Notes from inside the law firm machine.
Working theses, hard-earned observations, and the occasional unpopular opinion on AI, demand generation, and operations for law firms. Written by Bob and Jim.
The State of Legal AI: 2026 H1 Report.
Bar opinions, adoption gaps, and what every law firm should be doing right now. Seven interactive components and a self-assessment to score your firm's readiness.
The 2027 marketing budget question your intake team should answer first
Before a firm adds a dollar of spend next year, it should know one number: how many of this year's inquiries got a response in time. Most firms can't say, and the leak is bigger than any new channel.
After-hours is where the cases are
Criminal defense taught me that a large share of the inquiries that matter arrive when the office is closed. Here is what a 24/7 intake system has to do, what it must not do, and where AI belongs in it.
The handoff: five places a signed case dies between the click and the retainer
Marketing owns the click. Operations owns the retainer. Nobody owns the five steps in between, which is where most of the revenue goes. A walk through each step and the fix.
What a buyer reads first in a law firm's numbers
I've been on the inside of a business that sold to private equity. Buyers skip the revenue slide and go looking for four things, and most firms have never measured any of them.
State bars are moving on AI. What law firms need to do now.
Oregon's intake-AI opinion, California's proposed Rule 1.1 amendments, and a recent discipline case. Three events in 90 days that change the regulatory calculus for every firm using AI.
Private equity is buying personal injury firms. Here's what makes yours acquirable.
Three deals in five months signal a real roll-up cycle. What PE actually values and the work to do now.
AI search is fragmenting. What law firms should do about it.
ChatGPT lost share, Gemini hit #2, Claude jumped 10×. The single-platform optimization playbook is officially broken.
Inside the Counselcraft diagnostic: what we look for in the first two weeks.
What we audit, what we typically find, and what shows up in the deliverable. The diagnostic, demystified.
Paid media is breaking for law firms (and what to do about it).
Local Services Ads, Performance Max, and broad-match Google Ads have all shifted under law firms. The 2023 bidding playbook underperforms in 2026.
The fractional COO question: when to hire one, when to wait.
Most growing law firms need a COO before they can afford one. Fractional fixes that. The real math on when it makes sense.
Why most law firm AI projects fail in the first 90 days.
In law firms the failure mode is specific and predictable. Four causes, every time.
The 24-hour intake gap is silently bankrupting your firm.
A third of qualified legal leads vanish within a day of inquiring. Not because they didn't need a lawyer. Because your lawyer didn't get back fast enough.
Google AI Overviews are erasing law firm SEO. What comes next.
The page-one playbook that built every legal marketing agency for 25 years just stopped working. Three things to do in the next 90 days.
The partner bottleneck: why your firm gets harder to run as it grows.
Every growing firm hits a moment where the managing partner stops being the leader and starts being the system. The architecture out.
Marketing attribution that survives an investor audit.
Most law firms can't tell you which dollar of marketing produced which signed case. The reason is fixable, and it matters more now that investors are looking.
The AI governance question every law firm needs to answer in 2026.
Privilege, conflicts, citations, ethics rules. None of it gets a pass because the tool is new.
Reading is the cheap part. The diagnostic is the work.
If your firm is growing and getting harder to run, start with a 60-minute call. A founder reads every inbound.