To get your law firm recommended by AI, publish a plain-language guide for each question clients ask about your practice areas in your city, and put your attorneys, offices and contact details on your site where ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity can read them. Then ask those questions again after the guides go live and check whether the assistants name your firm.
People now ask an assistant the questions they used to ask a friend. "Do I need a lawyer after a car accident in Austin?" "How much does a divorce lawyer cost in Austin?" The answer names a few firms, and it names them from what the assistant can read. A firm has one more thing to get right: your state bar's advertising rules apply to what the firm publishes, so every page has to follow them.
How AI assistants decide which firm to name
An assistant answers in one of two ways. It answers from the web, by searching when someone asks and reading the pages it finds. Or it answers from its memory, from what its model learned in training. Either way, it can only name a firm it can read about: your own site, and the other places your firm is described, such as legal directories and review sites.
For a legal question, an assistant needs to find five facts about a firm:
- What you handle. Each practice area, named the way clients name it.
- Where you practice. Your offices and the courts and counties you serve, in words.
- Who your attorneys are. A page for each attorney, with their role and admissions.
- How to reach you. A phone number and a way to book a consultation.
- What clients say. Reviews it can find and point to.
Your website is the one place you control all five. When the directories that list you agree with your site, an assistant has one version of the firm to repeat.
The advertising rules come first
Rankli writes for law firms under extra rules. Its scorer refuses three kinds of sentence in a firm's article, and a draft that contains one does not publish:
- A promise about the result of a case. Pages describe the process and the choices a client has, never the outcome.
- A claim to be a specialist or an expert. State bars restrict both words, so Rankli refuses them about a firm and its lawyers.
- A case result or a recovery. Real results carry their own disclosure rules and are never a writer's to state.
Every article Rankli writes for a law firm ends with this line: "Attorney advertising. This article is general information, not legal advice." The scorer checks that the line is there before the article can publish.
This guide explains how Rankli handles those rules. It is not legal advice, and your own state bar's rules decide what your firm may publish.
How to get your law firm recommended by AI
Five steps, in order. Each one removes a guess from the next.
Step 1: List the questions clients ask
Write down the questions a client asks before they know your firm's name. Legal questions have a shape: a practice area, a place and a situation. Say your firm handles personal injury and family law in Austin. Rankli drafts a firm's questions from shapes like these:
- "Which personal injury law firms in Austin offer a free consultation?"
- "Do I need a lawyer for a car accident claim?"
- "What should I do after a car accident in Austin?"
- "How does divorce work in Austin, and how long does it take?"
- "How much does a divorce lawyer cost in Austin?"
- "[your firm] reviews: is this law firm any good?"
Aim for 10 to 20 questions across your practice areas. That is enough to see a pattern and few enough to track by hand.
Step 2: Ask the assistants and write down which firms they name
Ask each question in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, the way a client would, with the city in it. For each answer, record whether your firm was named, which firms were named instead, which pages were linked and the date.
Ask each question more than once, on different days. Answers change from one ask to the next. A firm named in most of your asks holds that question. A firm named once is noise.
The questions where another firm is named and yours is not are the questions you are losing. They are your list for step 4.
Step 3: Put your firm's facts where AI can read them
Inside the app, Rankli's readiness check for a law firm reads your homepage and the pages it links to, such as contact, about and attorneys. It looks for six things. You can check them yourself.
Labels that tell AI your address, hours and phone. Your site can carry labels that state the firm's type, address, phone and hours in a form software reads directly. Developers call this LegalService structured data.
Your name, address and phone, printed and matching. The same details on every page, matching those labels and your directory listings.
A way to call or book from the homepage. A phone number and a consultation link in the page text.
Reviews an assistant can find. A link from your site to where clients review you.
A page for each attorney. Each attorney's name and job title, marked up so software can read them. List admissions and education as plain facts. If an attorney holds a certification your bar recognizes, name it and the body that granted it.
