Be the firm the assistant names.
People now ask ChatGPT which lawyer to call. Speak Local shows whether your firm is the one it names, in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s map, and what to fix when it isn’t.
Free. Up to 25 pages graded across Local, SEO, AEO and GEO, usually in under a minute. No email, no card.
How does a law firm get recommended by ChatGPT and Google?
By being easy to verify and easy to quote. Assistants recommend firms they can confirm: a complete Google Business Profile for each office, recent reviews that describe the work, and the same name, address and phone everywhere. They quote firms whose practice-area pages answer the client’s real question in plain language. Mark the firm up as a LegalService, give every attorney a real bio, let AI crawlers in, and track the questions that bring you cases.
Updated 9 October 2026
What do people ask before they hire a lawyer?
The questions they’d ask in a consultation, put to an assistant first. Six worth tracking:
- Best car accident lawyer in your city
- Do I need a lawyer for a workers’ comp claim in your state?
- Divorce lawyers near me with free consultations
- How much does a DUI lawyer cost in your city?
- Is your firm good for medical malpractice?
- How long do I have to file a personal injury claim in your state?
Examples to adapt, not data. Put the ones that bring you business to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini on a weekly or monthly round, and each answer is recorded: named, cited or absent, with whoever was named in your place. How AI answers are tracked
What do Google and AI assistants weigh for a law firm?
Whether you can be verified, whether your pages answer, who stands behind the advice, and whether the rest of the web agrees.
Practice-area pages that answer the question
A page called “Personal Injury” with three paragraphs of boilerplate gives an assistant nothing to lift. A page that answers what a case is worth, how long the client has to file in your state and what it costs to hire you, in plain words, is a page it can quote.
Attorneys as people, not a logo
Bios with bar admissions, education, practice focus and a photo, and Person schema that ties each lawyer to the firm. Legal advice is held to a higher bar of trust, and a named, credentialed author is how a page clears it.
Reviews with substance
A firm collects far fewer reviews than a coffee shop, so each one carries more weight. Reviews that name the kind of case and how the firm handled it, in the client’s own words, are the ones an assistant can summarize.
Directories that agree with you
Legal directories and your bar profile are among the pages an assistant can read about you. One that still lists an old address, or a lawyer who left, argues with your own site.
Which schema should a law firm use?
LegalService, one per office. schema.org deprecated its Attorney type in favor of LegalService, which it calls more inclusive and less ambiguous. Give each office its own @id, address, phone and hours, and describe your attorneys as Person.
Speak Local’s scanner reads LegalService, and every other schema.org LocalBusiness type, as entity schema on your homepage.
knowsAboutfor the practice areas you takeareaServedfor the counties or cities you coversameAsfor your bar and directory profilesPersonwithjobTitleandalumniOffor each attorney
Check it with Google’s Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator before it goes live.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "LegalService",
"@id": "https://www.example.com/#downtown-office",
"name": "Example Law Group",
"url": "https://www.example.com/",
"telephone": "+1-555-0100",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "100 Example Street",
"addressLocality": "Your City",
"addressRegion": "ST",
"postalCode": "00000",
"addressCountry": "US"
},
"areaServed": ["Your County", "Neighboring County"],
"knowsAbout": [
"Car accidents",
"Workers' compensation",
"Medical malpractice"
],
"sameAs": [
"https://www.example-directory.com/example-law-group"
],
"employee": [
{
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Test Attorney",
"jobTitle": "Managing partner",
"alumniOf": "Example Law School"
}
]
}Where should a law firm start?
In roughly this order: the first fixes are quick, and they unblock everything after them.
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Let the AI crawlers in
Firewalls, CDNs and security plugins can block GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot without anyone deciding to. If they can’t fetch your pages, nothing else on this list reaches them.
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Make the name, address and phone agree
Especially after a merger, a rename or an office move. Your site, every Business Profile and the main directories should all say the same thing.
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Rewrite your top three practice-area pages answer-first
Lead with the direct answer, put the client’s questions in the headings, and use your state’s actual rules and deadlines rather than generalities.
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Give every attorney a real bio
Credentials, focus and a photo, with Person schema linking each attorney to the firm.
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Track the questions that bring cases
Five questions on the Local plan, asked every week, show whether the work is moving the answers.
How does Speak Local help a law firm?
Every plan includes all of it. See the full platform for how the pillars combine into one score.
Asked and answered.
Can a law firm pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?
Do advertising and confidentiality rules apply to our website and review replies?
We have offices in three cities. Do we need three Business Profiles?
Should every practice area have its own page?
How long until a firm sees a change?
See where a law firm like yours stands.
Audit, score, fix and monitor how you show up in Google and in AI answers.