Small law firms are catching up big law when it comes to thought leadership marketing, according to new research by content marketing software provider Passle. The research analyzed the content produced by the top 200 law firms in both the UK and US during 2021. Those 400 firms produced a total of 157,359 pieces of thought leadership or ‘insights’, defined as blogs or articles, excluding firm news, which demonstrated lawyers’ knowledge.

On average, US firms produced around 50% more thought leadership than their UK counterparts. The research also found that the volume of insights published by a firm correlated ‘relatively strongly’ with the number of times it was Googled.

Baker McKenzie generated the most insights – 4,653 pieces – perhaps unsurprisingly given that with 6,000 lawyers, it was the second largest law firm on the list. Only Dentons was bigger, but despite having almost twice the number of lawyers – 11,516 – it produced just over 1,500 insights.

Squire Patton Boggs – the 28th largest firm – ranked second with 2,394 insights and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft was third with 2,013. Despite being 157th for size, the latter produced the equivalent of 5.5 pieces of thought leadership pieces per lawyer – far above the average of one.

Norton Rose Fulbright, Eversheds Sutherland, Latham & Watkins, Kirkland Ellis and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer were among the top 10 by size but fell outside the top 30 for thought leadership.

The 400 law firms included in the study generated a total of 15.7m Google searches. Dentons was the most Googled law firm name, with an average of 60,500 times each month. The firm scored consistently highly across all categories, which included YouTube views and followers on LinkedIn and Twitter, probably in large part due to its sheer size.