What New Data on AI Content Means for Law Firm SEO

I just came across an interesting study that analyzed how AI-generated content affects search results for law firms. I found the results to be encouraging, as they align with what I’ve been saying for years and throughout the AI marketing boom. But the data is also very easy to misinterpret, which can be dangerous if you draw the wrong conclusions.

I want to share my take on these findings and how they impact the way your practice uses AI for lawyer SEO.

Biggest Takeaways from the Study

Custom Legal Marketing analyzed over 2,400+ law firm rankings and 1,600+ unique URLs to find answers to a two-part question that we hear all the time: Are law firm marketers using AI to rank at the top of Google? And does it actually work?

The short answer is simple.

Yes, they’re using it. But no, that’s not what’s driving rankings.

AI content was detected on nearly every law firm page ranking in Google across eight competitive practice areas.
There is no meaningful correlation between AI content and ranking position.
Both pages with low-AI and high-AI are ranking at the top of the SERPs.
Content heavily generated by AI tends to be harder to read, which negatively impacts performance.
Authority, depth, and trust signals are where firms are winning in search (not AI).

That last point is what matters most, but it’s easily overlooked amongst the splashier headlines pulled from the data.

Are Law Firms Using AI Content to Rank in Google Searches?

Yes, law firms are using AI content rank. In some cases, very heavily so.

In personal injury, which is among the most competitive practice areas, the study found that 100% of pages ranking in the top five contained AI-detected content.

But this statistic is very easy to misinterpret. Here’s why:

The median level of AI content across all pages in the study was just 3%.
55% of law firm pages ranking in Google’s top five spots have less than 5% of AI-generated content on them.
On the flip side, 21% of pages were at least 70% AI-generated.

In other words, most firms aren’t relying on AI to write entire landing pages or blog posts. They’re using it in smaller ways, likely drafting sections, assisting with structure, rewriting headers, editing short sections, and and speeding up production.

At the same time, a smaller group of firms has gone all-in with heavily AI-generated pages, and those are ranking too.

So if both approaches are working, what the heck is going on?

The Most Important Finding That’s Easy to Overlook

This is the most important conclusion from the entire study: there is no statistically significant relationship between how much AI content is on a law firm page and where it ranks in Google.

None.

Not positive or negative. It’s present, but not relevant for rankings.

The firms ranking with heavily AI-generated pages aren’t beating their competitors because they’re using AI. They’re winning because they have:

Strong domain authority
Established backlink profiles
Recognizable brand names
Solid local SEO signals

AI is just layered on top of this.

But I think all of this gets lost a bit when you see headlines or statistics showing that AI is appearing in 100% of top-5 personal injury searches. If you draw your own conclusions, you may think it’s ok to just let AI do your work and assume you’ll rank. That’s simply not the case.

Even on personal injury pages, CLM found that the Spearman correlation between the amount of AI content present and ranking position was r = 0.0065 and p = 0.138 (the value would have to be closer to +1 to indicate a positive correlation or -1 to indicate a negative relationship).

What’s Actually Driving Rankings (and Always Has)

It’s clear that AI is not the differentiator that’s helping law firms rank in Google. So what is?

The same stuff that has always mattered for legal SEO:

Authority and Backlinks

If you look at any law firm that’s ranking high in any legal search, you’re going to find:

An established domain
Attorneys with well-recognized names
Tons of backlinks from other high-authority sites

This comes from getting media coverage and brand mentions for decades, paired with a high volume of direct search volume over that same period. Whether they’re using AI or not isn’t important.

Content Depth

CLM analyzed 1.89 million words in their study.

They found that word count had a much more significant relationship with ranking position compared to AI presence. Pages with 2,000+ words consistently outperformed thin content, and pages with the highest average word count of 2,900+ words had the best average position.

Pages that were 70% or more AI-generated tended to be closer to 1,500 words.

So AI can definitely be a tool during your content production. But whatever your publishing needs to be supplemented by human writers with real expertise.

Trust and Credibility (E-E-A-T)

Law falls into Google’s Your Money Your Life (YMYL) category, which adheres to the strictest standards for rankings. If you want to use AI, that’s ok, but your content still needs to be:

Written by a qualified legal expert (Expertise)
Who has first-hand knowledge (Experience)
Backed by credentials, case results, and a reputation others can verify (Authoritativeness)
Transparent about who wrote it, why they’re qualified, and what the firm actually does (Trustworthiness)

Your site needs to have case studies, reviews, author bios, and other real-world credibility signals here.

Local SEO Fundamentals

Local SEO is crucial for law firms because Google wants to match search intent by location. This ensures that someone searching for a personal injury lawyer in Boston isn’t shown results for lawyers in Texas.

This Google Business Profile optimization, citations, reviews, and geographic relevance all play a major role in rankings. And they have nothing to do with AI.

Where AI Content Can Go Wrong For Law Firm Marketing

The data from CLM’s study uncovered something a bit more subtle: There is a negative correlation between AI-generated content and readability.

In simple terms, AI-heavy pages tend to be harder to read. This can create real problems for your law firm if you’re going all-in on AI without human guardrails.

When people search for a lawyer or just browse for legal answers online, they aren’t looking for robotically structured paragraphs and runarounds that don’t actually solve their problems. They need clear answers from an expert source they can trust.

Beyond the ranking impact here, this can directly hurt your conversion rates.

One thing that the study didn’t cover, and I think is an important caveat to this, is how future Google algorithm updates can also shake things up.

I’d be shocked to hear that Google released a core update that penalized human-written content in favor of AI-generated content. And while Google has maintained that they aren’t currently penalizing AI content, who knows what will happen down the road.

I just saw data from another source earlier this year finding that 67% of YMYL sites (which includes legal) were affected by the December’s core algorithm update.

My Final Take

This new study echoes what I’ve been saying all along.

You can use AI, but proceed cautiously and make sure you’re doing things correctly.

Spending 30 seconds writing a blog prompt into Chat GPT and then copying and pasting the output as publish-ready on your site is a mistake. The data actually suggests that a blended approach works best.

Draft outlines or initial versions
Help scale legal content production
Organize thoughts, ideas, and information more effectively

But this needs to be followed by human editing at minimum, and typically real human writing that can just produce content faster by leveraging AI as a tool. You still need to have real-world legal insight and examples, and none of this works if you aren’t focusing on the other law firm SEO factors that have mattered all along.

If a site is ranking high and using AI, it’s because they’ve already built authority, trust, and depth over time. If you skip the fundamentals and just focus on AI, you’re not gaining a competitive advantage and it will likely backfire in the long run.