Six months ago I was still hearing grudging doubt in most law firm marketing teams whenever AI came up. By May, the same conversations seem to mostly sound like “where do we sign up.” If I’m honest, none of the gradual adoption expected of the legal sector has been there. It’s been a pretty swift flip in the first half of 2026.
Three things are driving it.
First, the need. Search has moved. SEO is no longer doing the whole job. Answer Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation are how clients now find firms, and they need different content to do it. If your homepage is built for old-style search, you’re invisible to the tools researchers and clients are actually using.
Second, the tools are dramatically (and increasingly) better. Writing, drafting, analysis, insight work. The output a year ago was passable but now the output is genuinely useful. The voices that doubt its value based on quality are getting quieter as more people see the value it can offer them.
Third, validation from the partnership. Firms are investing heavily in legal AI. Lawyers are using it and that’s always the catalyst for legal marketing getting (some of) the investment it needs and wants. In short, if it’s good enough for fee earners, marketing has more chance of getting it too.
I don’t need to tell you that AI is all anyone in legal marketing seems to want to talk about. The interesting bit, I think, is what this means in plain terms.
1. Directories are becoming a strategic input, not an admin task
This one I find genuinely exciting. For years, the case has been that legal directories work produces more than rankings. Now firms are actually treating it that way.
We know of several firms using their Chambers referee data to feed client listening programmes and vice versa. The conversations referees have with researchers, the themes that come up, the things clients praise and the things they don’t. It’s intelligence the firm can use. Other firms are dovetailing Legal 500 NPS data with their wider brand reporting and measurement, treating directories as one input among several that show how the firm is actually perceived.
This is what “submissions as the entry point to a year-round programme” looks like in practice. (We made the broader case for this in Directory submissions are changing.)
2. Bid and web content is being commissioned straight from submissions
Firms are asking us to take the work that’s already gone into approved submissions and turn it into other materials. Pitch-ready matter summaries, short and long, tagged by service and sector. Capability documents. Biography updates. Light-touch refreshes to practice and sector pages. Award entries drawn from existing matter content.
The argument has been around for a while. We made it in detail back in April in Your submission is content gold and we built a Content from Directories service around it. What’s changed is that firms are now coming to us asking for the work explicitly, rather than us having to make the case for it.
The commercial argument is simple. Partners have already given the firm their best matters, fact-checked them, sanitised them, signed them off. The content sits in a PDF. Letting it stay there is a waste of work that’s already been done and paid for.
3. AI is being commissioned for internal speed and quality
We’re seeing three forms of this.
Firms want our help to roll out AI systems and quality-assure the output. They’ve bought the tools. They want a specialist looking at what comes out the other end.
Firms want advice on setup and prompting that protects their tone of voice. A general-purpose tool with a generic prompt produces generic content. Tone of voice work now often includes building a firm-specific Claude Project, with the prompts, examples and standards trained in, so the firm can carry the work on after we hand over.
And firms are asking us to use AI to deliver more, faster, without dropping quality. That’s a fair ask. It’s also the same work we’ve been doing on ourselves: using AI so our experts can be experts, rather than administrators… So our clients pay for expertise, not admin.
4. Website content needs a rethink for AEO and GEO
Websites is where the gap between intent and knowledge is widest. Firms know their content needs to change but if I’m honest, most that we talk to don’t yet know what changing it looks like in practice.
We’re seeing a massive growth in firms asking us to help them figure out what’s possible and write the brief together. From there it’s audits and rewrites of priority practice and sector pages, training for marketing teams on writing for answer engines, FAQs and structured content built for the way clients and researchers now search.
We made the broader point earlier in the year in Turns out AI has a type. AI isn’t rewarding firms that adapt fastest. It’s rewarding firms that have been doing the right things the longest. It is my view that firms that act on that now in their web content will be the ones the tools find first next year.
What firms doing this well have in common
If we look at the firms making real progress on all four of these they have one thing in common. And it has very little to do with which AI tools they’ve bought.
They aren’t abdicating responsibility and churning out robotic rubbish, they’re using AI to free their marketing experts up to be real experts.
In practice, that looks like content programmes joined up across directories, web, bids and brand, rather than running in silos. It looks like a written content strategy, so when AI is brought in, the people using it know what it’s meant to produce. It looks like investment in messaging and positioning work, not just channels. And it looks like marketing teams whose time goes on strategy and judgement, not formatting and chasing.
If any of this sounds familiar, the second half of the year is where you fix it.
Get in touch and I’d be happy to talk more about this with you.
Helen Foord, CEO & Founder, ELE
