Something has shifted in how clients find lawyers. Sophisticated clients, including general counsel, C-suite executives, and other high-stakes individuals are increasingly beginning their search for legal representation not with a referral call or a directory, but with a query to an AI system, like ChatGPT. They describe their situation, ask what firms and lawyers might best handle it, and receive a curated answer listing some, but not everyone.
And the attorneys and firms surfaced by the AI engines are not necessarily the largest, the oldest, or the most decorated. They are the ones whose expertise has been made legible to machines.
This article is a joint effort from two disciplines that legal marketers tend to manage separately: public relations and website strategy. Though distinct and designed to achieve different objectives, we argue that the best AI visibility results are achieved when your website and PR efforts work together.
The PR Perspective: Earned Authority as AI Infrastructure
Public relations has always been fundamentally about trust and credibility. Earning recognition from trusted third parties remains tantamount and a tactic that no amount of direct self-promotion can replicate.
Nothing has changed here, even in the wake of the rise of digital search and LLM AI algorithms.
In fact, in the context of AI visibility, that core function turns out to matter more than most communications professionals realize. The signals AI systems rely on most heavily are not website traffic or domain authority scores. They are the breadth and quality of a firm's presence across credible external sources: coverage in respected outlets, attribution of specific expertise to specific attorneys, and the consistent repetition of precise language across a broad web of third-party references.
This means the strategic logic of a PR program must expand. Coverage is no longer valuable only because a target client might read a particular article. Instead, third-party media coverage is most valuable because it adds to a cumulative record that AI systems draw on when forming answers. A well-placed profile in a respected legal or business publication, a quoted commentary in a regulatory roundup, a bylined piece that is widely syndicated—each of these deposits credibility into a reservoir that AI systems access. The depth and consistency of that reservoir is increasingly what separates firms that appear from firms that don't.
The implications for how legal communications programs are designed and evaluated are real. A firm with irregular, broad-reach coverage is building a thin and incoherent signal. A firm with sustained, focused coverage that consistently attributes specific expertise to named attorneys is building something AI can actually use.
What a GEO-Oriented PR Program Looks Like
Reorienting a communications program toward AI visibility doesn't require abandoning what works. It requires adding a layer of intentionality to what already happens. Four priorities stand out:
- Anchor coverage in high-authority outlets. AI systems are not agnostic about source quality. Coverage in established, credible publications carries significantly more weight than equivalent placements in lower-authority venues. Relationships with journalists at outlets that AI systems actively draw from are among the most durable assets a legal communications program can build.
- Make attribution precise and consistent. AI systems learn by pattern recognition across many sources. If an attorney is described as a "regulatory lawyer" in one publication, a "compliance specialist" in another, and a "government enforcement attorney" in a third, those signals do not aggregate cleanly—they fragment. The language used to describe an attorney's expertise needs to be consistent across every channel: earned media, owned content, directory profiles, speaking bios, and social presence. That consistency is what AI reads as coherence.
- Build for accumulation, not spikes. A single strong media moment does not create AI visibility. Sustained coverage over time does. AI systems favor recency and volume of credible mentions together—neither alone is sufficient. PR programs structured around steady cadence, rather than periodic campaign bursts, are better suited to building the kind of signal depth that generative engines recognize.
- Treat narrative accuracy as a standing priority. Because AI can surface stale or incomplete information, firms need to actively monitor how they are described across the sources AI draws on most heavily. When a firm's areas of focus evolve, when attorneys change practice groups, when the firm enters new markets—those changes need to be reflected in the media record, not just the website. Corrections and updates pushed through credible channels shape what AI knows about you.
The Website Perspective: A Digital Presence AI Can Read
Most law firm websites are built for human readers. They present credentials, articulate values, and describe services in language meant to resonate with prospective clients. That matters. But for AI visibility, it is not enough.
When AI systems encounter a law firm website, they are trying to understand what the firm actually does, and for whom, at a level of specificity fine enough to match against the precise language of a user's query. Broad descriptions of the firm as generally capable across many matters are harder for AI to connect to a precise query. Specific, well-supported claims about defined expertise are much easier to map.
This is where many firms run into a basic challenge: they do a lot. They serve multiple industries, solve a wide range of problems, and speak to different audiences. As a result, firm-level messaging often defaults to the safest possible language, which is often too broad for AI to confidently match a specific query.
The good news is that you don’t need the entire firm to be narrowly focused in order to be specific. There are two places where law firms can make precise claims and authoritative claims about what they do and for whom: attorney bios and practice area pages.
