Law Firm AI Visibility Checker

Potential clients increasingly ask AI assistants whom to call, how a legal process works, and what information they should consider before hiring a lawyer. A firm can appear in a traditional search result yet be missing from an AI-generated shortlist, or its website can be cited as a source without the firm being recommended. This free law firm AI visibility checker helps you examine those differences across Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.

The tool is a guided, evidence-based audit. You run consistent prompts in each service and record what you observe. It does not claim to access private platform data, automatically search those products, or predict their algorithms. Complete all 30 checks to get a useful comparison; 25 unbranded prompts create the score and five branded prompts evaluate identity accuracy separately.

What Does AI Visibility Mean for a Law Firm?

AI visibility describes whether an AI answer identifies a firm, recommends it for a relevant need, or links to its website as a source. Those outcomes differ. A cited article may help a prospective client learn about an issue without naming its author as a choice of counsel. A mention might include a firm in a broad list. A recommendation is a more direct suggestion to investigate the firm, but it is not proof that a prospective client will call or retain it.

This checker records four distinct signals: firm mention, recommendation, direct citation of the firm’s domain, and accuracy of the answer. It also records absence after an actual test. An untested prompt is never treated as a failed result. Responses can change with the prompt, location, model, account, and test date.

How to Use the AI Visibility Checker

Enter your firm and market

Enter the firm’s public-facing name, city and state, principal practice area, and domain. If the practice covers several specialties or offices, run a separate audit for each meaningful practice-and-market combination. A family law firm in Chicago should not combine its divorce results with personal injury results in a different city and then describe the blended number as one reliable visibility metric.

Run the same prompts across five products

Open each platform in a new tab, start a fresh conversation, copy a prompt, and inspect the response. Keep the market and wording consistent. Use web search where the product offers it, and avoid giving the system your firm’s name during the five unbranded checks. The five prompt types cover a local shortlist, a legal problem, a process question, cost and choice, and a firm comparison. These prompts sample plausible research paths.

The sixth prompt names the firm directly and asks the product to verify its website, location, practice area, and attorneys. It is a diagnostic for entity accuracy. It does not affect the main visibility score: asking specifically about your firm can make visibility appear stronger than it is when a prospective client has never heard of you.

Record the result and evidence

For each prompt, mark whether the firm was absent, mentioned, or recommended. Mark a firm citation only if the response visibly links to the firm’s own website. Enter the linked page URL to receive citation credit; the checker verifies that it matches the firm domain you entered. Review any details about office location, attorneys, services, and legal claims; mark material inaccuracies when they could mislead a prospective client. Save results as JSON for later comparison or download a CSV summary. Entries stay in this tab unless saved locally; the tool does not transmit them to us.

How the Visibility Score Works

Each tested unbranded prompt earns one point for a mention, one additional point for a recommendation, one for a direct firm-domain citation, and one for accurate information when the firm appears. That is a maximum of four points per prompt. The score is earned points divided by four times the number of unbranded prompts actually tested, multiplied by 100. The complete benchmark uses 25 prompts, for 100 possible points across five platforms.

A firm that appears accurately in five tested answers, is recommended in two, and has its website cited in three receives 15 of 20 possible points, or 75/100 for those five tests. This is a measurement convention created for this tool. It is not an official score from Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, or Perplexity. Before all 25 unbranded prompts are checked, the overall result is labeled provisional and shows the number completed. A small sample may be highly unstable, even if its arithmetic is correct.

The branded prompt is excluded from the calculation. Its result still matters: a wrong office address, misidentified lawyer, or invented practice area can undermine trust even when the firm is easy to find by name.

Understand Each Platform Separately

Google AI Mode

Google AI Mode is part of Google Search, with links to supporting sites. Google says ordinary Search fundamentals remain relevant for eligibility: pages need to be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet, and there are no special technical requirements solely for AI Mode. Check relevant pages in Search Console, and compare this manual prompt test with Google’s dedicated Search Generative AI performance reports, which report exposure in Google’s generative search features. A manually observed recommendation and a site impression in Search Console are related but different measures.

Gemini

Gemini is a separate Google product and should be tested separately from AI Mode. Google’s Gemini Apps help says responses sometimes show sources and related links, while some answers provide none. If Gemini mentions your firm without linking to it, record a mention rather than a citation. A link to a third-party directory that describes your firm is evidence about that directory, not a direct citation of your own domain.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance reports citations across supported Microsoft AI experiences, including Copilot. It can show cited pages and trends, but aggregated citation counts do not tell you that a particular prompt recommended your firm. Pair that report with manual response checks. Verify your site’s Bing indexing and confirm public business details are accurate where clients may encounter them.

