AI is reshaping everything. Newsrooms are leaner. Lawyers can publish directly to LinkedIn, Substack, podcasts and their own websites. Anyone can create polished content in seconds.
It’s easy to look at all of that and conclude that traditional public relations is becoming less relevant. I think the opposite is happening.
PR is entering a golden age.
Not because media relations is suddenly easier. It isn’t. Not because every old PR tactic will survive. They won’t. PR matters more because we are moving into an environment where content is unlimited, but credibility is not.
Anyone can publish. Anyone can call themselves an expert. AI can produce thousands of passable words about virtually any subject. What it can’t manufacture is independent evidence that someone actually knows what they are talking about. At the same time, people are more skeptical of what they read and where it came from. This makes credible signals more valuable.
For law firms, that evidence comes from a respected journalist quoting a lawyer; a publication covering a significant case; an industry organization inviting a lawyer to speak; a meaningful ranking; or an authoritative source citing the lawyer’s analysis. Earned media is only one of those signals, but it still carries more weight than almost any other.
The future of PR isn’t about getting attention; it’s about building proof of authority.
Content Is Getting Cheaper. Credibility Is Getting More Valuable.
For years, law firms were told they needed to become publishers. Create more articles. Post more frequently. Build your social channels. Start a podcast. Send a newsletter. Develop thought leadership. Much of that advice still holds, but creating content is no longer the hard part. AI has made it extraordinarily easy to produce more of it. The result is an internet filled with largely interchangeable content.
That creates a different problem: Why should anyone believe you?
A law firm can say on its website that its lawyers are leaders in their field. A lawyer can share their thoughts and analysis on LinkedIn. The firm can repeat those claims in a proposal or biography. All of that is worth doing, but it is still the firm talking about itself.
When a respected reporter calls that lawyer for insight, a credible publication covers the firm’s work, or an industry organization asks that lawyer to speak, someone else has decided that the lawyer’s expertise is worth paying attention to. The flood of owned content won’t kill earned media. It will make real third-party validation stand out even more.
Law firms should resist the pressure to produce more simply because they can. If more content means weaker content, publish less. One article with a real point of view is worth more than five pieces that any lawyer at any firm could have written. AI should raise the bar for thought leadership, not lower it.
A Media Placement Is No Longer the End Product
Law firms still tend to treat media coverage as a destination. You pitch a story. The lawyer gets quoted. The article runs. Everyone circulates the link. Maybe it gets added to the website. Success.
That thinking leaves most of the value on the table. A significant verdict can become media coverage, social content, a speaking proposal, an award submission, a lawyer bio update, a client alert and a business development credential. An attorney quoted repeatedly on one issue begins to own that issue.
And now there is another audience to consider: AI. People increasingly ask AI the questions they once typed into Google or asked a colleague. Those tools pull from and cite sources across the web as they build answers. That means the footprint around a lawyer’s expertise now matters to machines as much as to people.
That is a significant shift. A media placement may be read today, shared on LinkedIn tomorrow and continue contributing to a lawyer’s digital authority long after the original article has disappeared from everyone’s feed.
This doesn’t mean publishing hundreds of keyword-stuffed articles in hopes of gaming an algorithm. It means building the kind of authority that deserves to be found: strong media coverage, original analysis, clear lawyer biographies, consistent expertise, reputable third-party mentions, and content that actually answers the questions people are asking.
PR has always been about shaping what people know about you before you enter the room. Today, the first thing evaluating you may not be a person at all.
Stop Pretending Impressions Measure Reputation
PR measurement has always been tricky, but law firms shouldn’t accept meaningless numbers. A report showing 900,000 impressions sounds impressive. But the better questions are: did the coverage reach the audiences that matter? Did the firm gain visibility in a primary market? Did a lawyer get attention on the practice or topic they want to be known for?
AI-generated answers, zero-click searches, social algorithms, bots, crawlers and fragmented media consumption make impressions and other PR metrics even less meaningful. That does not mean PR cannot be measured. It means visibility isn’t the same as attribution.
A sophisticated law firm PR program tracks the quality and relevance of media coverage, repeat journalist engagement, growth in authority around priority topics, speaking invitations, rankings traction, search visibility, referral conversations and case inquiries. Most importantly, it tracks whether the right lawyers are becoming known for the right things. Some of those outcomes are trackable. Others compound.
A prospect may encounter a lawyer quoted in a story, see them again on LinkedIn, notice the firm’s name in a ranking, hear them speak at a conference and eventually call six months later. Which touchpoint “caused” the business?
That is usually the wrong question. Reputation is cumulative, and it should be measured that way.
AI Will Do More of PR. That Doesn’t Mean It Will Replace PR
People tend to talk about AI in extremes. Either AI will transform everything, or nothing meaningful will change. Both miss the point. AI will become embedded in PR. It already helps with research, media monitoring, transcript analysis, first drafts, identifying trends, understanding large sets of information and accelerating work that once took hours. Five years from now, we won’t even call most of that “using AI.” It will just be how the work gets done.
The more interesting question is what becomes valuable when everyone has the same tools. Our answer: judgment, taste, relationships and a real point of view.
AI can identify a reporter who covers an issue. It cannot replicate a relationship built over years. It can draft a response to breaking news. It cannot judge whether a lawyer should comment in the first place. It can suggest 20 pitch angles. It can’t tell which one helps build the reputation the firm actually wants. It can produce a perfectly good article. It cannot manufacture the experience behind a genuinely interesting opinion.
For law firms, those distinctions matter even more. Confidentiality, accuracy and professional responsibility still apply when AI enters the process. The ABA’s guidance on generative AI makes clear that lawyers’ existing ethical obligations do not disappear because a new tool is involved.
We use AI to make the mechanical parts of the job faster, but faster is not the same as smarter. The point of AI should be to create more room for thinking, relationships and judgment, not to eliminate them.
We Are Going to Have a Human Premium
All this automation (and the global pandemic) has people craving things that feel human. We all already recognize when you are speaking with an AI customer service bot, or reading generic AI content. It may even say all the right things, and then you forget it five seconds later. That creates a premium on genuine expertise, specificity, personality and point of view.
Lawyers who are willing to say something interesting, and who can explain complicated issues like an actual person, will stand out. So will firms with a recognizable voice instead of the same sanitized thought leadership as everyone else. And PR professionals who understand people (reporters, lawyers, clients) will become more valuable.
The human touch is not some nostalgic defense against technology. It is becoming a competitive advantage precisely because technology is making everything else easier to replicate.
The Fundamentals Aren’t Going Away
Whenever technology changes, there is a temptation to declare everything that came before it dead. The internet was supposed to kill the press release. Social media was supposed to eliminate the need for traditional media. Brands becoming publishers were supposed to remove the gatekeepers. Now AI is supposed to upend the entire information ecosystem.
The channels absolutely change. Behavior changes. The tactics have to evolve. But the underlying problem PR solves is remarkably durable: Who should I trust? Who actually knows what they are talking about? Whose name do I remember when I need help?
The future of public relations for law firms will not be about chasing every new platform, producing the most content or generating the biggest impression number. It will be about building real authority and making sure the evidence of that authority shows up wherever clients, referral sources, journalists and the technology they use go looking.
AI will change how the work gets done. It will change how people discover information. It will almost certainly change how reputation is measured, but it will not make credibility easier to manufacture.
That is exactly why PR’s next era may be its most important yet.
