Will AI Kill Lawyers?
So everyone loves to make fun of lawyers. There’s probably an infinite supply of lawyer jokes floating around the internet — and now, AI might be writing the next batch.
One of the big questions people have been asking lately is: with tools like Harvey AI, GPT-4, and Perplexity, how important is a lawyer anymore?
Because here’s what’s happening — more and more people are realizing they can just take a contract, a term sheet, or a 40-page legal document, drop it into an LLM, and say, “Tell me what I should care about.”
I had this happen recently. A founder friend of mine was closing a seed round. He had one version of a term sheet, and the investor had another. Before calling me, he did something fascinating — he uploaded both term sheets into ChatGPT and asked it to compare and contrast the key differences. Within seconds, it outlined the variances in liquidation preferences, board control, and vesting. By the time he called me, he already understood the essentials and just wanted real-world context — what these terms mean in practice.
That 10-minute interaction saved him probably $1,500 in legal fees.
So the question really becomes: Will AI kill the legal profession — or just the parts of it that charge by the hour for boilerplate work?
When Lawyers Became My SEO Clients
Over the last decade, I had the opportunity to work with a number of lawyers on their SEO efforts. Many of them wanted to be known as the best lawyer in their state for a specific category — employment litigation, personal injury, family law, or even speeding tickets. You name it, I’ve probably optimized it.
I got to see firsthand how intensely competitive the legal SEO world was. Firms cared deeply about ranking at the top of Google Maps and Google Search. They wanted the phone to ring from organic leads, and SEO was their engine.
But now something very different is happening.
AI and large language models are shifting consumer behavior. We’re entering the era of AIO — AI Optimization — and it’s becoming more important for lawyers than Google rankings ever were.
Think about it: a potential client who might have once Googled “sample lease agreement” or “what should be in a seed round term sheet” is now asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overview directly. And they’re trusting that answer. That means those same people are not calling a lawyer to ask for advice, at least not on basic or transactional matters.
So in one sense, LLMs are a real threat to lawyers — they’re eating away at the bottom of the funnel: the simple leases, the small contract reviews, the quick consultations that kept many practices profitable.
But — and this is the important part — lawyers shouldn’t see AI as the enemy. In fact, the smart ones will use it as their next marketing channel.
Imagine your law firm being the one the AI recommends when someone asks,
“Who’s the top employment lawyer in New Jersey for startup founders?”
Or when Perplexity’s results include your firm’s own content because your legal FAQs and case summaries were structured perfectly for LLM ingestion.
The lawyers who win in the AI era will be the ones who optimize not for links, but for language models.
The Client No Longer Googles You — They Ask the AI
A lot more people are going to LLMs now — and they’re not just asking simple legal questions like, “Can you review this contract?” or “What does this clause mean?” They’re asking complex, decision-level questions that used to start with a Google search.
They’re typing things like:
“Who’s the best corporate litigation lawyer in New York?”
“Who’s the most affordable law firm for a $10M bankruptcy case?”
“Which firm specializes in startup equity disputes in California?”
These are serious, high-value questions — and they’re being asked directly to AI systems.
People no longer want to spend time bouncing between ten blue links, clicking random law firm websites, reading testimonials, or comparing hourly rates. They want the AI to do all that work for them — to analyze reviews, credentials, case results, and even mentions in LexisNexis or Martindale-Hubbell — and just give them the best, most relevant answer.
So I tell every law firm I talk to today: your next client isn’t coming from Google anymore — they’re coming from ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini.
That means one thing: you’ve got to up your content game.
If your website, blog, or case summaries aren’t structured in a way that LLMs can interpret, rank, and trust, then you’ve already lost the discovery battle.
The law firms that win in this new era will write not for Google, but for the machines that read Google.
From Backlinks to Prompts: The New Legal SEO
In the past, most lawyers cared about one thing — backlinks.
For years, I worked with law firms to build high-quality links pointing to their websites, anchored with the right keywords. If you were a personal-injury or employment-litigation lawyer in New Jersey, the entire game was about who could get the strongest backlinks and local citations.
That world is gone.
Today, I tell lawyers something completely different: your job is no longer to signal to Google — it’s to signal to the LLMs.
You need to create amazing content that makes it clear why you’re the best in your niche. If you want to be known as the leading bankruptcy lawyer for small-business bankruptcies under $10 million, you can’t rely on keyword density or backlinks anymore.
You need:
Deep, original content on your site explaining how you approach that type of case.
Articles and videos syndicated across platforms.
Mentions in the press, LinkedIn posts, and social media clips where you speak about that specialty.
In the SEO world, we used to build links to rank higher.
In the LLM world, you build authority so the AI models recognize your expertise and recommend you.
Think of it this way: instead of ranking for keywords, you’re now competing for prompts.
If the top five prompts that matter to your practice are:
Best bankruptcy lawyer for small businesses in New York City
Best employment-litigation lawyer in New York City
Best asset-liquidation lawyer in New York City
Most experienced startup bankruptcy attorney in New York
Best law firm for Chapter 11 filings under $10 million
—then every piece of your digital presence should reinforce those five ideas.
Your content, your videos, your public interviews — even how you describe cases — should all map back to those prompts.
And yes, you should be bold enough to say things like:
“Here are the five most recognized bankruptcy law firms in New York for small businesses — and here’s why we outperform them in results, service, and cost.”
That’s how you train the LLMs to understand you — and how clients discover you.
The good news? This new world can actually be better for law firms. Sure, AI tools will handle the low-end work — the quick contract reviews, NDAs, and boilerplate agreements. But if you position yourself correctly inside the LLM ecosystem, you’ll start attracting higher-value clients who need strategy, judgment, and advocacy — the things AI can’t replicate.
Those who master AIO for law will find themselves not losing clients — but gaining better ones.