What AI Search Means for Solicitors in North Hertfordshire
Look, I'm going to be straight with you. Most solicitors in North Hertfordshire are about to get absolutely blindsided by what's happening with AI search. And I don't mean in five years. I mean right now, this month, your potential clients are already getting answers about conveyancing, wills, and employment law without ever seeing your website.
Let me tell you what happened last Tuesday. A solicitor in Royston called me because his enquiries had dropped 40% since January. Forty bloody percent. His SEO agency kept sending him reports showing he was ranking page one for "conveyancing solicitors Royston". Which was true. He was there, sitting pretty at position 3.
Problem is, nobody's clicking through anymore.
Google isn't showing your website, it's showing your answer
Here's what actually happens now when someone searches "how much does conveyancing cost in Hertfordshire":
They get an AI-generated answer at the top. No links. No click. Just the answer. And if that answer mentions specific firms (which it increasingly does), it's pulling from whoever has structured their content properly for AI systems to understand and cite.
Your traditional SEO rankings? Still matter. But they matter less every single week.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, even Bing's AI. They're all doing the same thing. Answering questions directly. And when someone asks "should I use a local solicitor for my house purchase in Letchworth" or "what's the difference between a will and a trust", these AI systems are deciding which firms get mentioned and which don't.
The criteria isn't who paid for the best SEO package last year.
What AI search actually looks for (and it's not what you think)
I've tested this across maybe 30 different legal queries specific to North Hertfordshire in the last month alone. The pattern is pretty clear.
AI search engines are looking for:
- Direct answers to specific questions, not marketing waffle about "experienced solicitors providing excellent service"
- Structured information that clearly states costs, timeframes, and processes
- Entity recognition. Does your content clearly identify you as a law firm, where you operate, what you specialise in?
- Citations and credibility markers (though these work differently than traditional backlinks)
That lovely homepage you paid £8,000 for? The one with the video background and the vague promises about client care? AI search doesn't know what to do with that.
But that boring FAQ page your junior associate wrote three years ago explaining stamp duty thresholds? That's getting pulled into AI answers every single day.
The visibility problem
Here's where it gets interesting (and slightly terrifying if you're not prepared).
When someone in Baldock asks ChatGPT "which solicitor should I use for my divorce", the AI might mention three firms. Maybe four. It's not showing them page after page of options like Google used to. It's being selective. Definitive, even.
If you're not one of those firms mentioned, you don't exist in that moment. There's no "scroll down to see more results".
That's it. Conversation over. Or rather, conversation continues, but you're not in it.
What solicitors are getting wrong (basically everything)
Most legal websites I see around Hitchin and Stevenage are optimised for a version of the internet that's already gone.
They're doing the things that made sense in 2019: - Keyword-stuffed service pages - Generic blog posts about legal changes nobody reads - Pages for every possible search term variation - Content written for Google's algorithms, not for humans (or AI that's trying to help humans)
The solicitor I mentioned from Royston? His website had 47 different pages about conveyancing. "Residential Conveyancing Royston", "House Purchase Solicitors Royston", "Property Lawyers Royston". All saying basically the same thing in slightly different words.
Useless for AI search. Completely useless.
AI systems don't want 47 variations. They want one authoritative, comprehensive answer to the actual questions people ask. They want structure. Context. Clarity.
AEO is different from SEO (and you need both)
Answer Engine Optimisation isn't about replacing your SEO. Look, those traditional ranking factors still matter. You still need to be visible in conventional search results because plenty of people still click through (just fewer than before).
But AEO is about making your expertise discoverable and quotable by AI systems.
This means:
- Content structured around actual questions your clients ask (not search volume keywords)
- Clear factual statements that AI can confidently cite
- Schema markup and entity data that helps AI understand who you are and what you're authoritative about
- Information hierarchy that makes sense to language models, not just humans
The local angle matters more now
Weirdly, being specific about your location has become more important for AI search, not less. When I optimised content for a family law firm in Stevenage, we got incredibly specific about local courts, local processes, even local quirks in how things work in Hertfordshire versus other counties.
That local specificity is exactly what AI search engines use to decide which firms to mention when someone asks a location-specific question.
"Solicitors covering the UK" is weak. "Family law solicitors in Letchworth Garden City with specific expertise in Hertfordshire county court procedures" is strong. (Yes, I know it sounds weirdly specific. That's the point.)
What you should actually do about this
Right, practical stuff. Because none of this matters if you don't know what to do differently.
First, audit your content through an AI lens. Go to ChatGPT or Perplexity and ask the questions your potential clients actually ask. "How much does probate cost in Hertfordshire?" "Do I need a solicitor for a leasehold purchase?" "What happens if my employer dismisses me unfairly?"
See who gets mentioned. See what information the AI pulls through. If it's not you, figure out why.
Second, restructure your key service pages around questions and clear answers. Not marketing fluff. Actual information. Costs, timeframes, processes, what documents people need, what happens next. The stuff they actually want to know.
I know this feels uncomfortable. You've been trained to never quote prices online, to always say "it depends", to get people to call you before giving away too much information.
That strategy is dead. Well, dying. Might take another year to be fully dead, but it's not looking healthy.
Third, implement proper structured data. Schema markup for legal services, local business entities, professional credentials. This is technical stuff (I won't pretend it isn't), but it's the foundation that helps AI systems understand your content in context.
The firms that move first will own this space
Here's my actual concern for solicitors in North Hertfordshire. This isn't something you can catch up on later.
Once AI systems start consistently citing certain firms as authorities in specific areas, that builds momentum. Those citations become part of the training data, the pattern recognition, the "authoritative sources" that get referenced again and again.
The firms that get their content structured properly in the next six months will have a hell of an advantage over those who wait until 2026 and try to catch up.
Is this fair? Probably not. But it's happening whether we think it's fair or not.
I've been banging on about this for three years now and most local firms still aren't taking it seriously. Which means there's still time if you move now. Not loads of time. But some.
If you're a solicitor in North Hertfordshire and you want to understand what this means specifically for your practice, let's have a proper conversation about it. No sales pitch, just an honest look at where you stand with AI search and what you might want to do about it. Book a call or read more about AEO in North Hertfordshire.
Either way, don't ignore this. That 40% drop in enquiries I mentioned? That's not an outlier anymore. That's becoming normal.