AI Search
AI search is changing SEO. Learn the website changes and AI marketing strategies law firms must adopt to stay visible and attract clients before 2026.
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To understand what your law firm website needs to change to remain relevant and visible in 2026, it helps to have a firm grasp of how AI search tools differ from traditional search engines. Some of these differences may be apparent to you from your own experience, but what goes on behind the scenes has important implications for your law firm’s content and its technical search engine optimization (SEO). Making adaptations early and being prepared to make adjustments puts you in a position to build a generative engine optimization (GEO) strategy that keeps pace with users’ search behavior.
For many years, the web search landscape was dominated by one major search engine: Google. Other search tools, like Bing and DuckDuckGo, did exist, but they accounted for a relatively small share of global search activity. The result for businesses like law firms, aiming to optimize their pages for relevant searches, was that SEO “best practices” consisted of a mostly standard set of recommendations. These could be applied to a wide range of websites and were expected to improve search engine results page (SERP) rankings in most situations.
AI search tools are more diverse in their collection and presentation of content. If you are optimizing your law firm website to appear in the results from AI-assisted searches in 2026, you will need to take more than one set of protocols into consideration. Most large language model (LLM) search tools are going to use many of the same factors in evaluating websites. This is because they operate on generally similar principles built on the same basic search functions that led to SEO’s development. However, the way different AI programs prioritize individual factors may vary. Instead of considering a single set of optimizations, websites will increasingly need to account for cross-platform differences.
For years, the standard SEO content strategy advice was to focus on creating evergreen content. For traditional search, this is still great advice. Creating content that will still be relevant in months or even years means that you increase your overall digital footprint, and therefore your online visibility, every time you add a new post. Many of the benefits of SEO are cumulative. Maintaining a growing blog of evergreen content allows the positive effects of SEO content marketing to build over time while ensuring that the pages attracting traffic contain information you are still comfortable sharing. Evergreen content has also historically been cost effective. A law firm can pay for a blog article once and know that the investment will keep drawing in prospective clients long after its publication.
All these advantages still apply to traditional SEO, but some AI search models, including Google’s own AI overviews, now summarize the latest developments and point toward commentary on trending topics. AI search tools are also getting more sophisticated at recognizing and tailoring results to individual users’ locations and interests.
To maximize your law firm’s visibility in AI-driven search results, add insights relevant to your practice area whenever a trending news item intersects with the kinds of cases your firm handles. What that may look like is going to be different for every law firm. For example, you could explain the likely impacts of newly passed legislation or clarify important legal concepts that have become the subject of trending searches because they apply to a case in the news.
Do not shortchange your local news outlets here. Consider timely and relevant content based on events reported in your own community, where the people most likely to retain your firm’s services are located. If you have an established relationship with a digital marketing agency, you can often save time while maintaining your firm’s relevance by negotiating a standing arrangement for time-sensitive content writing. To get the most out of this strategy, give the agency the news item and point them toward existing pages on your website that establish your firm’s voice on related legal issues. This helps ensure both topical relevance and tonal consistency.
Beyond content for search engines, AI offers powerful tools for proactive marketing. Law firms can now use predictive analytics to identify potential clients before they even begin their search for legal representation. By analyzing public data sets, social media trends, and economic indicators, AI models can forecast which demographics or industries are likely to face specific legal challenges. For instance, a firm specializing in bankruptcy law could use AI to monitor local business filings and economic distress signals, allowing them to create targeted outreach campaigns for companies at risk of insolvency. This forward-thinking approach shifts marketing from a reactive to a proactive strategy, placing your firm one step ahead of the competition.
AI can also revolutionize how you engage with prospective and current clients on your website. Instead of offering a one-size-fits-all user experience, you can implement AI-driven chatbots and dynamic content modules that personalize the journey for each visitor. Imagine a user lands on your site and an AI-powered chat assistant not only answers their initial questions but also analyzes their language to gauge their specific legal needs and emotional state. Based on this interaction, the website can automatically feature relevant blog posts, case studies, or attorney profiles that speak directly to that visitor’s situation. This level of personalization builds trust and demonstrates a deep understanding of the client’s needs from the very first click.
The algorithms that drive AI search results are expected to prioritize page content that meets site accessibility standards. As AI tools provide more options for user customization, we may see users select options that filter sources to privilege those that meet their needs. If you are not personally familiar with accessibility settings, consider looking for an SEO specialist or digital marketing agency with strong credentials in this area.
Many techniques that make your website more accessible to human visitors also facilitate crawling and indexing by machines. Expect LLMs to “double down” on the existing preference for structured data and descriptive page titles. A few accessibility features that may have an increased impact on how consistently your law firm shows up in answer engines as we head into 2026 include:
Making your law firm website accessible to the visually impaired usually means limiting the number and complexity of the fonts used. You also need to ensure that the hexadecimal codes for the page text and background have a high degree of contrast. Over-reliance on special formatting, such as bolded text and italics, may be a mark against you, since these signals of emphasis are difficult to reproduce via screen readers.
Making sure that all headings are carefully and logically encoded as <h1>, <h2>, and so on has been a mainstay of conventional SEO for years. It gains new force with visual accessibility expectations, as many screen readers rely on these markers to organize page text. For similar reasons, you will want to check the alt text used with any site images. Add alt text if it is missing, and update it to make sure that it both describes the image and explains its connection to the text.
Content is still king, but law firms have more options for how to build their content portfolios now than ever before. Many LLM search tools have a much stronger ability to “read” and deliver results from non-text content, such as graphics or videos, than conventional search engines. You can maximize the benefits of text-based keyword integration with the advantages of multimodality by ensuring that all your non-text content is accompanied by clear captions and transcripts. This makes it easy for LLMs to index your content and reference it in the answers they provide to users.
One of the most important changes you can make to your law firm website strategy is to plan for regular updates. Many law firms maintain static websites where little changes beyond their blog posts for months or even years. That strategy is outdated. It makes integrating timely content more difficult, and it hinders your ability to make technical adjustments in response to new LLM models. Waiting until your website is already out of date to find a web designer can put you weeks, if not months, behind your competitors. Deciding ahead of time how you will handle website updates and planning for regular review gives you an edge.
If you choose to partner with a legal marketing agency, make sure they truly understand AI technologies and are up to date on how to get your law firm website listed on large language models (LLMs). The agency should be prepared to implement strategies tailored for AI-driven search, ensuring your website is not only optimized for traditional search engines but also positioned to appear in the latest AI-based platforms. This expertise is vital to maintaining and growing your firm’s online visibility as digital landscapes evolve.
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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