Let’s face it. Law firm content marketing is a lot of work. The prospect of having to manually create quality legal content on a consistent basis can seem daunting. So, what a welcomed relief to discover AI content writing – right? When ChatGPT first came on the scene last fall, AI legal content marketing seemed like the perfect solution to the need for humans to write legal content.
But what at first seemed like a revolution in the way legal content could be written has a year later given way to a more realistic evaluation of how generative AI (GenAI) can be used in creating content for law firm websites.
AI law firm writing is not bad. In fact, some of it is pretty darn good. However, as time goes on, GenAI content can become like copies of copies, producing content that is duller, more diluted, and less accurate. And to think AI-generated content can take the place of human-written content is to deny the natural ability humans have to connect with other humans by offering unique perspectives and relatable stories.
- AI Law Firm Marketing with ChatGPT
- Legal and Ethical Considerations with AI Legal Content Marketing
- How AI Law Firm Marketing Could Get Ugly
- AI Content Writing and Google’s Helpful Content Guidelines
- Why There is Still a Place for Human Writers in AI Legal Content Marketing
- Connect with Your Clients with Blue Seven’s 100% Human Written Law Firm Content
AI Law Firm Marketing with ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an AI model that is able to interact with users in a conversational way and produce human-like text responses, often in seconds. ChatGPT was initially trained on massive amounts of internet-sourced data current only up to September 2021. As of September 2023, ChatGPT has the ability to browse the internet for up-to-date information. For law firms, ChatGPT and other GenAI platforms offer ways to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and create a better client experience.
In its current iteration, ChatGPT is already a useful assistant for lawyers and law firms when used appropriately. It is able to quickly and accurately summarize large documents into desired formats. It is a great starting point for drafting forms and templates. It can generate useful ideas to help attorneys with legal strategies. AI can create emails, social media posts, and copy for use on websites. The technology will become even more useful to the profession as legal technology providers incorporate it into their specifically tailored products.
Good as it is for some uses right now, GenAI cannot replace the need for significant human involvement to guarantee, at a minimum, content accuracy and originality. As some attorneys have found out, legal content written by ChatGPT is not a finished product and should always undergo final revision and editing by human writers.
Limitations of AI Legal Writing
In many instances, GenAI can create adequate content that provides accurate information. ChatGPT also uses a type of natural language processing, allowing it to understand context and maintain conversation flow to provide more natural responses and build on previous conversations. However, it is not able to create better or beyond the data it learns from.
ChatGPT can’t write with personality. It can’t write from experience. It can’t express an opinion or formulate original ideas. There is a generic quality about AI legal writing that can make it land flat with readers and make it hard for search engines to distinguish from other AI generated content on the same topic. Only human writers can add the flavor that engages readers and connects with them on a personal level.
Legal and Ethical Considerations with AI Legal Content Marketing
Law firms that incorporate AI into their practices should have a basic understanding of the potential legal and ethical issues that could arise. The American Bar Association (ABA) reminds lawyers the use of AI in a legal practice can raise ethical issues with regard to:
- Confidentiality
- Competence
- Practice Management
- Honesty
At this point, there are still more questions than answers, but practitioners should be aware and educate themselves on how the use of AI as a legal practice assistant has been addressed within the jurisdictions they practice.
Using AI-generated content may also raise legal issues regarding copyright infringement. The way ChatGPT and other GenAI programs learn and create content has the potential to violate copyright laws. The AI training process involves making digital copies of existing works on the internet.
The works are copied without the permission of the copyright owner, who is guaranteed exclusive use. AI companies are arguing that the copying constitutes an allowable ‘fair use’ of the creator’s work. Copyright infringement may also occur if the AI-generated content is too similar to the work it copied.
There have been no legal determinations as copyright infringement cases are just starting to make their way through the courts. A report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) addresses the questions about how AI content writing might infringe on copyrights and suggests Congress may wait for some guidance from the judicial system before deciding if additional legislation will be required.
How AI Law Firm Marketing Could Get Ugly
How would you feel if you had spent 10 years building your law firm website with quality human-written content and someone downloaded your sitemap to use GenAI to mass produce content based on all your page titles, hijacking your website traffic in the process?
A recent Hubspot blog article discusses how AI was used to generate content from copied page URLs that was just different enough from the original content to pass Google’s duplicate content filters. One of the reasons this type of unscrupulous content marketing strategy was successful (for a while, anyway) was that the content being written was largely instructional and didn’t lend itself to much insight or variation.
Hubspot’s director of Global Growth, Aja Frost, says AI would have a much harder time duplicating content that communicated tone, interpretation, perspective, or experience – all contributions humans bring to content writing.
