In short
Law firms get named by AI assistants when services, prices, team and regulation are clear. How the SRA transparency rules help and what to fix first.
Law firms get recommended by AI assistants when those tools can find clear, checkable facts about them: the legal services they offer, who does the work, what it costs, where they act and how they're regulated. SRA-regulated firms already publish much of this under the SRA Transparency Rules. The firms that turn it into plain answers on their own pages, and keep the same details everywhere they appear, are the ones ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews can describe with confidence.
The raw material is there for any regulated firm. The work is setting it out the way an AI tool reads it.
Are people asking AI tools for legal help?
Ofcom's figures show AI answers are now part of everyday search. Its Online Nation 2025 report, published in December 2025, found that about 30% of searches now show AI overviews and that 53% of adults say they see those summaries often. It also counted 1.8 billion UK visits to ChatGPT in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million a year earlier.
Legal questions describe a situation rather than a search term: what conveyancing costs and how long it takes, or how debt recovery works for a claim of a given size. An AI answer to a question like that names a handful of firms with a reason for each.
What does an AI assistant need to know before naming a law firm?
It needs to match each part of the question to something your firm has written down. A legal question can carry several conditions: the area of law, the location, the cost, how long it will take and whether the firm has done this kind of matter before.
So the facts that count are:
- A separate page for each service you want clients for, not one page listing every practice area.
- Where you act, and whether you work with clients remotely.
- Prices or price ranges, with what's included and what isn't.
- Who does the work, with their experience and qualifications.
- The same firm name, address and phone number on your site, your Google Business Profile and every directory.
Independent reviews and mentions round it off, so your own website isn't the only place those facts appear.
How do the SRA transparency rules help?
They make firms publish the facts a client's question turns on. Under the SRA Transparency Rules, explained in the SRA's guidance on transparency in price and service (first published in October 2018, last updated in September 2024), firms must publish price information for set services. For members of the public, those are residential conveyancing, uncontested probate where all assets are in the UK, summary-only motoring offences, employment tribunal claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal, and immigration work excluding asylum applications. For businesses, they are debt recovery up to £100,000, defending unfair or wrongful dismissal claims, and licensing applications for business premises.
For those services, firms have to publish what the price includes, what isn't included that a client might reasonably expect, typical timescales and key stages, and the experience and qualifications of the people doing the work. Price information must be published in a prominent place on your website, with a clear statement of whether prices include VAT.
Read that list again as an AI tool would. It is a ready-made answer to "how much does conveyancing cost, how long does it take and who will handle it?" The firms that publish it as plain text on each service page, rather than in a single downloadable document, give AI tools the material to recommend them.
Why do some law firms never get mentioned?
The causes we find are technical and fixable. Access is the first: OpenAI's publishers and developers FAQ says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search and advises site owners to make sure its OAI-SearchBot crawler isn't blocked.
Other firms bury the facts. Every practice area sits on one long page, prices live in a downloadable file and team profiles say "experienced" without saying in what. Some trade under slightly different names on their website, their Business Profile and the legal directories, so a tool can't be sure they're all the same firm. And some have no independent mentions at all, which leaves an AI tool with only the firm's own word to go on.
None of this needs a new website. It needs the facts the firm already holds set out where AI tools can read them.
What should a law firm do first?
Start by finding out where you stand. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google the questions your clients ask, for each service and each town you cover, and note who gets named, how they're described and which sources the answers lean on. Our guide on checking whether AI assistants recommend your business shows how to run those tests.
Then fix the pages behind the gaps: one page per service, with the SRA price and service information in plain text, the team's experience stated and the same details across every listing. Our page on GEO for solicitors and law firms sets out how we run that work every week. If you'd rather start with an independent view, our GEO audit checks how ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews describe your firm, compares you with competing firms and sets out what to fix first. You get a report with prioritised fixes and a walkthrough call, and there's no ongoing contract.
Frequently asked questions
Should every practice area have its own page?
Yes. A single page listing every area of law can't answer a specific question about one of them. A page per service, with its price, timescale and team, gives an AI tool a direct match.
Which law firm services must show prices on the website?
Under the SRA Transparency Rules: for the public, residential conveyancing, uncontested probate where all assets are in the UK, summary-only motoring offences, employment tribunal claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal and immigration excluding asylum. For businesses, debt recovery up to £100,000, defending unfair or wrongful dismissal claims and licensing applications for business premises.
How long does it take for AI tools to start mentioning a firm?
It depends on how quickly crawlers revisit your pages and how much independent evidence exists about your firm. We test the same questions every month so you can see the change as it happens.
Does GEO for a law firm replace SEO?
No. The same pages and listings serve Google's results and AI answers, which is why we run SEO and GEO together every week inside the Growth Engine, at £1,499 a month + VAT on a 12-month term.
Find out what AI tools say about your firm
Want to know whether ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews name your firm today? Call us on +44 1382 699595 or ask about a GEO audit.
