Blogging Tips for Solo Lawyers & Small Law Firms (when everything's already been written)
Author’s note: This article was originally published in 2020; it was updated on January 20, 2026.
Blogging for your small law firm or solo practice, like for any business, can be a slog. Coming up with topics is time consuming, as is doing the actual writing. Plus, you're busy with client work—and all the admin that goes with it.
Your law firm’s blog can look lonely (and dusty) if you struggle to keep it up. You may think that everything's already been written. No one's going to find what you write on Google, so blogging is simply a waste of time.
I get it! We all have days, sometimes weeks, where it’s hard to know what to write about, never mind find the time to write. Life lifes and the workload never decreases for any of us running small businesses.
Here's the thing, though. A helpful, valuable blog post lives on—and people do eventually find it.
Address Your Audience if You Want Your Law Firm Blog Posts to Be Found AND Shared
Keep in mind, your people may not find your helpful blog post on Google or ChatGPT or Pinterest. A friend may recommend they read it. A coworker may link to it in their social media. A reporter might find it when they’re researching a story and get in touch with you.
The pathways to discovering a website are far more complex than most marketers choose to acknowledge. And unless you write the thing in the first place, you won't find out what your own best discovery driver is.
Then there’s this stat: Marketers (yes, you're a lawyer, but you're also a marketer when you publish your work online) who prioritize blogging efforts are 13x more likely to see positive ROI.
So let's start here with the big question you may be asking yourself:
“What should I blog about for my solo law practice?”
Chances are your website goal is for the right kind of client to reach out to you. That means you want this ideal client to recognize themselves or their situation in your blog posts.
I like to visualize marketing as an ecosystem with three core components: Discovery, Connection, Belief. Your blog is key to the most important—Discovery.
Legal Blog Pro Tip: Write blog posts about the things that actually worry your clients, beyond the law.
Here are some examples so you can visualize what this means in action.
Let’s say you’re a family law attorney in Boise, Idaho and it really lights you up to help single parents get peace of mind so that they can move on with their lives.
Perhaps you also have this gift for helping divorcing couples find solutions that are fair to everyone, especially the children, while also making sure that your client gets the financial support he or she needs to raise their children.
When you’re thinking about blogging for your business, it certainly makes sense to write "How To" and “Ultimate Guide” type posts that Google, Bing, and ChatGPT love like:
Know Your Rights: How to Apply for Child Support in Boise, Idaho.
A Child Support Guide for Single Parents in Idaho
You get the picture. (Also, notice the location-based lingo—this is key.)
But what if you also wrote blog posts about the things that truly worry single parents, that have nothing (and yet everything) to do with the law?
Some people-first topics such as these could be good for your law firm’s blog:
How do you handle your finances WHILE waiting for child support payments from a non-paying ex spouse?
How to cope with the guilt when you can't let your children have access to the non-paying parent. (Especially if the children want to see their other parent.)
Why avoiding bad mouthing a non-paying parent in front of your children is better for your and their wellbeing.
These kind of blog posts demonstrate that you understand your ideal clients' deep-seated fears and that you care about them and their families. This is a human connection most lawyers won’t make in their blogs, but it can make all the difference in your potential clients choosing you—and not even looking at your competitors.
If you're a family attorney, you meet with clients who are terrified of being kicked out of their apartments because their rent is late, who are sad because they can't afford to send their child on the year-end school trip, or who are tired of living pay \check to paycheck.
They feel: Scared. Sad. Tired.
These are just a few of the real issues single parents deal with day in and day out.
If, in your blog posts on your law firm website, you share free resources for divorcing families offered by your city and do Q&As with financial planners and psychologists on how to handle money and stress, imagine how helpful that will be to your readers. Some of these readers will become your clients and refer you, too.
Your audience will recognize themselves in these blog posts of your firm’s and see that you really get how they're feeling and what they're coping with. If a potential lead comes to your website via a referral, blog posts like these will encourage them to choose you to represent them without looking further.
Another example of this technique in action: Imagine you’re an employment lawyer (maybe you are) like one of our past clients and you help employees in sexual and other harassment cases.
Again, it’s simple enough to come up with blog post topics around employment law in your State or Province. And yes, definitely write a few of those to bring in search traffic and bolster your authority. Show you know what you're doing!
But dig deeper and think about what your potential clients are stressed about. In some cases, readers may not even know they have a case to begin with and are just trying to figure out how to cope at work.
They are Googling “How to handle an angry, aggressive boss.”
They haven’t even thought to Google, “Do I need to hire a lawyer when I have a bad boss?”
Answering that question in a blog post with non-legal tips and hacks will help your readers cope with their situation while they're still in it.
Like in the above family law example, you can link to articles by financial planners and psychologists that show how a person in this situation can manage their finances and stress when they're suffering at work.
If a reader needs to leave their job to stay healthy, write a post about how much money they should ideally save in their emergency fund before they quit. Or, you can offer tips and resources on resume writing if they won’t be able to list their current job and what to do if they need a reference, but can't supply one.
Here’s one more example, this time a positive, hopeful one: Let’s think about business attorneys and the massive impact you will have on your clients’ businesses and legacies.
Most business attorneys with blogs will write posts such as:
Do you need a contract when you start a business?
How to protect yourself when lawsuits as a freelancer.
These are important topics and can be very useful to potential clients. However, if we dig a bit deeper, we can be more expansive in our thinking. Most business attorneys I know are deeply invested in their clients success, and serve as much as a strategic advisor as they are attorney. My client Nequosha is a prime example of this!
She’s written some fabulous articles that are very helpful to entrepreneurs with growing businesses:
A breakdown of what to do when Bench Accounting shut down.
How to handle chargebacks, which are every business’s nightmare.
A breakdown of licensing and how entrepreneurs can use this tool to grow.
Some of these ideas are practical, some time sensitive, while licensing paints a picture of a big legacy many business owners would love to create!
Again, get to the root of the feelings and you can go beyond the ordinary.
If you're worried that your current clients will think you're blogging about their personal situations, you can reassure them you won't do that and you have the legal savvy to be smart about this.
Instead, find topic ideas online. Start eavesdropping in Facebook groups and read through Yelp or Avvo reviews for lawyers in your same field. See what these folks are saying about their own cases.
What are they deeply scared of?
How can you help them realize they’re not alone.
Paint a picture of the possibilities of what things will be like when this legal matter is handled professionally.
What would happen if you wrote about how to handle and overcome those fears and concerns during a stressful, legal challenge or you showed that that your legal tools could help make their dreams a reality?
These types of blog posts demonstrate you understand that your reader (and potential client) is experiencing deep fear, sadness and exhaustion and that you'll be able to help them with compassion.
