Twenty-five years in search and the legal industry. Selective UK law firm engagements. SRA-aware throughout. No account managers. No juniors. No tie-in contracts. This page is the longer version of how that works and why I built the consultancy this way.
I’ve spent twenty-five years in search and digital marketing — most of it inside the legal industry. From 2004 to 2020 I was Director of Digital Marketing at two UK law firms, then went independent. Across all of it, one pattern held: the firms getting the best results were the ones with senior people doing the work, on a small number of accounts, with deep context.
That observation doesn’t scale the agency way. Agencies grow by adding clients, adding juniors, and adding layers between the strategist who pitched and the work that ships — and quality slips. Sixteen years inside law firms showed me the opposite: senior people, close to the work, with real context, are what actually moves the needle.
So I went the other way. A selective number of law firm clients. Me as the consultant who actually does the work. No layers, no delegation, no excuses. If the work is wrong, it’s because I was wrong. If the work is right, it’s because the model lets it be.
Three reasons UK law firms are effectively all I do.
SEO for a regulated profession is a different job. Rule 8.8, the Transparency Rules, the rules around specialist claims and testimonials, the October 2024 AI content clarification — all of it shapes what can and can’t be written. Generic SEO consultants don’t know any of it. I built the consultancy to.
Google UK, Google Maps, ReviewSolicitors, Chambers, Legal 500, SRA register, Lexcel, CQS. The signals that move legal SEO and AI visibility in the UK are not the signals that move it in the US or Australia. Trying to do all three would dilute the offer.
How a probate searcher in Warrington behaves is not how a SaaS buyer in San Francisco behaves. Twenty-five years of patterns — almost all of it UK legal — compounds. Diluting across other sectors would forfeit most of the value.
I started in search — and in the legal industry — in 2001, when SEO was still mostly link directories, keyword stuffing and PageRank arithmetic. That early grounding shaped how I think about content: depth and credibility compound, shortcuts decay.
In 2004 I became Director of Digital Marketing at a UK law firm, a role I held until 2014. I then spent the next six years, to 2020, as Digital Marketing Director at another law firm. Sixteen years inside law firms taught me the difference between SEO theatre — rank-tracking screenshots and reports nobody reads — and SEO that actually earns instructions.
In 2020 I went independent, so the firms I work with get the senior person doing the work directly — no pitch team, no junior delivery layer. Today I’m niched fully into UK law firms and solicitors: it’s where two decades of legal-sector experience compounds, and where the AI search opportunity is most concentrated.
The frame I bring to every law firm engagement.
The SEO that wins for law firms is the work that compounds month-on-month: depth, credibility, authority, citation. Sprints win Q1 dashboards. Compounding wins the year.
The model only works because the senior person is the one doing the work. The moment that breaks, the consultancy stops being worth premium fees.
The Code of Conduct isn’t a constraint to work around — it’s the floor that everything sits on. Work that breaches the SRA isn’t valuable even if it ranks.
77% of UK legal queries trigger AI Overviews. The buyer journey now starts inside an AI assistant for a growing share of clients. Treating AI visibility as a 2027 problem will cost firms the next three years.
The firms that get the best long-term results are the ones who can hear “this isn’t working, here’s why, here’s what to do differently”. Pretending otherwise wastes everyone’s time.
Based in Warrington, Cheshire, and I work with firms right across the UK. Most working sessions are by video; I’ll travel anywhere in the UK for reviews and key meetings where it’s useful.
Monday to Friday, UK business hours. Out-of-hours work is reserved for genuine emergencies (algorithm updates, urgent regulatory issues, crisis SEO). I respect your evenings and weekends and expect you to respect mine.
I default to written communication for anything that doesn’t need a conversation. Monthly reports are concise and partner-readable. No 200-tab spreadsheets. No 40-page PDFs. If a meeting could be a tight email, it should be a tight email.
What I do for UK law firms.
Be found across the AI engines.
Background and track record.
The engagement, step by step.
How engagements are priced.
Book a 30-minute intro call. I’ll tell you honestly whether what you’re describing is something I can help with.
