A few months ago, Colorado Legal Group published a page targeting Air Force families in Colorado Springs facing custody cases. It included video, in-depth legal analysis specific to military custody law, client reviews from people who had been in that exact situation, and a recommendation from Google. It was not a practice area overview. It was not a listicle. It was a piece of content built for one specific group of people facing one specific problem.

That page is a good example of what Google now calls non-commodity content. And in my experience running marketing for family law firms, it is also one of the rarest things you will find on a law firm website.

What Google Actually Said

Google’s AI Optimization Guide, the official documentation on how to succeed in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and other generative search features, draws a clear line between commodity and non-commodity content.

Commodity content is something like “5 Things to Know Before Filing for Divorce”: common knowledge anyone could produce, adding no unique insight. Non-commodity content is something like “How We Protected a Business Owner’s Partnership Interest During a Colorado Divorce”: specific, experience-backed, and impossible to replicate without actually having handled the case.

This is not a new position for Google. In February 2023, Google formalized the E-E-A-T framework: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The addition of “Experience” was deliberate: Google was signaling that first-hand, lived knowledge carries weight that claimed expertise does not. A page written by a practicing attorney who has handled military custody modifications in Colorado carries a fundamentally different signal than a page written about the topic from the outside.

Read Google’s full guidance on AI-generated content here and our blog What is E-E-A-T and YMYL for Divorce Law Firms?

Why Most Agencies Keep Producing Commodity Content

I want to be honest about this because I think it gets glossed over. Most agencies continue producing generic law firm content for two reasons.

The first is that it is easy. Basic research, a content framework, and minor editing is all it takes and AI writing tools have made that workflow faster and cheaper than ever. There is no friction, no expertise required, and no difficult conversations with clients.

The second reason is harder to talk about: extracting genuinely useful content from attorneys is difficult. Many attorneys are cautious, sometimes overly cautious, about ethical considerations around discussing case outcomes publicly. That hesitation is understandable. But when content is developed correctly with the right framing and appropriate anonymization where needed, those concerns largely disappear. Most agencies simply do not want to do the work of navigating that conversation.

We do that work because our co-founder is a practicing attorney who has spent 30 years navigating it himself.

The David Crum Difference

US Legal Group’s CEO David Crum is not a consultant who read a book about family law. He is an attorney who literally wrote the book on it and currently runs four active law firms. Author of Confessions of a Divorce Assassin, he tells the story of how a single case transformed him from a win-at-all-costs litigator into an attorney who leads with collaboration and the long-term wellbeing of families.

This is an example of non-commodity content going back to 2016. That is not something an AI writing tool, a content farm, or a general marketing agency can replicate. And it is exactly what Google’s E-E-A-T framework is designed to identify and reward.

That mentality is what makes US Legal Marketing Group’s content different than other agencies. We speak and work with attorneys every day. When we write about how a Texas judge approaches business valuation in a high-asset divorce, or what happens when a military parent seeks a custody modification during a deployment cycle, we are drawing on the actual work of a practicing attorney who has handled those situations.

A Different Approach to Keyword Planning

Most content agencies start with a keyword tool. They find terms with search volume, plug them into a content framework, and produce pages designed to rank. The result is predictable: generic content that looks like every other firm’s generic content, optimized for terms that every competitor is also targeting.

Our process runs in the opposite direction now. We start with the cases the firm actually wins, the specific client situations, case patterns, and outcomes that define what that firm is genuinely good at. Then we find the keyword intersection: the search queries that map to those situations. The content brief is built around the case type, not the keyword.

This matters because the people searching for legal help are not searching for generic terms. They are searching for their situation. “How does a Colorado court divide a business in a divorce” is a fundamentally different search than “Colorado divorce attorney.” The first query has lower volume and higher intent. A page that answers it from real case experience will outperform a generic practice area page on both rankings and conversions. (Practice area pages are still the pillar pages for your website though.)

It also means the content we produce tends to align naturally with the queries that AI systems surface. The uncontested divorce page that earned 26 AI citations was not built around search volume, it was built around a process that Colorado Legal Group’s attorneys actually walk clients through.

What This Looks Like in Practice

We created a page all about custody for Air Force families in Colorado Springs. A very niche topic but one that is very relevant for an ideal family law client of Colorado Legal Group. We provided a real-world example from a previous client needing modification due to a permanent change of station order to base across the country. Both client and attorney perspectives were included making this one-of-one content.

Another is CLG’s “How to File an Uncontested Divorce in Colorado,” a detailed, process-driven piece built around the real steps, forms, and legal requirements specific to Colorado courts. According to Semrush’s AI Visibility data, that single page is currently cited in 26 different AI prompts for queries like “Colorado uncontested divorce forms,” “filing for divorce Colorado,” “how do you get a divorce in Colorado,” and “cheap divorce Colorado.” Across all platforms, Colorado Legal Group now has 96 pages cited in AI-generated responses.

The Intake Impact Nobody Talks About

Non-commodity, case-study-driven content does not just improve search visibility. It changes what happens on the intake call.

When a prospective client calls after reading a page written specifically for their situation, an Air Force parent facing a custody dispute, a spouse worried about how a business will be divided, they arrive already assured. They know the firm has helped people in circumstances like theirs. The fear and skepticism that characterizes most first contact with a law firm is reduced before the conversation even begins.

And when a lead is attributed to a specific page, the intake team member handling that call knows exactly what brought the person in. They know the pain points. They know the questions that person is likely carrying. They can speak with confidence and specificity from the first sentence.

That is a different conversation than the one that starts with “How can I help you?” and 20 minutes of open-ended discovery.

The Window Is Closing

Most law firm websites still publish commodity content. That is a shrinking window for firms willing to invest in content built on actual legal experience.

Google’s AI features are increasingly the first stop for people who are starting to research their legal situation, not yet ready to call a lawyer, but looking for credible information about what they are facing. The firms whose content gets cited at that moment are the ones building relationships before a competitor even knows the prospect exists.

The Air Force families page, the uncontested divorce guide, the business valuation explainer, these are not just service pages, FAQs, or blog posts. They are positioning assets. And they compound over time in ways that generic content never will. US Legal Marketing Group can you help you be that firm, schedule a free consultation.