Toppe Consulting – Your Source for Digital News & Trends in the Legal Industry

The way people search for legal services has undergone its most significant transformation since Google became the dominant search engine. AI-generated summaries now sit at the top of search results pages, answering questions that used to drive clicks to law firm websites. For small and solo practices that depend on organic search visibility to attract clients, this shift threatens to make them functionally invisible to the people who need them most.

AI Overviews Are Intercepting Your Clients

Google’s AI Overviews launched broadly across the United States in May 2024. Since then, the feature has expanded rapidly. A comprehensive study analyzing more than ten million keywords found that AI Overviews appeared in approximately 16 percent of all U.S. search queries by late 2025, peaking near 25 percent during mid-summer before settling into a range that continues to grow. Informational queries, the exact type of searches that prospective legal clients conduct when researching their options, trigger AI Overviews most frequently. These are searches like “do I need a lawyer for a car accident” or “how does divorce custody work in South Carolina,” and they increasingly receive AI-generated answers that satisfy the user without requiring a single click.

The consequences for law firm websites are measurable and severe. Independent research tracking hundreds of major websites found that zero-click searches, queries where users never visit an external website, grew from 56 percent to 69 percent between May 2024 and May 2025. When AI Overviews appear for a query, click-through rates for organic search results drop dramatically. Independent research conducted throughout 2024 and 2025 documented click-through rate reductions ranging from 34 to 46 percent when AI summaries appeared on search results pages, with informational queries seeing the steepest declines.

The End of Rank and Wait

For the solo practitioner or small firm that spent years building a website and publishing blog posts to attract search traffic, these numbers represent a fundamental threat. The strategy of ranking on page one and waiting for the phone to ring is breaking down. Even firms that maintain strong search rankings find fewer visitors actually clicking through to their sites because AI answers intercept the user before they scroll past the summary.

Understanding Why Small Law Firms Are Losing Clients Before the First Call puts this search visibility crisis into broader context. The firms already struggling with responsiveness now face a compounding problem: fewer people are reaching their websites in the first place. The ones who do arrive represent higher intent, because they chose to click past the AI summary, which makes capturing every single visitor even more critical.

What Still Works and What Has Changed

This does not mean search engine optimization has become irrelevant. It means the nature of effective SEO has changed. Firms that appear as cited sources within AI Overviews actually gain visibility, while those that do not get referenced become invisible. Research indicates that content structured to answer specific questions, backed by genuine expertise and local authority signals, earns citations in AI-generated summaries. Generic practice area pages with thin content and no differentiation are exactly the type of material that AI summaries replace entirely.

Local search remains more resilient than informational search. When someone types “personal injury lawyer near me” or “family attorney in Greenville SC,” Google still presents local map results and business profiles that drive calls and direction requests. Firms that invest in their Google Business Profile, accumulate genuine client reviews, and maintain accurate directory listings across the web retain visibility that purely content-dependent strategies are losing.

The firms navigating this transition successfully share common traits explored in The Digital Divide Between Growing and Shrinking Law Firms Is Getting Wider. They treat their digital presence as a living system that requires ongoing investment rather than a one-time project completed years ago. They produce content that demonstrates genuine legal expertise rather than keyword-stuffed pages designed to game algorithms. And they recognize that the search landscape of 2026 demands professional guidance, not DIY experimentation during billable hours.

Toppe Consulting: Your Partner in Building a Stronger Practice

Toppe Consulting specializes in helping solo practitioners and small law firms stay visible in an increasingly AI-driven search landscape. Our content team, led by a former Fox Business Network producer, creates the authoritative, expertise-driven content that modern search engines reward.

Our Services Include:

• New Law Firm Website Design – Websites built with the structure and content signals that AI search systems recognize and cite
• Search Engine Optimization – SEO strategies adapted for both traditional rankings and AI-driven search visibility

Ready to Stay Visible? Contact Toppe Consulting to discuss how we can help your firm maintain and grow its search presence in the age of AI Overviews.

About the Author

Jim Toppe is the founder of Toppe Consulting, a digital marketing agency specializing in law firms. He holds a Master of Science in Management from Clemson University and teaches Business Law and Marketing at Greenville Technical College. Jim also serves as publisher and editor for South Carolina Manufacturing, a digital magazine. His unique background combines legal knowledge with digital marketing expertise to help attorneys grow their practices through compliant, results-driven strategies.

Works Cited

Garanko, Jana. “Semrush AI Overviews Study: What 2025 SEO Data Tells Us About Google’s Search Shift.” Semrush Blog, Semrush, 15 Dec. 2025, www.semrush.com/blog/semrush-ai-overviews-study/. Accessed 15 Feb. 2026.

Southern, Matt G. “Google AI Overviews Impact on Publishers & How to Adapt Into 2026.” Search Engine Journal, 28 Oct. 2025, www.searchenginejournal.com/impact-of-ai-overviews-how-publishers-need-to-adapt/556843/. Accessed 15 Feb. 2026.

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• Why Small Law Firms Are Losing Clients Before the First Call
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