Ed. note: Please welcome Josh Anisfeld, chief digital strategist of Baretz+Brunelle, to the pages of Above the Law. In this new series, he and his colleagues at B+B will share their thoughts on trends they’re seeing across the legal industry. Check out the prior editions here and here.

For years, legal marketing was predictable. Someone with a legal question searched on Google, and if a firm did its job with SEO, they earned a click to the website. Looking for recommendations on legal representation directed them to Chambers or other ranking sites. Researching a lawyer or firm was a time-consuming task, sifting through profiles, media stories, biographies, and other sites which bubbled up to the top of the search results. Despite ongoing algorithmic changes to Google, SEO was a proven marketing strategy no matter what the searcher asked.

We live in the zero-click world where machines provide the answers before site results, even in the coveted #1 spot, are seen. AI visibility (sometimes called GEO or AEO) is no longer new. Many firms are trying to figure it out, and most are defaulting to a single strategy of adding technical elements to their websites and pumping out more content. But while AI algorithms keep changing, what will stay true is that AI visibility is not a single-strategy problem. There are three separate paths firms need to explore and prioritize to be included in answers and recommendations, and to proactively shape their own story and reputation. These three paths are directly tied to how legal service buyers now use AI engines.

The Expertise Path

It starts with a legal question. Maybe someone wants to know about the right of publicity statutes in California. In the past, a solid page on the website with all the SEO bells and whistles rewarded the firm with a top result. Now, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or any number of AI engines can give that answer before a search result is ever seen. Ahrefs found that the presence of an AI Overview correlated with a 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page.

Visibility on this path comes in two forms: a citation, where the firm is the source behind the answer, credited in a footnote or a link at the bottom, or a direct mention, where your firm or a lawyer is mentioned directly inside the answer itself. Both count. The second is worth more, since the reader picks up your name without having to click anything. There’s actually a third outcome firms tend to overlook, which is that your content shapes the answer and nobody hears about it. That happens constantly. The engine reads your alert, uses what it learned, and moves on. No traffic, no credit, and no way for you to know it happened.

Getting into those answers starts with deciding which questions you want to own. Not broad practice areas, but the questions clients ask before they know they need a lawyer. Run a focused set through the engines and see what comes back. Then rewrite with the answer up front. Original analysis beats another summary of the same decision, especially when it publishes while the issue is still live. Site structure and markup help, though less than some vendors claim. What you need from your lawyers is a point of view worth quoting. Marketing can handle much of the rest, which makes this the most manageable path.

The Recommendation Path

This path starts when the buyer asks who should handle the matter. They may want an intellectual property lawyer in Chicago or a firm with experience in cross-border investigations. The engine is not explaining the law anymore. It is building a shortlist, using signals such as directories, rankings, outside coverage, and what lawyers publish under their own names.

That matters because a firm can be excluded before anyone reaches its website. An InterCore study found that a legal directory was the first-cited source in 77.8% of 1,620 Perplexity Sonar answers to high-intent legal hiring queries. The study focused on consumer practices, so it should not be treated as a proxy for how general counsel choose firms for complex corporate work. Even so, it shows how much third-party sources can shape the list.

The work on this path happens largely outside the firm’s website. Rankings and legal directories need to support the position the firm wants to own, which means treating submissions and profiles as ongoing reputation assets rather than annual chores. Earned media matters for the same reason. AI engines often rely on outside validation when deciding which firms or lawyers belong in a recommendation, so visible commentary in respected publications can carry more weight than another self-published page. Marketing can coordinate that effort, but it takes sustained participation from the lawyers and practices the firm wants the market to recognize.

The Validation Path

This path starts after the buyer already has a name in mind. It may be a lawyer, a practice group, or the firm itself. The engine is no longer building the shortlist. It is checking whether the option in front of the buyer holds up.

This path matters because conflicting public information can weaken trust before the firm ever knows it was being considered. A firm may describe a practice one way on its website and another way in a directory. A lawyer’s LinkedIn profile may emphasize work that barely appears in the firm bio. Each source may be accurate on its own, but together they can produce an incomplete or confusing picture.

Start by comparing how your priority lawyers and practices are described across the channels buyers are most likely to encounter. The language does not need to match word for word, but the underlying facts and positioning should agree. Fix outdated listings, clarify where descriptions conflict, and assign someone to keep the information current. Marketing can coordinate the work, but validation reaches beyond marketing because no single department controls the full public record.

Your Approach Should Be Based on Priorities and Real Questions

Instead of trying to boost AI visibility everywhere at once, firms should focus first on the practices and lawyers most essential to their growth. From there, they can determine the questions buyers are likely to ask about these areas.

This distinction is important. Many law firms focus on what they want to communicate, rather than considering what buyers actually want to know. AI responds to specific prompts, not marketing schedules. If a firm hasn’t identified the right questions, it can’t guide the answers.

Marketing teams should collaborate closely with leadership and practice heads to develop targeted prompts for each key area. These should be rooted in the real prompts potential clients are using to answer their legal questions or evaluate and research firms and lawyers.

There won’t be a single solution. Some prompts might uncover gaps in content or show that the firm is missing from referral sources or is inconsistently represented online. By focusing on buyer questions, firms turn AI visibility from a vague goal into specific, actionable issues they can solve.

The Greatest Risk is Solving the Wrong Problem

The real risk is feeling confident about the wrong things. Repeatedly, law firms have fallen into the trap of creating and publishing what they think buyers want to know instead of giving buyers what they are asking for. That approach now has real consequences because of how legal buyers are using AI. Your firm can either keep going down that path with simplified, one-size-fits-all solutions, or take the time to do it right. Showing up more often is not the goal. Showing up when the buyer’s opinion and decision are being shaped is.

Josh Anisfeld is chief digital strategist at Baretz+Brunelle, a growth advisory firm to the world’s preeminent businesses in the legal industry.

The post Law Firms Don’t Have One AI Visibility Problem. They Have Three. appeared first on Above the Law.