A law firm’s website can be accurate in its individual details and still present an outdated picture of the firm. A practice page may describe services the firm continues to offer while saying little about the work driving its growth. An attorney bio may list the right credentials yet omit the experience most relevant to the clients the attorney now serves.

Those gaps affect what audiences can conclude about the firm’s capabilities. Prospective clients and referral sources need enough information to assess fit. Current clients may be exploring other services. Reporters are evaluating potential sources while recruits are looking for evidence of the firm’s direction and opportunities.

As firms plan for 2027, a content inventory offers an opportunity to bring the website into closer alignment with their current capabilities and business development priorities. The review should establish whether bios, practice pages and alerts give the firm’s audience a clear understanding of its experience and relevance to their needs.

Make Your Firm’s Capabilities Clear to Prospective Clients

Internal familiarity can make weaknesses in website content easy to overlook. Firm leaders know which practices are growing, which attorneys have developed specialized experience and how client needs have changed. Someone arriving at a practice page through a search or referral has none of that context.

Consider a firm that has expanded its work with healthcare businesses but still describes its transactional practice almost entirely in general corporate terms. The description may be correct, yet a prospective client has little reason to recognize the team’s relevant industry experience. The same problem arises when a lateral’s arrival receives a prominent announcement, but the capabilities that attorney  brings never appear on the practice pages where clients evaluate the team.

The inventory should test whether the available information supports the impression the firm intends to make. That requires reading connected pages together and asking what a person unfamiliar with the firm could reasonably understand from them.

Ensure Bios and Practice Pages Reflect Current Experience

Attorney bios and practice descriptions are particularly important because they connect the firm’s position to the people and experience behind it. Reviewing them for 2027 should include an assessment of what they help readers understand about the work.

For a bio, that means looking beyond updated titles and recognition to whether the narrative reflects the attorney’s current practice. Relevant matters, industries served and an explanation of the attorney’s role can help a reader assess suitability. A practice page should then show how that individual experience contributes to the team’s capabilities with examples that support its claims.

Consistency matters. If an attorney’s bio highlights experience that isn’t reflected in the related practice description, readers may not connect the two, leaving the firm’s expertise in that area overlooked. Likewise, a practice page that relies on departed attorneys or old examples may give an incomplete picture of the current team.

Careers and leadership pages deserve the same scrutiny. Statements about development, collaboration or firm priorities should be supported by current information that helps candidates evaluate what joining the organization would mean.

Review Alerts for the Advice They Still Communicate

Client alerts require attention to both their original purpose and continuing usefulness. An alert may remain discoverable long after the development that prompted it, including after later decisions or regulatory changes have altered the practical implications.

The review should consider whether a reader can distinguish historical analysis from current guidance. Where the earlier discussion remains useful, a visible update or link to subsequent coverage can preserve context. Where the advice has changed materially, the responsible attorneys should help determine what needs revision. A publication date provides context, but readers should not have to reconstruct a sequence of developments to understand which guidance still applies.

Clarity also supports artificial intelligence-assisted discovery. Google’s guidance for its AI Overviews and AI Mode emphasizes helpful content, important information available as text and useful internal links. For law firms, a practical implication is to make the relationship between an alert, its authors and the relevant practice easy to understand. That gives readers a way to assess the expertise behind the analysis and explore related information.

Make Each Inventory Decision Serve a Purpose

Use the content inventory to determine which pages to keep as they are and which need updating. Keep content that remains accurate and provides meaningful evidence of experience, even if it is older or serves a small audience. Update pages whose underlying subject remains relevant but whose details or positioning no longer reflect the firm.

Consolidate material when overlapping pages or successive alerts make the answer harder to find. A current overview can connect a series of developments while preserving links to the original analysis. Retire content that no longer serves a useful public purpose or creates a misleading impression, with attention to the links and references affected by its removal.

Create content when the review exposes a substantive gap. That might be a missing explanation of an established capability, a representative matter that makes a practice description more credible or a resource addressing a recurring client question. Each addition should have a clear audience and a reason to exist within the firm’s broader business development priorities.

Connect The Review to the Year Ahead

Beginning the inventory in the fall gives marketing teams time to involve practice leaders and address important gaps before January. Assigning responsibility and review dates helps carry those decisions through, particularly for content affected by attorney moves or ongoing legal developments.

The findings should also inform the 2027 content plan. If a priority practice is difficult to understand from the website, that positioning issue should be resolved before building a campaign around it. Valuable experience highlighted only in individual announcements can be incorporated into attorney bios and practice descriptions to make that experience more visible and provide a fuller picture of the firm’s capabilities.

A useful inventory leaves the firm with a clearer account of its capabilities and a reason for each content decision. When the website reflects the work that firm wants to be known for, it gives the people evaluating that firm a stronger basis for confidence and a more informed reason to begin a conversation.

Georgie Palm is a licensed attorney in Minnesota and a seasoned marketing and business development professional with more than a decade of experience in the legal industry. She specializes in content creation, strategic communications and business development, with a proven ability to collaborate closely with attorneys and law firm leadership to advance firmwide goals.

Chloe Decker, a content intern at Poston and a third-year law student at Mitchell Hamline School of Law working toward her Juris Doctor.