Dispelling Common Myths About Legal Content Marketing

No one could blame you if you’re feeling completely bamboozled about legal marketing copy. Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 and Google AI Overviews in March 2024, the advice around how to draft online articles and landing pages has become increasingly erratic and confused, as everyone tries to understand the new rules of the great Google game. During this time, several myths concerning content creation have sprung up, and like the old tale that you need to drink eight glasses of water a day or walk 10,000 steps (neither of which are supported by concrete data), paying too much attention to them could lead you to at best wasting your time, and at worst actually harming your marketing strategy. Below are the most common myths that need to be busted.

Myth one – Google penalises AI content

As a professional pen for hire who like most people who write for a living, is extraordinarily cranky about the eruption of various Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, I would dearly love to tell you this is true. But alas, no. AI content per say will not send your law firm’s website rocketing to results page seven oblivion. However, unedited, unchecked, unengaging AI content will do just that. And deservedly so (sorry, had to get in a little dig there).

OK, sheathing my claws, here’s the facts. Google does not care if a human, computer, or little green people from Mars writes your content, but it does demand that the content is original and valuable to the audience it is designed to reach. In January 2025, an update of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines was released. Google’s Senior Search Analyst and Search Relations team lead John Mueller, speaking at Search Central Live in Madrid stated the following regarding how quality raters are now rating digital content:

“The Lowest rating applies if all or almost all of the MC on the page (including text, images, audio, videos, etc) is copied, paraphrased, embedded, auto or AI generated, or reposted from other sources with little to no effort, little to no originality, and little to no added value for visitors to the website. Such pages should be rated Lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source.” [emphasis added].

According to Search Engine Journal, filler content, often used to meet word counts, can also downgrade a webpage’s rating.

The reason for this is ruthlessly straightforward. Google wants to build its AI Overviews (AIO) and to do this, its AI must ‘learn’ from original, valuable content posted on the internet. It can’t think for itself. If all internet content becomes nothing more than AI Slop, then AIO can never evolve to provide true value to Google’s customers. In fact, people could stop using the internet altogether to find out useful information, leading to (gasp) a return to books and magazines. This is not a useful strategy if Alphabet (the company that owns Google) wants to retain an estimated net worth of $1.8 trillion.

Going forward, you are going to have to work much harder and produce content of an even higher standard than before to ensure your law firm’s website gains a coveted place as an AIO reference.

Myth two – SEO is dead

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), that mysterious, marketing-budget gobbling art that is built around getting certain websites to Google’s first page is not dead. In fact, it is more crucial than ever. Back to AIO again (believe me, these are all that will matter in the future, Google predicts that by February 2026, search engine volumes will drop by 25% as searches remain on Chatbots, AIO, and other virtual agents), to feature in an Overview, you need to focus on creating content that demonstrates experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) and then optimise it with technical SEO such as schema markup, page speed optimisation, and long-tail keywords.

Also, with the decline in search engine volumes, your law firm’s content marketing plan needs to expand beyond a great website and blogs. YouTube, podcasting, editorial content – these are other marketing avenues all firms need to start exploring to stay visible and all need SEO to ensure potential clients can find them. 

Myth three – AI can write original content

No, it can’t. Refer to myth one.

Myth four – AI checkers are unreliable

They are to an extent. Sometimes I run my content through an AI checker (there is no end to the methods writers use to procrastinate) and it occasionally comes up stating that 15-25% of the copy is AI generated. I know this is false because I don’t go anywhere near LLMs. But if an AI detector is coming back saying over 50% of a content piece is AI-generated, chances are a machine has created at least some of the copy and you need to edit and check it thoroughly.

Myth five – Using AI for content creation will save you time

If you’ve read this far you probably have a sneaky suspicion that like all modern technologies that were initially promised to save you time (hello email, Zoom, etc) instead AI content has simply created a lot more work for already overworked people. It’s now not enough to write an informative article. To avoid a low Google ranking, that article has to have original thought and opinion so Alphabet can use your content to train its AIO in order to keep more eyeballs on its products so it can generate even greater advertising revenue.

When you think about it that way, you might just decide to forget AI as its quicker and perhaps safer overall (Google could change its stance on AI content tomorrow) to write your legal marketing content yourself.

And you’d probably be right.

Corinne McKenna: Founder of legal marketing firm Lawtelligence.co.uk