AI Content Writing and Google’s Helpful Content Guidelines
It remains to be seen how human-written content will fair against GenAI content in search engine results. Google has made it clear that how content is created will not be its focus going forward. The quality of the content itself will determine how it is indexed and ranked.
Google’s Helpful Content System was introduced in an update in August 2022 as a guide to help content creators produce better content. The algorithm rewards content that is helpful and focused on people rather than search engines. There have been a couple of updates to the original guidelines – the most recent coming in September 2023.
A noted change in the recent update was the preference for ‘content created by people, for people’. The language of the guidelines now reads ‘content created for people’, indicating Google will not reward or penalize content for the source of its creation.
Though Google may no longer explicitly favor content produced by humans, its guidance for creating helpful, reliable, people-first content suggests that well-written, human-created content might still be more favorable. When talking about page quality, Google is looking for content that is original, provides insightful analysis or interesting information, and adds substantial value as opposed to merely rewriting sourced information. In other words, Google is looking for something unique as a way to distinguish similar content.
In pointing out indications of the kind of search engine-first content to avoid, the guidelines provide content creators with some questions that can be used to evaluate their content, including the following two:
- Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
- Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
Bland, dull, mass-produced content that doesn’t offer anything new is not going to perform well in search engines and is just not a good way to stand out from the crowd.
Why There is Still a Place for Human Writers in AI Legal Content Marketing
Although as content writers we hate to admit it, AI is going to replace the need for human writers to produce some types of simplistic, repetitive content. But, AI does not have the capability to generate more complex writing projects requiring analysis, creativity, perspective, or opinion. For distinctive writing and fresh ideas, skilled human writers will continue to be in demand.
In most cases, AI will just assist human writers with time-saving functions such as generating ideas, creating outlines, and doing research. Human writers will still need to make sure the content is helpful, reliable, and people-first.
With legal content, there will always be the need for significant human involvement to make sure the content provides up-to-date information gathered from reputable sources without plagiarizing other content. By the time AI-generated legal content is checked and appropriately edited to ensure accuracy and search engine receptivity, a human writer might as well have done it right the first time.
Human-written content may also be more appealing to potential clients who are considering hiring the legal services of a law firm. A major purpose of legal content marketing is to establish authority and build trust. When contemplating AI legal content marketing lawyers need to consider reader expectations.
- Do people reading content on a law firm website have the right to know how the content was created?
- Do readers of law firm website content want to know how it was created?
- If readers found out the content was created by GenAI would that increase their confidence in a law firm or its attorneys?
Google’s position is that how content is created should be revealed to users when users would have a reasonable expectation of knowing how the content was produced.
Human Legal Content Writers Won’t Make Up Facts That Aren’t True
AI models can create content that sounds good but is not factually accurate. This is known as ‘hallucinating’ and has gotten a few lawyers in hot water for relying on GenAI content without verifying the information.
As the result of some lawyers’ misplaced reliance on legal authority made up by ChatGPT, several courts are now requiring attorneys to disclose the use of GenAI in documents submitted to the court. As the use of GenAI continues to grow and develop, it is likely that standardized rules will be established regarding the use of AI to generate legal documents to ensure integrity is maintained in the practice of law.
Human Created Data is Necessary to Avoid AI Model Collapse
There is another good reason human writers won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. As more and more AI-generated data gets dumped onto the internet the AI models begin training on other AI-generated data, which affects the quality and reliability of AI-generated content.
With each new AI iteration, AI content becomes more distorted, leading to a degeneration of content over time. AI model collapse occurs as AI trained on AI gets further and further from the original source of data becoming more homogenous and losing complexity and diversity.
What can be done to mitigate the potential for AI model collapse and maintain the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated content? One proposed solution is to consistently introduce new, human-created data into the training process.
Connect with Your Clients with Blue Seven’s 100% Human Written Law Firm Content
At the end of the day, you want the content you put on your website to connect with the people you are trying to reach and to persuade them you can give them what they need. Law firm content has to do more than merely inform. It has to reach out to people who may be very vulnerable because they have a legal problem and aren’t sure who to trust for the solution. Only human writers can understand how to write content targeted to affect the way people feel.
The writers at Blue Seven Content aren’t just any human writers. They are hand-picked professionals who receive thorough training and must meet high-performance standards. Content produced by Blue Seven writers is always well-researched, authentic, optimized, and people-first. Our multi-level editing process assures you receive quality content that is ready to go on your website. If you want the content on your website to stand out to search engines and potential clients, contact Blue Seven Content.
Written by Mari Gaines, JD – Legal Content Writer
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