2025 rewarded a small group of law firms with disproportionate visibility – while the rest fought harder than ever just to be noticed.
The combination of Presidential Executive Orders, political volatility, law firm merger announcements and high-profile celebrity trials contributed to the trend.
Google Trends reveals immediate spikes in searches following the first Presidential Executive Order. Later EOs caused similar surges for firms affected by subsequent orders. In most cases, the most searched for firms were able to attract a steady stream of searches throughout the remainder of the year.
The firms outside Executive Orders managed to attract impressive search numbers – largely on unique thought leadership and high-profile clients and events.
Using Google Trends, BTI analyzed relative Google search volume across more than 200 law firms throughout 2025.
Please join me in congratulating the following 22 firms for attracting the most searches in 2025:
The Most Searched in 2025
DLA Piper
Jones Day
Kirkland & Ellis
Latham & Watkins
Orrick
Paul Weiss
Perkins Coie
Sidley
Skadden
Strongly Searched
Duane Morris
Fox Rothschild
Greenberg Traurig
Husch Blackwell
Quinn Emanuel
Sheppard Mullin
White & Case
Wilson Sonsini
Searched Standouts
Baker Donelson
Carlton Fields
Mintz
Fried Frank
Shook Hardy & Bacon
Attracting searches is harder in a volatile world. Volatility invites law firms and their attorneys to post their best thought leadership and comments. This behavior is bringing thought leadership to a saturation point – making it harder to create the attention needed to motivate a search.
We recommend 4 strategies to attract more searches:
- Write for the problem, not the practice
Clients don’t search for expertise. They search for answers. - Name your point of view – then repeat it
Anonymous insight doesn’t get searched. Branded thinking does. - Be early instead of exhaustive
The first useful take wins the search spike – perfection loses it. - Turn client questions into headlines
If a client asks it out loud, someone else is Googling it.
Attention – and searches – concentrate fast. Firms don’t get searched because they’re large or prestigious. They get searched because they show up early, say something useful, and say it in language clients recognize as their own problem.
Volatility isn’t going away. Breaking through now means you will have a leg up when it gets even harder.
Be sure to join us today at Noon for the 16th Annual BTI Market Outlook and Client Service Review 2026 to learn where the market is headed, and the law firms best at business development. Register here.
Best in the market ahead –
MBR
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