AI visibility for lawyers: the name in the answer and the facts beside it

What does AI visibility mean for a law firm?

Two things, read from the same answer. The first is the name: whether the firm appears when a person who has never hired a lawyer asks about one matter in one place, sometimes with a condition added, such as "a DUI lawyer who appears in [county] court" or "an estate planning attorney in [town] who does a flat fee for a will". The overview for law firms explains why those questions carry a matter, a place and a term, and what the firm's pages have to state for each. This page is about reading the answers.

The second is what the answer says about the firm once it has named it. A caller acts on those sentences: that the first consultation is free, that a particular attorney takes DUI cases, that the firm appears in the county where the case will be heard, that it works on contingency. Each one was a fact about the firm on the day somebody wrote it down, and that day may have been years ago.

When a firm changes, every page that described the old state has to change with it, and only some of those pages belong to the firm. An attorney can move to another firm while an old bio stays up somewhere. A consultation policy can change on the site and not on a directory profile written years earlier. An answer written with web search on can repeat whatever a fetched page still says, and one written from training data can repeat what a page said before the data stopped. Either way the old fact can reach a caller.

Named, recommended or first: where the lines fall for a law firm

Every answer can be read for three verdicts: whether the firm is named, whether it is put forward as a choice for the person asking (an AI recommendation), and whether it comes first. The method on our methodology page records the first and the third. For a law firm, some answers sit close to the lines. Decide those cases once, in writing, before the first reading, so that whoever reads the answers in March records them the way they were read in January.

The visibility score the methodology page sets out takes only the first verdict: the share of the twelve questions in which the firm was named, from 0 to 100, with no weights. Nothing in the rest of this page changes the score. The columns below record whether the answer that named the firm was right about it, which a score was never built to show.

A panel where each line changes one part of the question

A panel is most useful to a law firm when each line differs from another line in one part only: the matter, the place or the term. Then a difference in the answers has one suspect. If the custody line for [County A] names the firm and the same line for [County B] does not, look at what the firm's pages say about [County B]. If both counties name the firm and the line that adds a payment plan does not, the term is the part to look at.

The template below is for a firm with family and criminal defense practices serving two counties. Fill the brackets once. After that the wording stays fixed, because a reworded line starts a new series instead of continuing the old one; setting up prompt monitoring explains that rule and the panel file that holds the lines.

Lines 1 to 8 test whether the firm reaches the shortlist for someone who does not know its name. Lines 9 and 10 hand the answer the name, so they cannot test the shortlist. They are where the facts show most plainly: what an answer says the first consultation costs, and how it says an attorney charges.

A firm with more practice areas repeats the pattern: an anchor line for each practice area in its main county, then a line for each other county and for each term its callers raise. Each line adds twelve answers a month, four assistants at three runs each, so the panel should stop at the size someone will still read in full. A solo practice in one county may need no more than six lines.

What to write down beside each verdict

Every answer gets the record the prompt monitoring article sets out: the three verdicts, each other firm named, and the full answer pasted in with its date, assistant and run. A law firm adds four columns, because an answer can get the firm's name right and the facts attached to it wrong.

line:            [1 to 10], wording unchanged
assistant:       [ChatGPT | Claude | Gemini | Perplexity], run [1 | 2 | 3]
date:            [YYYY-MM-DD]
named:           [yes | no]
recommended:     [yes | no]
first:           [yes | no]
matter, county:  asked [matter], [county]; answer gave [matter], [county or none]
attorney:        [name or none]; practices at the firm on this date: [yes | no | never did]
consultation:    answer "[words]"; site today "[words]"; [same | differs]
fee basis:       answer "[words]"; site today "[words]"; [same | differs]
claims attached: "[words]" or none; on the firm's own pages: [yes | no]
others named:    [firm], [firm]
answer:          (pasted in full, unedited)

The matter and county column holds what the answer tied the firm to, in the answer's own words, beside what the line asked. A custody line answered with the firm's name for divorce, or for a county the firm no longer covers, has named the firm and sent the caller to the wrong door. Read across months, this column shows which matters and counties the answers attach to the firm, which the verdicts alone never show.

The attorney column lists each lawyer the answer names with the firm, and whether that lawyer practices there on the date of the reading: yes, no, or never did. A lawyer who has left can stay attached to the firm for as long as some page still says so: an old bio, a directory profile, a news item about the hire. A lawyer who never worked there points to a mix-up with another firm or a hallucination.

The consultation and fee columns set the answer's words beside the site's: "free first consultation" against a contact page that says the first meeting costs [amount], "contingency" against a practice page that bills the matter hourly, a figure the firm has never published. Hold the answer against the site as it reads on the day of the reading, with the page open, because a comparison made from memory is only as current as the memory.

The claims column holds any word the answer attached that the firm would not use about itself: "top", "best", "specialist", "expert", or a result such as a verdict or a settlement. Note whether the words appear anywhere on the firm's own pages. A claim that is there came from the firm; one that is not was written somewhere else. Both cases go to the firm's review routine, which has a part for each.

What the columns show over several months

The score says whether the firm is named more or less often than before. The columns list what the answers get wrong about the firm, and that list should get shorter as the firm corrects the pages behind it. An attorney still attached to the firm three months after the site's roster changed means the old connection is written somewhere other than the site, or the answer was written from training data older than the change. When one assistant keeps misstating a fee basis that the others state correctly, open the pages that assistant cites and look for the old wording.

The first month is a baseline, not a verdict on the firm. The only reading of answers at scale that this site has published is the probe in our audit of 9,483 small business websites: one buyer question each for 9,240 businesses, put to Claude with web retrieval on, late August to early September 2026, which named 14.9% of them. That covers all 40 trades with no law firm cut, one assistant and one day. It shows a direction, and it is no benchmark for a firm's first month.

A firm without a panel yet can take a first look in one afternoon, and how often the AI recommends your law firm describes that check. The panel is what turns a first look into a series: the same lines, read every month.