A page per practice area, linked from the homepage. One page for each area you handle, reachable in one click.
Then check the settings that let AI visit your site. Rankli's free check reads your robots.txt settings for each assistant's visitors by name, and the words an assistant can see on your pages. It asks no AI assistant anything, so it is free and needs no account. To see which firms ChatGPT names for your practice area and city, run the free AI visibility checker for law firms.
Step 4: Publish a practice-area guide for each question you are losing
For each question you are losing, publish one guide that answers it in plain language. Rankli plans three kinds of guide for a firm:
- Practice-area guides. "Personal injury claims in Austin: how they work and what to expect."
- "What to do after" guides. "The first steps after a car accident in Austin: what to do, and what to avoid."
- Local cost guides. "How much a divorce lawyer costs in Austin, and how fees work."
Put the answer to the question in the first two sentences. Explain the process, the documents a client should gather and how fee arrangements work in general. Name the city and the courts you serve. Add your phone number and consultation link. End with the attorney-advertising line.
A guide like this helps a client before they call anyone. That is also what makes it worth quoting.
Step 5: Ask again after the guides go live
A week after a guide goes live, ask its question again in each assistant, a few times, and compare with step 2. Then ask once more a week later.
Two checks after publishing, set against the answers from before, show whether the guide changed anything. Rankli runs the same schedule: 7 and 14 days after an article goes live, it asks the article's question again, 3 times on each assistant your plan tracks, and shows before and after on the article.
What to leave off a firm's pages
Superlatives about the firm. Skip words that rank your firm above others. Let the facts do that work: practice areas, attorneys, offices and reviews.
Promises and results. Describe how a matter proceeds and what choices a client has. Leave the outcomes out.
Offices you do not staff. A page that claims an office in a town where nobody works gives an assistant a false fact to repeat.
Facts that drift. An old phone number or a former attorney still listed on a directory gives an assistant two versions of your firm.
Judging on one answer. Ask each question several times, on different days, before you decide where you stand.
How Rankli runs these steps for a law firm
Rankli runs this loop every week, in four steps:
- Ask. Every week, Rankli asks ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions your customers ask. Perplexity too, on Scale and Agency.
- See what you're losing. You see each question where AI recommends someone else, and who it picks instead.
- Publish the answers. Rankli writes an article aimed at each question you're losing and publishes it to WordPress, Webflow, Shopify or the other connected platforms.
- Re-ask and show what moved. 7 and 14 days after each article goes live, Rankli asks its questions again and shows you before and after.
For a law firm, Rankli drafts questions with your practice areas and city in them, writes practice-area guides, "what to do after" guides and local cost guides under the advertising rules above, and ends each one with the attorney-advertising line. You can set every article to wait for your review before it publishes. Rankli for law firms shows the setup, and the questions and articles in each plan are on the pricing page.
Rankli starts with a 7-day free trial. A card starts it, and starting it runs your first analysis: your questions put to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, with the ones you are losing listed. On day 8 it becomes your plan unless you cancel, which is one click in the app. Cancel during the trial and nothing is charged.
Questions
What do AI assistants look for in a law firm?
Practice areas, offices, attorneys and contact details they can read on your site and match with other sources. Rankli's readiness check for a law firm looks for a page per practice area and a page for each attorney with their name and job title.
Can a law firm publish articles drafted with AI?
The firm answers for what it publishes, whoever drafts it, so every page should pass the firm's own review. Rankli checks each law firm article for outcome promises, specialist claims and case results, and can hold every article for your review before it publishes.
Why is AI naming other firms and not mine?
Check three things: whether the assistant can read your site, whether a page answers the question, and whether your facts agree everywhere. Rankli's readiness check shows what stops AI reading your site, and its weekly questions show which answers name another firm.
Which assistants does Rankli ask?
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini on every plan, and Perplexity on Scale and Agency. Rankli asks each one your clients' questions with its web search turned on and records which firms it names.