Over the past few years, we've researched hundreds of buyers and sellers of professional services to understand how buyers want to engage with their service providers. 

If your firm is assessing the effectiveness or importance of its thought leadership approach, there is a key ratio to consider. 

The average buyer of legal services spends more than 9 hours a week consuming content. The average lawyer creates one post per year.

In 2023 we conducted our General Counsel Research, diving deep into how and why General Counsel consume thought leadership. We asked 100 General Counsel at large firms in the US and UK how much time they spent consuming content. 77% of those spent 9 hours or more.

In 2022, we released our Digital Performance Index, which analysed the performance of the top 200 US & UK law firms online. That report found that the average number of posts per year for a lawyer at one of those top US&UK firms was just over a single post (1.03). When viewed on a quadrant against firm size, there is a clear visualisation of how that thought leadership per attorney is distributed.

What the 9:1 ratio means for your firm

As clients transition to a digital first relationship with firms, thought leadership has become central to the way firms build and maintain engagement with clients and prospects.

The 9:1 ratio shows the importance of thought leadership in positioning your firm in the minds of your clients and prospects. Those that are able to offer regular, digestible and above all useful advice in any form of thought leadership will win in this new digital marketplace. 

Those firms that are unable to demonstrate their expertise effectively will find their clients spending their 9+ hours per week engaging with competing firms.