Most law firms have built their reputation in familiar ways. Recommendations from satisfied clients, publishing satisfaction survey results, strong Google rankings and years of established credibility have all helped firms attract new instructions. Those things still matter, but on their own, they are no longer enough.
The way people search for legal services is changing. Increasingly, potential clients are turning to AI tools such as ChatGPT or reading the AI summaries that now appear at the top of an increasing number of Google search results. In both cases, AI search is beginning to influence which firms make the shortlist before a client has even visited a website.
For years, law firm websites have been written primarily for Google's search algorithms. Marketing teams have focused on keywords, technical SEO and a steady stream of blog content to improve rankings. Those disciplines remain important, but they are no longer the whole story.
AI doesn't read a website in the same way a person does. It is trying to understand what your firm actually does, who you help and whether your content is trustworthy enough to recommend. A page full of generic claims such as "trusted legal advice since 1887" tells AI very little. A page that clearly explains the services you provide, the types of clients you help and the problems you solve gives AI something meaningful to cite and recommend.
So, what does actually impressing AI look like in practice?
It starts with the same instinct good marketers have always had, just aimed differently. Say clearly and specifically what you do. Instead of a services page listing "family law" and "commercial property", spell out that you handle contested probate cases where a will is being challenged, or lease renewals for retail tenants on the high street. AI models are built to extract meaning and match it to a question. Vague copy gives them nothing to match against.
Structured data plays a part too. Schema markup, the code added to a website that tells search engines and AI systems exactly what a page is about, has quietly become one of the most useful tools a firm has for AI visibility. It won't win you a place in Google's search results the way it once did, since Google retired FAQ rich results earlier this year, but it still helps AI systems understand and cite your content accurately. A firm with clean schema on its service pages is handing AI a clear answer. A firm without it is leaving AI to guess.
And then there's the layer most firms still overlook entirely: independent review sites. AI models increasingly take account of trust signals from across the web, not just from a firm's own site. Reviews on Google, Trustpilot and sites like ReviewSolictors all feed into whether an AI system considers a firm credible enough to recommend. A firm with strong, recent reviews across several of these platforms looks trustworthy to a machine in much the same way it would to a person doing their own research.
None of this needs a large budget or a specialist team to get started. A smaller firm with two or three partners can make more progress here than a much bigger one, because the changes needed are about clarity and specificity rather than scale.
Start with the pages that already bring in enquiries. Look at each service page and ask whether it actually says what the firm does, in language a machine could lift and repeat. Replace broad statements with real detail: the kinds of cases handled, the outcomes achieved, the sort of client the firm works best with. This is editing work, not a rebuild, and it can be done a page at a time.
Add schema to those same pages once the copy is right. This is a technical job but not an expensive one. Most website platforms can support it, and a competent developer can add it in a matter of hours rather than days.
Then look outward. Check where the firm currently has reviews and how recent they are. A Google Business Profile with three reviews from 2019 does very little. A steady flow of recent reviews across two or three platforms, gathered as a matter of routine rather than as an occasional push, does a great deal more. It’s often the quickest improvement a firm can make because it relies on better processes rather than new technology.
None of this replaces the fundamentals of good client service, referrals and a solid reputation built over the years. It sits alongside them. What has changed is that every page on your website now has two audiences: potential clients and AI. Increasingly, one influences the other.
The firms that get ahead of this won't be the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. They'll be the ones willing to look at their own website through a different set of eyes and ask a simple question: if a machine were reading this right now, trying to decide whether to recommend us, would it have enough to go on?
If you would like an independent review of your AI visibility and website content to make sure your firm is the one being recommended to prospective clients, get in touch.
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