Repositioning the Attorney Bio for AI Visibility
The attorney bio has traditionally been treated as a professional credential document. For AI visibility, it now also needs to function as a positioning tool. That means communicating clear, specific claims about what the attorney does and who they serve.
Ideally, that positioning starts in the first sentence, using language a client would actually use to describe their problems. From there, the rest of the bio and its related content should reinforce the claim. That could include representative matters, publications that show how they think, and speaking engagements that signal peer recognition in a defined area.
Why is this so important for AI visibility? The reason is that AI rewards specificity.
Attorneys with a well-defined niche naturally use more precise language, making it easier for AI to match their bios to real client queries.
For example, when someone asks about “the pros and cons of a SPAC versus a traditional IPO,” the lawyer whose bio reflects in-depth SPAC experience is simply easier for AI to identify than a lawyer presented more generally as a securities practitioner.
Practice Area Pages and the Logic of Topical Authority
Practice area pages serve a parallel function to attorney bios. While bios establish individual authority, practice pages establish institutional topical authority, and AI systems evaluate both when generating responses to user queries.
Topical authority matters because it signals that a source not only mentions a subject but also understands it in depth.
A practice area page that simply lists the kinds of matters a group handles does little to strengthen that signal. By contrast, a stronger page makes its focus clear, highlights substantiating content, and uses consistent, specific terminology across the page and related materials. This creates a credible reference point for that area of law that AI systems can learn from and recognize.
The Technical Layer
Positioning and content strategy create the substance AI needs to work with on law firm websites. But there’s one other thing necessary: proper technical infrastructure. This ensures AI can actually access and interpret that substance.
Three areas of your website matter most:
- Foundational technical health. Page speed, semantic HTML structure, clean URL architecture, canonical tags to prevent duplicate content issues, and an accurate XML sitemap are no longer optional. They are the baseline that enables search engines and AI crawlers to efficiently access content. A site that is technically inaccessible to crawlers, regardless of the quality of its content, is functionally invisible.
- Structured data and content relationships. A machine-readable structure allows AI systems to understand what a page is about and how its information connects across the site.
Clear H1 and a logical H2/H3 hierarchy, strong taxonomy, and intentional internal linking all help to make the relationships noticeable. So does schema markup. Schema markup makes the connections unmistakably explicit, giving AI systems stronger evidence to associate specific expertise with the right people, topics, and practices. This is an area where many firms have room to improve, and one of the highest-return technical investments a legal marketing team can make.
- Content formats that AI can extract and cite. Too often, a firm’s best content is buried deep within the site or scattered across disconnected pages. The strongest law firm websites do the opposite. They elevate their most important credibility-building content on the pages where AI systems (and real people!) are most likely to look.
To make that possible, law firm websites need to be crafted with special content formats that are easy for both humans and AI to consume. FAQs, case studies, videos paired with accurate transcripts, and infographics are examples. So are bio and practice area pages designed to have clear headings and a scannable structure. Content teasing that spotlights the most current and relevant posts, matters and insights is another important tool that makes it easier for AI systems to more confidently identify, summarize, and cite information.
Digital Visibility and What It Demands
How can law firms gain greater AI visibility? The answer involves pairing PR and your website to work together because AI looks for patterns, not isolated assertions.
When PR and your website reinforce the same claims of expertise, use the same language, and point to the same attorneys, AI is more likely to see the right patterns. And this allows it to recognize the firm or lawyer as worthy of inclusion in its synthesized recommendation. But that inclusion doesn’t just happen. AI systems weigh a combination of factors, such as
- The credibility of the sources that mention you,
- The consistency with which you are described across those sources,
- The specificity of the expertise attributed to your attorneys,
- The quality of the signals your own website sends about who you are and what you do.
Addressing each of these points requires PR and your website to work in sync. And those firms that can do that are in a much stronger position to send those signals clearly and consistently. That alignment helps establish subject-matter authority and makes it easier for AI systems and real people alike to identify where real expertise resides.
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Kenny Gary is the CEO and founding partner of LIMELIGHT, where he advises law and financial services organizations on growth communications, positioning, and market visibility. Connect with Kenny on LinkedIn and read his thought leadership on JD Supra.
Robert Algeri is a co-founder and partner at Great Jakes, a strategy-first brand and website design agency that helps law firms clarify their positioning and translate it into modern digital experiences. Connect with Robert on LinkedIn and read his thought leadership on JD Supra.
