San Francisco, California – Custom Legal Marketing (CLM), the agency behind the CLM Sequoia platform, has released findings from a comprehensive study examining the prevalence of AI-generated content in Google’s top organic results for law firms. Conducted in February 2026, the study scrutinized how AI content impacts the ranking of law firm pages across 28 legal keywords in 24 major U.S. cities.
Utilizing its CLM Sequoia platform, CLM analyzed 2,435 law firm ranking appearances, assessing 1,618 unique URLs and 1,021 unique domains spanning eight practice areas, including personal injury, criminal defense, and family law. Each page was evaluated using Winston AI, which determined the percentage of AI-generated content, alongside word counts and readability scores. The study revealed a striking conclusion: the percentage of AI-generated content showed no statistically significant correlation with organic ranking positions.
The Spearman correlation coefficient was calculated at r = 0.065 with a p-value of 0.138, indicating that the presence of AI content does not have a meaningful effect on a webpage’s ability to rank well on Google. “For the past two years, the loudest conversation in legal marketing has been whether AI content helps or hurts your Google rankings,” stated Jason Bland, Co-Founder and CEO of Custom Legal Marketing. “We went out and measured it across more than 2,400 ranking appearances. The answer turned out to be neither.”
Among the key findings, the distribution of AI content was notably uneven. Approximately 54.7% of ranking pages contained 5% or less AI-generated content, while 21.4% reported 70% or higher. This suggests that the industry is bifurcating between firms that minimally utilize AI content and those that rely heavily on it. In terms of practice areas, personal injury law firms exhibited the highest levels of AI usage, with a median AI content percentage of 14%, significantly higher than the overall median of 3%. Conversely, criminal defense pages were dominated by human-written content, as 87% of top-ranking pages for criminal defense keywords featured less than 10% AI-generated content.
The analysis pointed to a blended content creation approach as the most effective strategy. Pages with an AI content percentage between 26% and 50% achieved the best average ranking position of 2.83, along with a higher average word count of 2,958 words. In contrast, pages with 71% to 100% AI content ranked lower with an average position of 3.23 and an average word count of 1,561.
Readability issues also emerged as a concern for firms heavily utilizing AI. The study identified a correlation of r = -0.233 (p < 0.0001) between AI content percentage and readability scores, indicating that higher AI usage correlates with lower readability. With word count also showing a stronger statistical relationship to rankings than AI percentage, firms may inadvertently harm their search performance by neglecting editorial quality in their AI content.
Geographical location influenced the amount of AI content found in search results. Columbus, Ohio, stood out with a mean AI content percentage of 59% and a median of 76%, likely due to the dominance of national firms in that market. In contrast, cities like San Antonio, Jacksonville, and Houston showed lower AI content percentages, suggesting a reliance on traditional content creation among regional firms.
Bland emphasized the implications of these findings for law firm marketing strategies. “What gets you from Position 5 to Position 1 in competitive legal markets has not changed. It is still domain authority, content that actually says something, pages people can read without a headache, strong E-E-A-T signals, and solid local SEO,” he noted. “AI content does not appear anywhere on that list.”
Interestingly, 18.2% of top-ranking pages for personal injury keywords featured over 70% AI content, although these successes appeared linked to high domain authority rather than the quality of the AI-generated copy itself. As the legal marketing landscape evolves, firms may need to reconsider their reliance on AI to enhance their online visibility and focus instead on fundamental SEO practices.
Custom Legal Marketing, founded in 2005, specializes in blending creative marketing strategies with AI technology to help law firms navigate an increasingly competitive digital landscape.
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