How AI engines choose which law firm to recommend

A client no longer types "estate lawyer near me" into Google and scrolls. They ask ChatGPT for the best estate planning attorney in Coral Gables, they ask Perplexity who handles a construction defect matter in Brickell, and they ask their phone for the top personal injury lawyer near me. Ask all three the same question and you will often get three different firms, because the overlap in the sources these engines trust is surprisingly small.

Why do the engines name different firms?

Because each engine has its own source pool and its own logic for ranking it. A profile ChatGPT trusts may never surface in Perplexity, and a firm that owns Google AI Overviews may be absent from Claude. They are not the same product with a different logo. Treat each as its own channel and the differences become a map instead of a mystery. The good news for a managing partner is that the foundation is shared, so you are not starting five times over. You build one citable, Bar-compliant presence, then tune a few signals per engine.

The compliance point most firms miss

Florida Bar advertising rules and AI visibility pull in the same direction, which surprises most partners. Rule 4-7 bans misleading or unverifiable claims, so the vague superlatives firms love ("we handle complex matters," "aggressive representation," "the best trial lawyers in Miami") are exactly the copy the rule frowns on. They are also the copy AI engines skip, because a model cannot verify or quote them. A specific, Bar-safe statement is the opposite. "We represent physicians in Florida licensing board investigations" is concrete, verifiable, and easy for an engine to cite by name. Results still vary from matter to matter, and saying so keeps you compliant, but precise practice-area facts are what both the Bar and the machines reward.

ChatGPT: authority and a firm it can recognize

ChatGPT leans on authoritative sources, high-ranking pages, and recognized legal directories, and it cites with inline links beneath the answer. For a law firm it rewards a clear firm entity plus profiles it already trusts, meaning Avvo, Justia, Super Lawyers, and Martindale, backed by name, address, and phone that match your Florida Bar registry listing exactly. The lever is that consistency plus credentialed attorney bylines and one clear, quotable answer per page. If the model cannot confirm the firm is a real, licensed entity, it moves to one it can.

Perplexity: recency and an answer up top

Perplexity favors fresh content and recent publications and cites with numbered footnotes. It rewards a strong headline and the key answer in the first paragraph. For a firm that means dated, current content: a post on a new Florida statute, an updated FAQ on the personal injury claim timeline, a page that visibly says when it was last reviewed. The lever is visible publish and updated dates and an answer-first opening line. A firm with excellent but undated evergreen practice pages often underperforms here for no reason other than the missing date that makes it look current.

Claude: depth and source-backed reasoning

Claude prefers long-form, well-structured explainers and surfaces sources inline and at the end of an answer when browsing. It rewards depth over surface and claims that carry their own support. Legal questions play to this strength, because the honest answer to "how is a construction defect claim proven in Florida" is nuanced, and a page that walks through the real steps, cites the governing rule, and stays measured reads as the credible source. The lever is thorough, honest explainers over thin FAQ stubs, which also happens to be the safest way to talk about outcomes under Rule 4-7.

Gemini and Google AI Overviews: the Knowledge Graph and classic legal SEO

The Google surfaces reward what Google has always rewarded, plus structured data. Gemini weights the Google index, Knowledge Graph entities, and the firm profile Google already holds. Google AI Overviews pulls top-ranking organic pages and schema-rich content into source chips. The lever is solid traditional SEO plus complete schema, meaning Attorney, LegalService, Person, and FAQPage markup on the right pages, and a claimed, consistent Google Business Profile and entity footprint. Firms that never did the classic local SEO groundwork tend to be weakest exactly here.

The shared foundation under all five

Read down the last column and the pattern is clear. A clear firm entity, consistent listings, complete schema, and specific, Bar-safe answers help everywhere. After that you are tuning: recency for Perplexity, depth for Claude, Knowledge-Graph identity for the Google engines. None of it is exotic. It is the same firm foundation, made legible to five different readers, and most firms are strong in one or two of these and quietly invisible in the rest.

Where a firm should start

Start where your clients already ask. If your buyers open ChatGPT, the fastest wins are clean directory listings, credentialed bylines, and a specific answer block on each practice-area page. If they compare firms in Perplexity, dates and answer-first openings matter more. Then widen out. The work compounds, because the foundation you build for one engine is most of the work for the next, and a firm that is legible to all five is far harder for a competitor to displace than one that got lucky in a single tool.

Not sure where your firm stands across the five engines today? Run a free AI Visibility Scorecard and see which ones already find, trust, and cite you by name, and which ones skip you.