Using ChatGPT in Your Law Firm’s Website
If you’ve had a chance to look up from document review or discovery in the last year or so, you might’ve heard about a little thing called ChatGPT.
Now, here’s the thing: I’ve been purposefully avoiding writing about this and other AI tools because of how nuanced the conversation should and needs to be.
The truth of the matter is that artificial intelligence, as it is starting to develop today, is one of the most powerful and effective tools that has come into existence since the advent of the computer or calculator. That sounds overly dramatic, but it’s true.
And, if we are listening to AI experts who developed this tech, it is going to be even more consequential in the next 5-10 years.
As you can probably expect, though, that isn’t how the dialogue has been transpiring. There’s been very little tempering of expectation or development of ethical practices alongside the huge headlines screaming that AI has passed the BAR exam.
But the genie isn’t going back in the bottle, and now that practical AI tools have been mainstream for close to a year, we’ve experimented with the systems well enough to know how you should (and should not) be using them in your law firm’s content marketing.
Do Your Due Diligence When Using ChatGPT for Your Content
Here is the good news: Google doesn’t care if your content is human or AI generated. Here is a quote from their official blog highlighting that they are actually an advocate for AI content production:
“Our focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced, is a useful guide that has helped us deliver reliable, high quality results to users for years.”
This means you can use tools like ChatGPT to your heart’s content, and you won’t be penalized for making use of the tools available to you. As long as it establishes E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) and follows best practices, your content will still be favorably viewed by Google.
Like I said, good news.
But here is our warning: news of lawyers getting into trouble over the unchecked use of artificial intelligence is already surfacing:
“[attorney] Steven Schwartz, admitted in May that he had used OpenAI’s ChatGPT program to help research the brief, which cited six non-existent court decisions, in a client’s personal injury case against Avianca Airlines.” — Sara Merken, Reuters
Eventually, Schwartz and his firm, Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, were sanctioned and told to pay a $5,000 fine.
These cases prove my stance that AI should be used to jumpstart the creation process, but it should never be used without human oversight, fact checking, adding personal experience & knowledge, and plenty of due diligence.
I can’t tell you how common it is, regardless of the industry or profession level, for people to copy and paste ChatGPT content without regard for accuracy or plagiarism.
Even if it’s technically worded differently, swapping the phrasing and sentence structures can still fall into the unethical side of things, so it’s better to be hands on about how you get it to produce your content from the start.
Not to mention, when it comes to marketing copy, your services needs to be accurate and beyond reproach, but your copy also needs to be personable and persuasive — two things that current iterations of ChatGPT and AI in general still struggle with.
So if you do go the AI route, you’ll be doing plenty of manual input and wordsmithing after the fact to make sure your content is up to the right standard.
This is why many people who want to tackle their own content end up coming to professional marketers anyway; it’s difficult to produce content quickly that is accurate, persuasive, educational, and entertaining.
Empowering Your Practice Pages
When it comes to search engine optimization, webpage content is one of the most important pillars that your law firm will stand on. Your ranking on Google, to put it simply, is entirely dictated by how useful your content ends up being to its audience.
Here is a short list of webpage types law firms typically have and how you can use AI to assist in their development:
Home Page — We would not recommend that AI be used too much for your homepage, unless it is entirely in a brainstorming capacity. Your homepage is your first chance to develop your brand and identity, and every word and phrase needs to be carefully selected to push leads through the marketing funnel. It needs to be strategic from the ground up – so go ahead and skip the AI assistance on this for the time being.
About Page — Your about page is a prime opportunity to make use of ChatGPT’s ability to digest huge amounts of raw information and compile them into something unique. To get started, copy and paste your resume and provide some more personal information about yourself, then ask it something simple like “use this information to create a compelling and interesting About Me webpage.”
Practice Pages — Regardless of what kind of law your firm practices, you’ll likely need to develop some content about your areas of practice regarding that specific legal niche. For example, if one of your practice areas is Workers’ Compensation, you probably see a lot of questions like “how much does a workers’ comp lawyer cost,” “what do workers comp lawyers do,” or even “what’s the difference between workers comp attorney vs personal injury?” You’ll want to have a strong practice page that markets to your potential client, and let ChatGPT’s help providing preliminary answers to these questions that you can then elaborate, expand, and fact check in a meaningful way. This will help you create an authoritative practice page that will perform well on Google quickly.
FAQs — FAQ pages are a great way to tackle a lot of high volume search queries in a short amount of time. (Especially as Google begins to implement their own artificial intelligence answers to queries.) If you find yourself with a lot of very common questions or want to give your potential clients a place to read up on the most sought information, use ChatGPT to develop strings of questions and answers for you to review and publish.
Empowering Your Blogs
There are three ways you can use AI to improve your blog writing process: you can develop a pool of blog ideas to use and riff on, you can develop preliminary outlines for certain subjects to get the ball rolling and potentially bring up angles you didn’t previously consider, and lastly, you can develop very early drafts from ChatGPT that you can use almost as an enhanced outline.
These are particularly useful applications if content production isn’t in your usual skillset.
After that, though, you need to pump the brakes hard; human oversight is paramount from this point forward. Don’t take any fact for granted — check any and every claim that the AI program makes.
Add your own voice, build with your own insider knowledge, make some jokes or references; whatever you can do to set this content apart from all the people who will be copying and pasting ChatGPT / AI outputs at outrageous levels.
Do all these things to make sure your content has integrity, credibility, authenticity and a personal touch.
Contact Everest Legal Marketing
If you would like to schedule a call, reach out to us at (909) 697-7484, or submit a contact form and we’ll get back in touch with you at a better time. We are local to Southern California and are happy to meet virtually or in-person to discuss your SEO strategy.
President & Founder – Everest Legal Marketing, LLC
Doug Bradley is the Founder and CEO of Everest Legal Marketing. Doug has over a decade of experience specifically in legal marketing, and foremost with expertise in Search Engine Optimization for law firms. Doug has been quoted on numerous websites, co-hosted many MCLE sessions, and has advised law firms of all sizes on the topic of effective marketing and ethical SEO strategies.
