Winning New Legal Business in 2026
The legal industry ended on a high note in 2025. Profits had their largest year-over-year increase since the early days of the pandemic, and large and mid-sized firms saw a 20-year high spike in demand in Q3.
Advertising has followed suit. The legal category remains one of most resilient in U.S. media, with annual spend exceeding $3 billion.
Much of this spending continues to flow to television, as firms look to protect market share and sustain demand. While many advertisers still rely heavily on broadcast, they can’t ignore the streaming elephant in the room. Over the past two years, ad spending on CTV among legal advertisers has grown by 241%.
So, what’s the right mix between linear and CTV, and how can firms optimize their investments across these channels?
Drawing on insights from our recent legal category report, which analyzed advertising activity from 2023 to 2025, we’ll explore how they can identify competitive advantages, win new business, enhance TV ad placements and refine creative strategy, positioning them to thrive in a high-stakes industry.
Where Things Stand
To understand how legal advertisers should approach television in 2026, it’s important to first look at how the market has evolved.
Since 2020, legal advertising volume has grown more than 32%. Nearly 20 million ads have run across TV, radio, digital and out-of-home channels, as firms compete for attention in the personal injury and mass tort category and battle rising costs for digital and search ads.
With so much spending, however, heavy investment alone no longer guarantees a competitive advantage, especially in television.
For further analysis on the growth o f legal advertising, check out our new report.
Television Titans
While national campaigns tend to generate the most attention, legal advertising is often most competitive at the local level.
Across local broadcasts, legal ads captured 6.1% of all available impressions from 2023 through 2025. Meanwhile, CTV accounted for 2.7% of Legal advertising impressions and continues to grow quarter-over-quarter, making it the next battleground for legal marketing.
With nearly half of budgets expected to be allocated to linear and CTV combined in 2026, legal advertisers are continuing to invest heavily in television. Rather than abandoning broadcast altogether, many are layering CTV on top of existing linear strategies to increase reach, precision and accelerate speed to market.
Among top-spending firms, CTV investment has in some cases doubled over a 12-month period, while broadcast spending has remained stable. As advertisers work to find the right mix for reaching their target audiences, they must begin to evaluate television as a unified ecosystem.
Understanding how their competitors are spending and how their own mix compares has become critical. In other words, the question for legal advertisers is no longer whether to invest in streaming, but how to integrate it strategically with broadcast to maximize reach and efficiency.
Optimizing a Balanced TV Mix
As legal marketers refine their television strategies, it’s important to lean into the distinct strengths of both local linear and CTV.
Local broadcast continues to deliver unmatched reach, particularly among older and more traditional television audiences. Moving to a streaming-only approach risks leaving gaps in coverage that competitors could quickly exploit.
Streaming, however, brings its own advantages. The wealth of data available through CTV enables advertisers to microtarget based on DMAs, zip codes and other geographic signals. Firms can use this level of precision to reach potential clients in specific local markets and high-priority areas, such as communities near courthouses, hospitals and treatment centers.
CTV also allows campaigns to be optimized more quickly when they are in flight. This flexibility enables advertisers to adjust spend, messaging, or placements in response to competitor activity or shifts in demand.
By balancing the broad reach of local broadcast with the precision and agility of CTV, legal advertisers can build stronger market presence and expand their share of voice.
Putting It All Together
Once firms identify the right balance between linear and streaming, the next step is creating a reporting structure that unifies both channels.
Fragmentation across linear, CTV and digital platforms can introduce operational risks, like missing competitive threats to slowing responses to shifts in the market. It can also make it difficult to accurately measure campaign performance across channels.
Legal advertisers can address these channels by investing in tools that provide a unified view of advertising activity across linear and CTV. Centralized visibility helps eliminate blind spots across screens and enables firms to monitor competitors more effectively, identifying gaps they can capitalize on.
In an increasingly crowded category, ensuring that messages reach the right audience is critical. The firms that balance the scale of broadcast with the precision of streaming, and have the visibility to optimize both, will define the next era of legal advertising.
