AI is recommending law firms to clients every day. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity to suggest a solicitor for a dispute, an acquisition or a divorce, a handful of firms get named and the rest stay invisible. Known & Cited measures exactly where AI sends those clients, why some firms appear, and how to change the answer so yours is cited.
A client rarely types "best law firm" any more. They describe their problem. "Who should I use for a shareholder dispute in Manchester?" "Which firms handle cross-border data claims?" "I need an employment solicitor for a settlement agreement, who is good?" The AI answers in prose, names two or three firms, and moves on.
Those answers are built from what the engine can read about you. ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity pull from your practice-area pages, legal directories, ranked listings, press coverage, reported judgments and the commentary your partners publish. If your firm is described clearly and consistently across those sources, you get named. If your site talks about "full-service excellence" and nothing specific, you do not.
Legal is a high-trust, high-value purchase, so the engines lean heavily on third-party signals. A firm with strong directory recognition and bylined thought leadership will often beat a larger firm that has left its reputation to word of mouth. Being well known offline is not the same as being legible to an AI. See why AI visibility matters for the wider shift.
Three things decide whether your firm is named, and they map to the three dimensions Known & Cited scores in every AI Visibility Strategy.
Most firms are strong on one dimension and weak on another. The score shows you which, so you fix the right thing rather than publishing more content into a gap that was never the issue.
We run your firm through the three engines that matter: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. We build a prompt set specific to legal buyers, covering your practice areas, your jurisdiction, your sector specialisms and the comparison questions clients ask when they are choosing between firms.
Every result is scored on the same 0 to 100 scale and placed in one of five bands: Ghost (0 to 10), Whisper (11 to 30), Emerging (31 to 50), Cited (51 to 75) and Known and Cited (76 to 100). You see your band per engine and per practice area, so a firm that is Cited for corporate work but a Whisper for private client knows exactly where the gap is.
Behind the score sits our 12-pillar framework, weighted across AI Visibility (40%), Source Quality (30%) and Narrative Fit (30%). The full method, including how we design prompt sets and verify citations, is set out on our methodology page. You can also see a worked example on see it in action.
Every engagement starts with a free Exec Brief. We run a focused set of legal prompts across the three engines, score your current standing, and show you which practice areas the AI already names you for and where you are invisible. There is no charge and no obligation. You can request one from start.
If the Exec Brief shows a gap worth closing, you move to a full AI Visibility Strategy on the cadence that fits your firm: Annual, Bi-Annual or Quarterly. Each is bespoke priced against the number of practice areas, jurisdictions and competitors you want tracked. A multi-office firm tracking a dozen practice areas needs a wider run than a single specialist boutique.
You receive a scored report, the specific prompts and citations behind it, a competitor view, and a prioritised list of what to change to move your bands up. Then we re-measure on your chosen cadence so you can see the score move rather than guess. Be Known. Be Cited.
Book an AVS Exec Brief: a real, one-off measurement of how ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity talk about your business right now. Same methodology as the full AI Visibility Strategy, delivered manually, free of charge. Annual, Bi-Annual and Quarterly cadences are bespoke priced.
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