Deciding to start a firm podcast is the easy part. Knowing what to cover every week is where most firms stall. Here is how to choose topics buyers actually care about.
By Will Nash
29 June 2026
Deciding to start a firm podcast is the easy part. The harder question arrives a week later: what do we actually talk about, episode after episode? Most firms answer it badly, and you can usually tell within the first three episodes.
Here is the short version. The best topics for a firm podcast come from the questions your clients already ask, not the subjects your partners find most interesting. Those two lists overlap less than you would hope. Build the show around the client's problems, mapped to the areas you actually get hired for, and you will not run dry.
Why firms reach for the wrong topics
Left to their own devices, expert partners talk about what fascinates them. For a tax partner that might be a fine technical point in new legislation. For a litigator it might be a clever procedural argument. These are genuinely interesting to them, and almost beside the point for the client, who is wondering something simpler and more anxious, like whether their business is exposed and what it will cost to put right. The gap between what the expert wants to say and what the buyer wants to hear is the most common reason a firm podcast falls flat.
Start from the questions clients actually ask
You already hold the raw material. It is in the questions that land in partners' inboxes, the things prospects raise on first calls, the "can I pick your brain for five minutes" requests that never quite stay at five minutes. Spend an afternoon gathering them. Ask each partner for the five questions they answer most often, and the five they wish clients asked sooner. You will end up with a list of real, recurring problems stated in the client's own words. That list is your content plan.
Map topics to practice areas and to the buyer
Once you have the questions, sort them along two lines. First, which practice area or service each belongs to, so coverage is spread rather than dominated by whichever partner is keenest. Second, where the listener is: someone who does not yet know they have a problem needs a different episode from someone comparing firms to fix one. A simple grid of practice area against buyer stage shows you the gaps quickly, the same way a content audit does for a blog.
Anchor on lasting questions, season with timely ones
Most of your episodes should answer questions that will still matter in two years, because that is what keeps a back catalogue working long after release. A smaller number can respond to something current, a regulatory change or a market shift, as long as you connect it back to a lasting client concern rather than simply reacting to the news. A show built only on commentary dates fast and competes with everyone else chasing the same headline.
A quick test for any episode idea
Before you commit to a topic, ask one question. Can you name a specific client or prospect who would hear this and think, that is exactly my problem? If you cannot picture the person, the topic is probably too general or too inward-looking. If you can, and especially if you can imagine them forwarding it to a colleague, you have a good episode.
Where this goes wrong
A few cautions. If the honest answer is that your firm has no distinctive view on these questions, a podcast will expose that rather than fix it, and the work to do first is on the thinking, not the format. If every topic quietly turns into a pitch for the firm's services, listeners will feel it and drift away, so keep the useful-to-them test ahead of the promotional one. And if you work in a regulated field like law or audit, some questions carry compliance constraints on what you can say, so build a quick review step into the process rather than discovering the limits after recording.
In short
Choosing what your firm's podcast is about is mostly a discipline of listening. Collect the questions your clients already ask, map them across your practice areas and the buyer's journey, and lead with the problems they recognise rather than the subjects your partners enjoy most. Do that and the perennial worry, what do we talk about next, mostly takes care of itself.
If you have the expertise but not the time to shape it into episodes, that is the part we help with. Send us the questions and the raw material, and we turn them into finished episodes in your experts' voices. Talk to us about your podcast.
Not sure a podcast is right for the firm yet? Our decision guide, Before You Start a Podcast, walks through it.
