August 4th, 2025
How do People Choose a Solicitor or Accountant?
How do people choose a solicitor or accountant? This is something our PR and content agency urges legal and accountancy firms to focus on, having commissioned independent research to highlight the marketing tactics on which solicitors and accountants need to concentrate.
Knowing how people choose a solicitor or accountant matters, as there is so much competition for clients. There are more than 160,000 practising solicitors in England and Wales alone[i] and 9088 solicitors’ firms, as of June 2025.[2]
We can’t be entirely sure how many are in Catapult PR’s closest counties of Lancashire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Yorkshire, Cheshire and Northumberland – our sweet spot – but it will be thousands.
In February 2023, it was said there are around 94,000 accountancy firms in the UK.[3]
That’s a lot of professional services companies trying to attract clients and market share.
How are solicitors or accountants found by clients?
There should be little surprise in knowing that most people find a solicitor or accountant online, via a search engine search. Even as far back as 2014, personal recommendation was dropping as a way of sourcing professional services advice. Professional services marketing now has to rely heavily on the Internet and on the websites operated by individual solicitors and accountants. Clients are already deciding which solicitor or accountant to choose, according to what they read on those websites.
This makes the content of professional services firms’ websites hugely important. It needs to connect with the prospective client and tick their choice box, in some way. That might be by conveying expertise in a particular area in which the client needs support but it might also mean demonstrating approachability or understanding. The content needs to resonate with whoever is seeking professional services advice. It needs to build rapport.
The criteria on which people choose a solicitor or accountant
Research carried out by an independent research specialist, on behalf of Catapult PR, shows that solicitors firms and accountants need to be going way beyond strong website content, if they want to attract more clients. The research showed that a significant percentage of prospective clients also want to leverage trust in a professional services firm having seen articles that they have written, or which appear about them, in the media, online or offline.
Our research highlighted how, despite not all interviewees having ever necessarily tried to source a solicitor or accountant:
- 14% of all surveyed said they had “struggled” to know which solicitor or accountant to approach for help in the past
- this rose to 16% of those aged over 55.
In some cities, it was significantly higher:
- in Liverpool 21% had struggled to know which solicitor or accountant to approach.
- in Sheffield, it was nearly a quarter of interviewees (24%)
- in the North East, it was a fifth of those surveyed (20%).
The need for thought leadership by solicitors and accountants
When we then asked if interviewees had trusted a professional services firm more because of opinions they had offered in an offline or online article, nearly one-in-ten (9%) said ‘yes’, This rose to 11% of men and 21% of people in Cardiff.
Most notably, 26% – more than a quarter – of those aged 25-34 said that they had trusted a solicitor or accountant more because of the opinions they had provided to an article.
In marketing terms, this is known as thought leadership. This is a topic we have covered on YouTube in various videos, in the past year. The Catapult PR research findings clearly show the need for thought leadership and not, probably, amongst more mature generations but in a younger demographic keen to find reasons to trust a solicitor or accountant’s firm. The simple question to ask yourself is “Is my legal or accountancy practice ignoring the needs of more than one-in-five potential clients, in a key age group demographic?”
Why AI search changes marketing for solicitors and accountants
All of this was essential even before late July 2025. But, the arrival of Google’s AI search algorithm means that many solicitors practices and accountancy firms are going to be left asking the question “where has all my web traffic gone?”
Unless a professional services firm has consistently created a stream of online articles that demonstrate experience, expertise, authority and trust (EEAT), and backed this with other authority building, such as thought leadership through a media relations programme, they will struggle.
AI search is all about seeking out the best choices to put before web users and the AI search box will look not just for EEAT, but EEAT 2.0. Our most recent video talks about this.
New thought leadership download for solicitors and accountants
But so too does our latest credentials download, which you can find here. This is all about thought leadership for EEAT 2.0 and the need for firms, like solicitors and accountants, to act fast and put right their lack of marketing that is in tune with EEAT 2.0. There is still some time to generate the kind of authority that the search engines want to see – and that includes Chat GPT – but you need to work quickly.
Tips for choosing a PR agency for your solicitors or accountancy practice
What you should not do is:
- Rely on Chat GPT or AI bots to generate articles. Google will want to see AI generated material in a maximum of 20% of articles, according to online experts in the USA. It wants to detect genuine authority, a human voice and real people, giving real opinions. It does not want to see me-too material churned out by hundreds of firms.
- Choose the wrong agency to assist you. Many agencies are not experts in generating thought leadership and do not know how to position solicitors and accountants in the right way. Many are not PR experts and thought leadership is typically classified as a PR (public relations) skill, even though not all PR agencies are adept at creating it.
- Choose an agency that will rely on you suggesting all of the thought leadership topics. Again, you need to choose wisely because many agencies are not able, or willing, to suggest a programme of topics that will work well. Many are reactive, not pro-active, in this regard.
- Select an agency that does not have the skills to do any more than create articles. You need to choose a PR agency that can create PR campaigns around your thought leadership and so generate the third-party endorsement of the media. That ticks a huge box for AI search.
Why a professional services firm should choose Catapult PR for its marketing
Catapult PR is excellently placed to generate your required thought leadership profile for you and your solicitors or accountants’ practice. We have the national and regional awards to prove it. The very fact we commission our own research to help you navigate the world of professional services’ marketing speaks volumes.
EEAT 2.0 is needed right here, right now, so download our brochure, watch our EEAT 2.0 video and then pick up the phone and call Jane Hunt on 0333 2424062 or email jane@catapultpr.co.uk to see how we can effectively market and promote your legal practice or accountancy firm. Alternatively, send Jane a message via LinkedIn. Her Linktree is here.
Although we are based in Lancashire, we have clients nationwide, who come to us for our expertise, not our postcode. Do not be deterred by location. Book a 30-minute discovery meeting appointment with us today, for an initial exploration and chat.
Head to https://CatapultPR.as.me/discovery to book 30 minutes that could be the start of a new marketing dawn for your solicitors or accountancy practice.
[1] https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/international/doing-legal-business-in-england-and-wales
