Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to be one of the biggest technological breakthroughs of our time, with its impact being felt across a wide range of industries. 

The legal sector is not immune. AI is busily reshaping the future of legal practice, handling routine client enquiries, automating documents and generating case summaries that reduce hours of work to mere minutes. 

Law Firm Marketing 

The rise of conversational chatbots like ChatGPT is also causing law firms to reassess their marketing strategy, with some firms questioning whether it is worth the time, effort and expense of having a professional write their blogs when AI can do it more quicky and at a fraction of the cost. 

Even as a professional blog writer, I can see the attraction of generating content using AI: 

• It’s quick. A human can probably write an 800-word article in around two hours. ChatGPT can churn out a draft in a matter of seconds.  

• It’s cheap. Many AI writing tools are free or available for a nominal fee, which is substantially cheaper than getting an in-house employee to write a blog post or paying an external agency or content writer to do it. Using ChatGPT also frees up lawyers for higher-value work. 

• Beats writer’s block. When I said that it takes a human two hours to write a blog, a good hour of that can sometimes be spent staring at a blank screen. AI has no such issues with knowing where to start. 

However, its convenience is tempered by its impact, and there are considerable downsides to using AI to produce legal blogs and other marketing materials. 

• It’s not original. Blogging is meant to showcase particular specialisms in a distinct tone of voice, both of which are watered down by AI tools that produce generic content based on information already available online. You also run the risk of other law firms using AI to generate a post on the same topic and publishing the same article, which not only undermines your expertise but also has a negative impact on SEO. 

• People can tell. It’s not just the use of em dashes that people consider a giveaway in an AI-generated article. The passive tone, neutral style and lack of anything that gives a piece of writing any individuality are also red flags. Everyone can tell when something has been written by AI, which might not give the right impression of a firm to clients. 

• It can affect SEO. Google penalises sites that use AI to write content if it’s unoriginal, lacks value, or is too similar to other AI articles already published on the same topic. This will have a detrimental impact on SEO and cause you to fall down the rankings. 

• It can get it wrong. ChatGPT can be helpful, but it’s not always right. Research shows that AI can produce incorrect answers, fabricate quotes and reference non-existent sources. 

So, should law firms use AI to write blogs? While they certainly can, and some probably will, there are risks involved, and firms should proceed with caution.  

Although AI-powered content writing tools like ChatGPT can be useful as a tool for blogging and producing other marketing materials, effective blog writing still requires the ‘human touch’, where articles are checked, optimised and personalised by a sentient being. 

(Just don’t type this query into ChatGPT, as I suspect it might give you a very different answer.) 

Blog Writing for Law Firms 

At FireTap Legal, our legal journalists and social media experts have over 40 years of experience in legal content writing.  

From our offices in central London, our legal blog writers produce high-quality, bespoke content including blogs, articles, social media posts and materials for targeted campaigns for solicitors and lawyers across the UK. 

For more information about our content writing services for law firms, get in touch with our specialist legal content writers today. 

For more information about our legal content writing services click here. 

To speak to one of the team, call 020 3911 9715 or email hello@firetap.co.uk.