Third-party cookies have dominated digital advertising for decades. Developed initially to help protect the privacy and anonymity of web browsing activities, in the 2010s cookies became virtually synonymous with digital surveillance. “Big data” collection allowed the development of increasingly granular audience segmentation, which in turn facilitated the creation of ever-more-carefully-targeted advertising strategies, generating legitimate privacy concerns. In a less sinister vein, the analytics capabilities of third-party cookies also became important tools in tracking conversions, helping businesses learn what “worked” and what failed in their online outreach, so that they could refine their digital marketing strategies accordingly.
Concerns about the consumer privacy implications of third-party data collection grew through the second half of the 2010s, prompting a number of attempts at reform (both corporate and regulatory) since the beginning of this decade. Given the uncertain future of third-party analytics, law firms have begun looking for ways to track user activity and calculate conversions via other mechanisms that may have more longevity. Here are the latest developments and what law firms can expect to see working well over the next few years.
What Are Third-Party Cookies?
Third-party cookies are small bits of data that are placed on users’ devices when they visit a website. They are distinguished from first-party cookies by the fact that the website does not add the files to the user’s device directly; instead, the cookies are placed on the user’s device by a third party, most often an advertising or analytics service.
How Do Third-Party Cookies Help Track Conversions?
Cookies may serve a variety of functions, but one of the leading uses of third-party cookies has traditionally been to act as a sort of digital trail of cookie crumbs, allowing the third party service to “track” the user’s online activity. The cookies are used, in many cases, to help advertisers track specific actions that users take while visiting a website, such as navigation between pages and the time spent on each page.
One of the most useful pieces of information for law firms has often been rate of “conversions”: Essentially, the ratio of site visitors who go from browsing your pages to taking an action that demonstrates what marketing professionals usually call “purchase intent” (for law firms it will usually be not be an immediate purchase), such as filling in a contact form, booking a consultation, or even (for some law firms) downloading a free e-book. Some analytics services will also provide conversion data from off-site ad placements (e.g., on social media). Tracking conversions makes it easier to see which marketing strategies are performing most efficiently and make adjustments accordingly.
Why Are Third-Party Cookies at Risk?
Because third-party cookies often allow their installers to track users’ activity across other websites, consumer privacy concerns have been raised from a number of regulatory bodies and advocacy groups. Certain types of data, particularly when protected behind logins, are not normally transmitted, but for much of the Web 2.0 era many third-party cookies have allowed digital marketing professionals to track users across multiple websites and social media platforms. While the specifics of these visits to other websites may not always be delivered in great detail, often the data collected can be used to help develop “ad targeting” strategies that aim to show specific ads to users whose online activity matches targeting parameters set by the marketing team. In some cases the targeting itself has been subjected to scrutiny, out of concerns that it has potential for abuse.
Does Ad Targeting Violate Attorney Ethics?
Since many of the concerns that have led the fate of third-party advertising cookies to fall under a cloud of uncertainty relate to potential consumer privacy vulnerabilities, it is normal for attorneys to have questions about whether they can or should use third-party cookies in their digital marketing, even if the technical capabilities remain available in some form beyond 2025. Whether third-party cookies will be permitted long-term or not is a question too jurisdiction-dependent for a blanket answer to apply to all circumstances. We will see what Google does and how regulatory bodies respond, but assuming third-party cookies are still an option for business marketing in the broader sense then the two main areas law firms will want to keep their eyes on are:
- Data privacy laws: Consumer data privacy protections can vary widely from one jurisdiction to another. If your law firm handles any work involving international trade or IP, you will need to keep in mind the European guidelines, which tend to be stricter than those in the United States. Within the U.S., there are sometimes significant differences in regulatory requirements between states, so that the kind of information law firms are allowed to collect about their website visitors, and the required disclosures, may be stricter or narrower, depending on the state or states in which you are admitted to practice.
- State bar association guidelines: At a national level, the American Bar Association (ABA) continues tracking the intersection of attorney ethics and online advertising. For a variety of reasons, state bar association guidelines may be updated more regularly (some state bars have adopted updates as recently as 2025). If you practice in more than one state, you may want to discuss with your law firm marketing team some strategies for adhering to the strictest standard that applies.
Another obvious factor to consider is what a law firm does with consumer data once collected, whether the information comes via third-party cookies or by any other means. If the communications themselves are illegal or unethical, then the data collection methods that facilitated those communications may become a secondary consideration.
Are Third-Party Cookies Going Away?
Google has wavered on its policy for handling third-party cookies in the company’s Chrome browser. Some of the options put forward in 2025 could require additional technical capabilities from websites that use third-party cookies. Even if third-party cookies continue to be allowed in Chrome, the browser’s customization features increasingly emphasize settings on the user’s end that make it easier to reject third-party cookies.
The rise of LLM search options is another factor law firms need to consider. Because AI search tools change the ways users find websites and in many cases the way they navigate the web, analytics cookies that have previously been effective at tracking user activity across multiple websites may decline in their usefulness, making it important for law firms to develop alternative strategies for measuring the effectiveness of their online advertising efforts and website conversions.
