By Julie Bays, OBA Management Assistance Program Director

Lately I have been having more conversations with lawyers who are worried that their website “just isn’t working like it used to.” They are not imagining it.

The way people search for lawyers is changing, and it is changing because the way people search for anything is changing.

Annette Choti recently wrote a piece on law firm marketing trends for 2026 that really hit on something important. Not because it lists tools or tactics, but because it explains the why behind what many of us are already noticing: traditional Google search behavior is no longer the whole story.

Two of her points really stood out to me.

First, search is evolving into what she calls AI answer engines. People are no longer just typing keywords into Google and scrolling through blue links. They are asking questions in ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Siri and Alexa. They are asking with full sentences. They are asking very specific questions. And they are expecting a direct answer, not a list of websites.

That changes everything about how a law firm is “found.”

These tools do not rank websites the same way Google did for years. They pull from content that clearly answers questions, from trusted sources, from sites that demonstrate real authority. If your website is built around “We are a full-service law firm serving the greater metro area,” you are invisible to this kind of search. If your website answers real client questions in plain language, you are suddenly much more visible.

Second, voice search is no longer a novelty. People are talking to their phones, their cars, and their home devices. And when they speak, they do not use the same language they type. They ask, “What do I do if my employer won’t pay me?” not “wage claim attorney Oklahoma City.”

That means the content on law firm websites needs to sound more like how clients talk and less like how lawyers title practice areas.

These two shifts together explain why some lawyers feel like their marketing stopped working. It did not stop working. The environment around it has changed.

Annette’s article goes on to discuss several other trends that are worth a read, but these two points alone are enough to make most of us rethink how we describe our services online and how we structure the content on our firm websites.

Read the full trend report by Annette Choti: Law Firm Marketing Trends 2026: 10 Essential Strategies at Attorney at Work.