What editorial best practices can we learn from content that spurs business development opportunities among readers, clients, and prospects?
JD Supra asked this question in an informal study, over many months, of content that led in some fashion to new business or BD opportunities 
between readers and the firms/attorneys who produced the work.
The main takeaway?
Thought leaders whose work successfully supports BD appear to have adopted a different mindset in their role as attorney-author.
Many attorneys who are also skilled in their practice produce abstract content that still leaves readers with a general impression: “This is a knowledgeable tax attorney,” “This is an experienced real estate attorney,” “This person knows a lot about _______” without necessarily answering their pressing questions.
...thought leaders who spur BD engagement among their readers seem to do something different.
While this sort of content can do well for credentialing at the top of the marketing/sales funnel, thought leaders who spur BD engagement among their readers seem to do something different.
Their work appears to be driven by answers to a set of critically important (and deceptively simple, you might even say) framing questions:
- What do my current clients need (and how am I helping them)?
- (Also, more broadly:) What do I know and for whom does it matter?
- Is there a change that matters for my clients and the sectors I serve, for which I can be helpful?
- What advice do I have to aid with these challenges? (And again: for whom is it most pertinent?)
Not only do these thought leaders approach their writing this way, but their content also explicitly answers these questions – addressing ideal readers directly in headlines/titles and key takeaways, and framing guidance and actionable next steps in clear terms that specific readers don’t have to work hard to find or understand.
This specificity matters and is sometimes as simple as a minor shift: from writing, for example, general immigration updates (well read, but not always by ideal clients) to writing focused immigration updates for university administrators – a timely topic, written with a specific reader in mind.
These findings resonate and often align directly with what we already know to be best practices for SEO, what in-house counsel consistently ask for in law firm guidance, and what we are now beginning to understand about visibility in AI-driven queries. These habits can perhaps be best summed up with one directive to all attorney-authors:
Don’t write about the law. Write (explicitly) about how the law impacts the people you serve.
[Adrian Lurssen originally created this post as a handout for attendees of the LMA 2025 PR/Comms panel on thought leadership best practices.]