What Are Effective Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies for Law Firm Websites?
While the current status of third-party cookies depends on the regulatory framework in which a law firm and its potential clients are situated, the clear trend in digital advertising is away from a reliance on third-party cookies and toward “cookieless” methods for increasing online visibility and generating leads. Amid the rapid changes seen in digital marketing over the past few years, a few viable alternatives to third-party cookies have begun to take shape. These offer varying degrees of capabilities for tracking engagements and conversions, but in many cases they also hold the promise of greater consistency and warmer lead generation compared to conventional tracker-based advertising strategies.
Tracking and Targeting Based on First-Party Data Collection
Cookies installed and managed by a website directly, rather than by a third-party service provider, are considered “first-party” cookies. Many of these cookies are primarily functional, used for such features as building shopping carts for product-based businesses and registering logins (a feature law firm websites may or may not offer). Other first-part data collection conduits include dedicated apps and CRM (customer relationship management) systems.
The ad targeting possibilities of the cookies in particular may be limited, but although ad targeting based on first-party data has less breadth than the options facilitated by an analytics service that tracks activity across multiple digital surfaces, it also tends to have a relatively higher conversion rate, as it usually means placing suggestions or other “nudges” in front of users who have already consented to the use of their information and indicated some level of interest. The appropriateness of the suggestions and framing of the nudges can make a significant difference in the ROI factors of advertising based on first-party data, so law firms will want to put some strategy weight into setting up a logical framework for structuring these communications.
Ad Targeting Based on Zero-Party Data
Zero-party data is not collected through cookies as such, although cookies may be used to “remember” the data for purposes of providing a smooth user experience (UX) in navigating a website. Instead, zero-party data is entered by the user directly, often through such collection surfaces as polls and surveys. Social media polls seeking user preferences in the topics they would like to see a law firm address in its content, for instance, can provide extremely valuable data, often at little to no cost, and result in not only improved ad targeting methods but opportunities to refine content strategy to align with the interests of a specific, local audience.
Depending on the collection surface, you may have the opportunity to request contact information and ask users to indicate their areas of greatest interest, both of which can be highly useful. If you do choose to collect users’ contact information or other potentially identifying details, be sure your law firm has a carefully developed data privacy policy in place, along with strict internal controls for maintaining the security of the information you collect. Any plan you establish will need to consider data in transmission as well as how it is stored, and should also address the purposes for which users’ information may be used. You will obviously need to disclose these privacy practices to users; consider utilizing the disclosure as an opportunity for your law firm to invite users to select “opt-in” consent for newsletters, blog updates, or other communications. Including opt-ins and other prompts in the presentation of your privacy policy can have the double benefit of streamlining data collection for the law firm while at the same time clarifying for users how their information will be used.
Contextual Advertising
Contextual advertising is one of the most exciting possibilities for replacing tracker-based targeting. Instead of attempting to reverse-engineer prospective customers’ interests based on their online activity, contextual advertising places ads where they are relevant to the content of the page. This technique offers a notable “warm lead” advantage in that the ads will necessarily appear in front of users who have already self-selected for interest.
In some ways, contextual advertising works on principles similar to those that drove ad strategy during the heyday of print publishing: Brands would (and to some extent still do) choose the publications in which to purchase ads based on the perceived overlap between each publication’s primary audience and the brand’s core consumers. However, contextual advertising can go a step further because conditional programming allows for the topical relationship between page content and ad content to be much more closely tailored than is possible in the context of print layouts, where ads must typically be purchased long before the topics covered in a specific edition are even decided. In addition, digital surfaces allow a much greater degree of interactivity, which means visitors who are interested in the ads displayed on a page can often act on them immediately, via buttons or input fields. This immediacy eliminates the “gap” between encounter and action in which potential sales are often lost.
After Cookies: Direct Engagements
Third-party cookies may not have vanished entirely, but overall trends point away from their continued dominance of online advertising. The shift toward more first-party and zero-party data collection has coincided with the rise of AI search modalities, creating the conditions for potentially fewer views and lower website traffic, but at the same time significantly higher conversion rates. Despite the very real causes for concern, the evolving digital search landscape offers important opportunities for “warm” lead generation via interactive surfaces such as social media polls and strategically placed interactive ads. As we move into 2026 and beyond, law firms can expect to see more and more chances for customizing user experience and appealing to local audiences with greater precision. Think about seizing this period of change as your sign for growth, and work with your digital marketing professionals to outline a strategy that will position your law firm as a leader in fostering high-engagement, high-conversion points of connection with your audience.
Annette Choti, Esq. is the founder of Law Quill, a legal digital marketing agency that helps growth-minded law firms increase their online visibility and convert more clients. She is also the author of “Click Magnet: The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide for Law Firms” and Click Magnet Academy. Annette used to do professional comedy, which is not so far from the law if we are all being honest.
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