In this work, Lawson type numerical methods are studied to solve Vlasov type equations on a phase space grid. These time integrators are known to satisfy enhanced stability properties in this context since they do not suffer from the stability condition induced from the linear part. We introduce here a class of modified Lawson integrators in which the linear part is approximated in such a way that some geometric properties of the underlying model are preserved, which has important consequences for the analysis of the scheme. Several Vlasov-Maxwell examples are presented to illustrate the good behavior of the approach.