ChatGPT

Test ChatGPT in a context where web search is available and inspect the actual linked sources in the answer. OpenAI advises publishers to permit OAI-SearchBot if they want their content eligible for search summaries and citations. Allowing a crawler is not a guarantee of inclusion. Also look at referral traffic and downstream inquiries; a citation that never sends visitors is still a different outcome from a retained client.

Perplexity

Perplexity often shows source links, so note whether the linked page is the firm’s website, a directory, a news article, or another party’s content. Perplexity publishes crawler and robots.txt guidance for site owners. Check whether important public pages are available to its retrieval systems, while recognizing that crawl access alone cannot force an answer to mention your firm.

What to Do When the Firm Is Missing

First, verify the basics: important practice pages are indexable, contain substantive text, have descriptive titles and headings, and are linked from the rest of the website. Review whether service-area pages clearly explain what the attorneys actually do for clients in that location. Google says existing search fundamentals apply to its AI features; it does not prescribe a special AI-only file or a fixed content length. Publishing many interchangeable city pages solely to capture prompts is unlikely to make the content more useful.

Next, examine the sources that appear when your firm does not. They may reveal a missing explanation, a strong competing attorney biography, more specific local information, or an authoritative external source on a legal question. Improve pages with accurate jurisdiction-specific analysis, clear attorney experience, useful examples, current facts, and accessible contact details. Correct inconsistent firm names and locations across major profiles. For legal content, a reader should be able to tell who wrote or reviewed it and whether it applies to the correct state.

Finally, confirm the answer is wrong before trying to fix it. A firm may be absent because the question does not match its practice, location, or qualifications. The objective is to represent the firm’s real services clearly, not to manipulate an assistant into suggesting an unsuitable lawyer.

Measure Business Impact Beyond the Score

Repeat the same prompt set monthly or quarterly, keeping the date, platform, location, and prompt wording with each audit. Save the JSON export so later changes can be compared against the same baseline. Repeat important prompts across sessions and document variation. One screenshot is evidence of one response, not an estimate of how often all users see the firm.

Compare the audit with Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, referral analytics, call tracking, and intake records. Ask new leads how they found the firm, but recognize that self-reported sources can be incomplete. Track qualified consultations and signed matters, not simply AI mentions. Keep any personally identifiable client information out of your exported audit files. Use the score to prioritize investigation, then use real inquiries and retained clients to assess marketing value.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the checker automatically scan five AI platforms?

No. It generates consistent prompts and scores the results you manually record. Live automated checks would require separate platform access and ongoing integration, and may not reflect what a prospective client sees in a normal interface.

Is Google AI Mode the same as Gemini?

No. Both are Google products, but their interfaces, answer behavior, and source displays differ. Run the same test in each rather than assuming a result in one applies to the other.

Why are branded prompts excluded from the score?

A response to “Tell me about [firm]” shows whether a product understands the named business. It does not measure whether the firm appears when a client asks for a lawyer without already knowing its name.

What counts as a citation?

Count a citation when the answer visibly links to a page on the firm’s own domain. A text-only mention or a link to a legal directory is not a direct firm-site citation. Record the URL so another reviewer can check it.

Can a law firm have a good score and still receive no clients?

Yes. The score measures observed answers in a small prompt set. Actual client acquisition depends on relevance, geography, intake, reputation, user behavior, and many other factors. Compare it with consultations and signed cases.

How often should we repeat the audit?

Monthly or quarterly is reasonable for a fixed set of important prompts. Repeat after major website or business-profile changes, and keep the original prompt wording to make comparisons meaningful.

Do we need special AI schema or an llms.txt file?

Google does not require special markup to appear in AI Mode. Structured data can describe a business when it matches visible content, but neither markup nor a text file guarantees citations across these products.

Why is the score provisional?

Until all 25 unbranded prompts are tested, the score describes only the subset you completed. Untested prompts are excluded from the denominator. The report displays coverage to prevent a high score from one or two favorable answers being mistaken for comprehensive visibility.

Can the audit replace Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools?

No. Those services can provide broader site-level performance information for supported features. This audit documents exact prompt-level observations and separates mentions, recommendations, citations, and answer accuracy.

Build a Stronger Presence Across AI Search

An audit is useful when it leads to specific improvements: clearer practice content, accurate attorney information, reliable local signals, technically accessible pages, and better measurement of qualified inquiries. Forward Lawyer Marketing helps law firms turn those findings into a coordinated content, SEO, and conversion strategy. Contact Forward Lawyer Marketing or call (888) 590-9687 to discuss your firm’s AI visibility and the clients you want to reach.