The Firm Playbook: It’s Q4. Do you know where your 2026 clients will come from?

By Nermin Jasani

It’s early November. It’s perfect fall weather outside. The leaves are turning and falling, and it smells better than a spiced chai candle. The best part? They haven’t started playing holiday music yet.

If you’re a smart law firm owner, you’re watching other firm owners go on vacation, take the rest of the year off, or coast through Dec. 31.

While everyone else has started to “holiday” before 2025 is even over, you’re doing something different. You’re planning your 2026 strategy. Most importantly, you’re figuring out where your 2026 clients will come from.

As a consultant for nearly a decade working with small law firm owners, I rarely see them actively thinking about or planning for future clients. Most don’t realize they can influence who hires them. They assume it’s random, that clients “just happen.”

At this point, you have 10-plus months of data showing where your clients have come from in 2025. You’ve asked every new client on your intake form or during the consult, “How did you hear about us?” or “Who can we thank for referring you?”

You then take that information, along with the type of case and your revenue and you put it into a spreadsheet that looks like this. Your data (the hypothetical spreadsheet below) and your marketing strategy when used together mean you can plan for the kinds of clients you want to work with.

You’re looking for trends and patterns and answering the following questions:

• Where did most of my clients come from in 2025?

Google/SEO was responsible for at least $260,000 in revenue in 2025. Of course, you’re not going to stop doing SEO in 2026. In fact, you might want to do more of it. This means that instead of publishing two articles each month, you might increase to three and focus them all on fathers’ rights and the male perspective in divorce. Why? Because $190,000 of your revenue (almost 40 percent) came from male-led cases (divorces where the husband was your client and child custody cases where the father pursued it).

• Who referred business to me, and did I thank them yet?

Attorney Patel and Accountant Smith drove revenue to your firm. Did you thank them? Did you send a gift? You can send a referral fee (if permitted in your state), but if not, send a thoughtful gift as a thank you. By the way, if the gift has your firm’s name on it, it’s not a gift, it’s a promotion.

• What marketing channels can I increase to generate the same or more revenue in 2026?

We already mentioned SEO and sending thank-you gifts to referral sources. But if only two people referred cases, can you expand that network? For example, could you reach out to two accountants or attorneys each month to build new referral relationships? You also had several past clients send business. Can you ask them for Google reviews to help you rank higher and show up in Google Local Search?

• What marketing channels can I decrease to save funds?

Instagram brought in pre-nup and post-nup clients. Do you want more of those cases? Were they easy or stressful? If they were a headache, consider turning off that channel and focusing more intentionally on your network and past clients.

• What’s the lifetime value of your divorce clients?

Do they return for a pre-nup or a child custody modification later on? Do you talk about those services in your newsletter or on social media (Instagram, etc.)? If you start viewing each divorce client not as a one-time case but as a long-term relationship, what can you do internally to guarantee they come back again and again?

Think about your favorite restaurant or hotel: what level of service makes you return? Do they know your name? Reserve your favorite bottle of wine? Always send dessert on the house?

• If I want to hit $1 million in revenue in 2026, what type of clients do I want?

Do I want more divorces where the husband is the client? Or divorces where the wife is the client? Or fewer divorces overall and more pre-nups or uncontested divorces?

• Based on question 6:

If, for example, you want to double your “husband as client” divorce cases from $150,000 in 2025 to $300,000 in 2026, you know those cases probably won’t come from Google/SEO alone. So, where will they come from? Instagram? Google PPC ads? Referrals from uncontested divorce attorneys in your network? Or referrals from mediators?

More hypothetical examples:

(The actual process is more complicated, but we’re keeping it simple for instructional purposes).

You see, the type of marketing you do (LinkedIn, Instagram, newsletters, client appreciation events) and what you talk about when you’re marketing determines the kinds of clients who come to hire you.

If you post on Instagram 100 times a year (about twice a week) and only talk about fathers who want custody, fathers who want child support modified, or husbands who want a divorce, it’s reasonable to conclude that fathers and husbands will become your clients. And all you had to do was talk about it.

Many attorneys think, “If I say I only work for men, then I’ll never get a woman to hire me.” That’s not true, because:

• You still have past female clients who will rehire you.
• You receive referrals from attorneys and accountants who will send female clients your way.
• You’re not explicitly saying, “I only work with men.”

But your content is for men because your 2025 data shows that’s where most of your revenue came from. So why not keep expanding that? Why not double down on what’s already working? Why not let the data guide your decisions instead of guesses and theory?

If you are struggling with a 2026 client strategy, start here.

 

 

Nermin Jasani, Esq. is the founder of Wildly Successful Law Firm, a consulting firm that helps law firm owners scale from 7 to 8 figures with strategy, structure, and smarter decision-making. After starting her career as a lawyer on Wall Street advising hedge funds, Nermin transitioned into consulting in 2017 to help lawyers solve the business problems law school never prepared them for. Today, she’s known for her direct, data-driven approach that turns ambitious firms into predictable, profitable, and well run businesses. She can be reached at [email protected].