By Legal Futures Associate MLT Digital
Google clicks to law firm websites from people searching for a practice area fell by more than a third this summer, while clicks from people searching for a firm by name held steady, according to new research from MLT Digital.
The legal-sector performance marketing agency has published Search Has Moved. Has Your Firm?, drawn from Google Search Console and Google Analytics data for 99 law firm websites across Scotland, England and Wales, and Ireland. It compares June to August 2026 with the same three months of 2025.
Total Google clicks fell 27.1% over the period, and the fall deepened each month: 25.3% in June, 27.8% in July and 28.2% in August. Split by what people searched for, across 94 websites with comparable data:
- searches naming a firm: up 0.2%
- general searches for a lawyer or solicitor: down 26.0%
- searches for a practice area: down 35.8%
MLT calls this the Discovery Gap: the distance between how easily a firm is found by people who already know its name, and by people who only know their legal problem. The second group are the prospective clients a firm needs to grow a practice area.
The research points to AI-generated answers as one cause. Of 75 high-volume UK legal searches MLT tracks, 49 now show a Google AI Overview, which answers part of the question before any firm is listed.
Other findings include:
- Practice-area clicks fell 46.0% for firms in England and Wales, against 29.8% in Scotland.
- Immigration clicks fell 60.5%, criminal and road traffic 35.4%, and family and divorce 11.7%.
- In family law, searches to find a solicitor rose 3.2%, while searches researching divorce and separation fell 12.9%.
- Visits referred by AI assistants such as ChatGPT rose 60.6%, from a small base.
The data also suggests the problem sits before the website, not on it. Search visits and website enquiries fell by similar proportions (13.9% and 13.4%), and the share of visitors who went on to enquire held at 6.4%.
Stephen Moore, CEO and founder of MLT Digital, said: “People who already know a firm’s name are still finding it. People who only know their legal problem are reaching law firm websites far less often, and for a firm that wants to grow a practice area, those are the people who matter most.
“The good news is that firms’ websites are still doing their job. Once people arrive, they enquire at the same rate as last year. The work for 2027 is making sure a firm is found and considered earlier in the decision, including in the answers AI tools give, and measuring that in enquiries and instructions rather than traffic.”
Alongside the data, the report sets out a visibility plan for 2027, aimed at firm leaders setting budgets ahead of the January peak. It introduces the Discovery Chain, which traces where firms win and lose new clients between first search and instruction, and includes five tests for a practice-area page, a method for checking what AI tools currently say about a firm, a two-minute leadership diagnostic and a 90-day plan.
The report is free to download at www.mltdigital.co.uk/search-has-moved. MLT is also offering firms a free review of one practice area against the report’s findings.
