upkeep | No implied outcomes, responsible lawyer named |
| Monthly email | Carla drafts, a partner reviews | 1.5 hours | One legal change per month | No client matter; check against the source |
| Firm AI rule | Ben | One-off, then 15 minutes a month | One-page policy, monthly check | Client data never in public tools |
The firm's first month is spent on the profile and the AI rule. The rule comes first because Carla will draft with AI from day one; the one-page law firm AI policy template is the version they adapt.
How many hours a week does this take?
The sample plan takes about four hours a week across three people, which is roughly what a small firm can sustain alongside client work. The largest share goes to writing, and that is where AI saves time, because the inputs are the lawyers' knowledge and public legal changes rather than client files.
Here is where the time goes in a typical week for the example firm:
- Monday, 20 minutes (Carla): add the review request to any closing letters, log new referral sources from intake.
- Tuesday, 1 hour (one partner): write or update one section of a practice area page from their own notes, with an AI draft as a starting point.
- Wednesday, 30 minutes (Ana and Ben): thank-you notes to referrers; reply to any reviews using Carla's drafts.
- Thursday, 1.5 hours (Carla, then a partner): first and second week of the month, the email update; other weeks, reuse the update for two short social posts.
- Friday, 25 minutes (Carla): check the Google profile, update hours and photos if needed.
Two rules shape the time budget. Under ABA Opinion 512 a lawyer may not bill clients for time spent learning a GenAI tool (National Law Review, 2024), so learning time sits in the marketing hours. And the review time is not optional: a partner checks every AI draft before it is published, because an unchecked statement of law misleads the readers you want.
How do you measure the plan without vanity numbers?
Measure the plan by recording, for every new matter, how the client found you, and by tracking the few actions the plan controls: pages published, review requests sent, emails sent. Follower counts and website visits are interesting but rarely tell a small firm whether marketing is working.
The intake question is simple: "How did you hear about us?", with a fixed list of answers (past client, other professional, Google search, Google profile, website, email, other) plus a name field for referrers. Carla records it in the practice management software at the conflict check stage, so it is never skipped.
At the end of each month the firm looks at three lines:
- New matters by source.
- Plan tasks done versus planned.
- Anything that broke a rule or nearly did, and the fix.
The third line is the one most plans leave out. It is also where the AI rule, the review policy and the advertising checks get better over time.
How do you review and adjust the plan each quarter?
Review the plan every quarter in one short meeting: look at new matters by source, drop the task that produced nothing and cost the most time, and add at most one new task. A small firm's plan should change slowly. The point is a routine that survives a busy month, not a perfect channel mix.
For the example firm, the first quarter review might go like this. The email update is sent on time three months in a row, and two past clients mention it at intake. The review requests work; replies are slower than planned, so Carla drafts them in a batch on Fridays. The website page for estate planning is still unfinished, so Ben swaps the Tuesday slot with Ana for a month.
Two questions are worth asking at every review:
- Is the plan still inside the rules? Check the advertising points (Rule 7.1 on misleading claims, Rule 7.2 on responsible lawyer and specialist claims) whenever a new kind of content is added (Minn. R. Prof. Conduct 7.2, accessed 2026).
- Does the time still fit? If client work has grown, cut a channel before you cut the review step.
When you are ready to decide what to spend, not just how many hours to give, use the method in law firm marketing budget. The channel-by-channel reasoning behind this plan is in the small law firm marketing guide.
If you want the plan, your practice areas, your referrers and your AI rule kept in one set of files any AI tool or new hire can read, that is what the Business Brain Starter Kit is for. Get notified when it launches.
FAQ
How long should a small law firm marketing plan be?
One page is enough for most firms of two to ten people: goals, channels, owners, weekly time and the rule check for each task. A longer plan is fine if you will use it, but every line should lead to something someone does in a given week. Strategy text that nobody acts on just makes the plan harder to review.
How many hours a week should a small firm spend on marketing?
There is no reliable benchmark we can point to, so start from what the firm can sustain. The illustrative plan in this article runs on about four hours a week across three people. A plan that survives busy months at three hours does more than an ambitious one that stops in March.
What should a solo lawyer's marketing plan focus on first?
Usually the referral path: record how each new client found you, tidy the Google Business Profile, ask every client for a review the same way, and improve your main practice area page. Write a short AI rule before using AI for any of it. These steps need no client data and little money.
How do I know if my law firm marketing plan is working?
Ask every new client how they found you and record the answer at intake, then review new matters by source each month alongside the tasks you completed. If a channel takes time and never appears in the intake records after a few months, it is a candidate to drop.
Sources
- Canadian Lawyer (Branislav Urosevic), "Solos and small firms lag with AI adoption: Clio report", 2025-05-15. https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/general/solos-and-small-firms-lag-with-ai-adoption-clio-report/392441
- National Law Review (Linn F. Freedman), "American Bar Association Issues Formal Opinion on Use of Generative AI Tools", 2024-08-14. https://natlawreview.com/article/american-bar-association-issues-formal-opinion-use-generative-ai-tools
- Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, "Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 7.2", accessed 2026. https://revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/rule/prcond-7.2/
- Google Business Profile Help, "Prohibited & restricted content", accessed 2026. https://support.google.com/business/answer/7400114