Can lawyers use AI to write blog posts?
Yes. Rule 7.1 reads the page you published, not the thing that typed it.
A post on your firm’s site is a communication about your services whoever drafted it. Your words, an agency’s, a draft that came back from software: your state’s version of Rule 7.1 asks all three the same question, which is whether it is misleading.
So the question is what does not move when the drafting does. Three things: who answers for the page, what you keep, and what a lawyer does before it goes live. This page is those three.
Draft · What happens at a first custody hearing
A first hearing is shorter than most parents expect and narrower than they want. The judge is deciding what happens before the next date, not how the case ends.
Bring the calendar, the school records and the messages. Most of what moves a temporary order is documentary, and it has to exist beforehand.
Excellent · nothing to fix
Overall 93 · publishable bar 80
Three things do not move, whatever drafted the page.
The name on it is the one on the hook
A bar does not discipline a vendor. It looks at the firm that published the page and the lawyer named on it.
The file does not keep itself
Whether your state sets a retention period or leaves it to you, the copy that answers a question later is the one taken on the day.
A lawyer has to read it
Not the office manager, and not the tool. The reading is the job, so the only thing worth improving is how fast it is.
The work can move. The answering cannot.
Delegating the writing is ordinary. Firms have used associates, paralegals and agencies to prepare marketing for as long as firms have had websites, and the rules on supervising work done for the firm already cover it. Software does not change who supervises whom.
What changes is how finished the draft looks. Four minutes after you ask, you have something that reads as though someone who knew the area wrote it. A draft that looks finished invites a skim, and a skim is not a review. At a solo practice the person who catches that is you, at the end of a day in court.
There is no national clock, which is not the same as no rule.
This is where advisers and doctors have a number to point at and lawyers do not. Nobody federal regulates lawyer advertising. Your state’s highest court adopts the rules, your bar enforces them, and the baseline most states copied sets no retention period at all. Several states set one anyway. A few want certain communications filed with the bar or labelled. The rest leave it to you.
What to keep
- The post as it published, notices included.
- The date it went live, and of any material edit.
- Which lawyer approved that version.
- If a result appears, whether the prior-results notice went with it.
Four lines, two minutes on the day, none of them recoverable afterwards.
What firms have instead
- “It is on the website.” A live page is an editable object. The version a question is about is how it first read, which stopped existing when somebody corrected a figure.
- The draft, not the page. Your not-legal-advice block is rendered by the theme, not typed into the post, so the draft does not show the part that gets asked about.
- The revision history in the CMS. It belongs to the platform, and it leaves when you do, or when a plugin rewrites the page.
- The post, but not the approval. Nothing says a lawyer read it before the person with the login pressed publish.
One copy, taken at publication, filed somewhere that belongs to the firm rather than to a website. It is the only artefact describing how the page was made, and the only one you cannot produce afterwards.
The reading is the only part software can shorten.
The first two are yours and stay yours. The third is a reading job, which is where Verand comes in and the only place it does. It drafts the post, checks the finished page against the rules your bar adopted, marks the sentence that would be a problem, and stops. A lawyer at your firm presses publish. No plan or setting changes that.
Whose law is this?
A model writes a confident average of fifty states. Check every statement is about yours, and says which.
Every legal claim to a primary source
A statute, a rule, an opinion. Current version, jurisdiction named, opened not assumed.
The result sentences, read twice
Anything promising an outcome, inviting one to be inferred, or ranking the firm against others.
Nothing that came out of a file
The details that would make the post good are often the ones you cannot use. Software cannot tell which.
The notices, on the page as it publishes
Not in the draft. A reader sees what the live template renders around the post.
Approve, keep, publish
In that order, by name and date, because afterwards it quietly stops happening.
Four ways a legal draft goes wrong, and where to look first.
An outcome, implied from a past one
You mention a matter that went well, because it did. What comes back arranges it so the reader takes it as what happens to people like them. The blunt version is caught. The one that never says guarantee or promise is yours to catch.
Parents ask what will happen, and after enough of these hearings I can promise a result you will be able to live with.
The blunt one, flagged before anyone else reads it.
A comparison with nothing behind it
Superlatives are what marketing copy is made of, and a model has read a great deal of it. So “one of the leading family firms in the state” arrives in a paragraph about parking at the courthouse. If you cannot name the ranking and its method, it goes.
Detail that should not have left the file
The specifics that would make a post good are usually the ones you are not free to use. Software given your matters cannot tell a public docket from a confidential fact, and reaches for the more vivid one. No check decides this. It is the clearest reason a lawyer reads the draft.
Law that belongs to a different state
Filing windows, fee rules, what a judge actually does on a first appearance: all of it moves across state lines, and a model trained on every state writes the average. The sentence is not wrong anywhere. It is just not right here.
The first two a check catches in their blunt form. The last two are why a lawyer reads the page at all, and why it is worth telling the software where you are admitted, once, in your own words.
One limit, said plainly.
Verand’s attorney rulebook is the generic baseline: the ABA Model Rules on advertising as most states adopted them, over the federal truth-in-advertising floor. Your state’s own version binds you, and states differ on labelling, on filing with the bar and on retention. Those overlays are documented rather than shipped as rulebooks of their own, so anything your bar bans that the baseline does not, you add in Brand Hub and it gates like any other rule. Whether it applies is your counsel’s call.
The four that come up in the first call.
Do I have to say a post was drafted with AI?
The rule asks whether the communication is false or misleading. It does not ask for a byline naming the software. Bars have begun publishing guidance on generative AI, so yours is the place to look. Anything beyond that is your firm’s policy decision.
Who at the firm has to read it before it goes up?
A lawyer. The supervision rules do not distinguish between a paralegal, an agency and a tool: the responsibility sits with the lawyer, and at a solo practice that is you. Someone not admitted can prepare it and press the button. Someone admitted has read it first.
Can I write about a case I actually handled?
Often, and it is usually the best thing on the site. It turns on confidentiality more than advertising: what sits in the public record is one question, what a client agreed to is another, and both are your judgement. Where a result appears, the prior-results notice goes with it.
Could Verand publish for me while I am in court?
No, and there is no setting that would. Verand writes the post, checks it, opens it as a WordPress draft or a pull request, and waits. A connector wired into an assistant cannot publish either, cannot clear a block and cannot delete anything. Hearings run long. The post waits.
Two questions this page leaves to their own pages.
AI content for law firms
What a draft is checked against before anyone can publish it.
/attorneys The testIs a law firm blog attorney advertising?
When a post becomes a communication about your services, and what changes.
/what-counts-as-advertising The checklistWhat your disclaimer has to say
The not-legal-advice block, the prior-results notice, and where each belongs.
/disclaimer-requirementsSources: the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct on advertising, confidentiality and supervision, as your state adopted them. Validated against the ABA Model Rules and the FTC’s truth-in-advertising rules. AI-researched and operator-reviewed. Your counsel confirms applicability. Not legal advice. ABA Model Rules 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 · Model Rule 1.6 · Model Rules 5.1, 5.3 · Model Rule 8.4(e) · FTC Act Section 5
Drafted in minutes. Read like a lawyer.
Seven days, every feature unlocked, one click to cancel. Your first article is drafted during setup, checked against the rules your bar adopted, and then it waits.
No routine, schedule or connector can press publish. That is not a default you can move.