- April 30th 2026
- Blog,Content,Content Strategy,SEO,SEO News,SEO Strategy
Getting Found Online: The New Way Clients Find Solicitors with AI Search
Quick Takeaway
AI search tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google AI Overviews are changing where clients start their search for legal services. To stay visible, your firm needs to combine strong traditional SEO with Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) — structuring content clearly, building third-party authority, and answering the questions clients are already asking AI. This article explains what’s changing, what the data shows, and what your firm should do next.
If you’ve noticed that your website is generating fewer enquiries in 2025 and 2026, you’re not imagining it, and you’re certainly not alone. Acquiring new legal clients online is genuinely harder than it was just three years ago, and the reason isn’t that people have stopped looking for solicitors. It’s that the way they’re looking has changed.
It’s true that most people searching for a solicitor still begin online. But what ‘online’ means is no longer simply a list of ten blue links on Google. It’s an AI-generated summary at the top of the page, a conversation with ChatGPT, or a set of recommendations from Copilot. AI search for solicitors is now a real behaviour shift, not passing trend.
We don’t want to spread panic about SEO being dead, because it isn’t. Instead we want to give you the data, explain what Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) actually means in practice, and point you towards the steps that will keep your firm visible as search continues to evolve.
The challenge of finding new clients in 2026
Traffic is down, making leads cost more. And the clicks that do come through don’t always convert.
The concept driving this experience is zero-click search. When a potential client types ‘employment solicitor near me’ or ‘how do I contest a will’ into Google, they increasingly get their answer straight from an AI overview at the top of the page. They don’t need to click. Your content may have answered their question perfectly, but your website never saw the visit.
The numbers behind this are admittedly unnerving, with the Guardian reporting that sites ranked below an AI Overview can lose up to 79% of their traffic. For paid search, the situation is equally unforgiving, since paying for clicks that now sit below an AI summary causes your cost-per-lead to rise even as volume falls.
Then there’s the visibility gap. Fewer than 15% of law firms are currently sourced in AI-generated search results (RankOS, 2025). That means the overwhelming majority of firms, possibly including yours, are entirely absent from the discovery channel that clients are increasingly using.
Like any other part of life, though, change isn’t terrible news if you navigate, adapt and evolve. The firms that appear in AI results aren’t there by accident, they’ve earned that visibility, and you can too.
What’s actually changing in search?
Before we talk about what to do, it helps to understand the scale and shape of the change in how discovery works (with added data!)
Traditional search isn’t dead. As of 2025, 87% of people still use Google to help decide which law firm to hire. That’s a significant majority, and it means that solid SEO foundations remain essential. Google has not been abandoned.
AI is now firmly part of the research journey. Looking at figures from the end of 2025, we can see that 28% of consumers now use ChatGPT to research solicitors and ChatGPT held 70% of AI search share, handling approximately 2.5 billion queries daily. These figures are only going to go up.
As far as consumers are concerned, they’re experiencing a dual journey. Your potential client might ask ChatGPT whether they have grounds for constructive dismissal, receive a summary answer that mentions two or three firms by name, and then they search for one of those firms on Google to check their reviews before picking up the phone. If your firm wasn’t cited in the AI answer (even without a link), you were never in contention.
The click data reinforces this. When AI summaries appear in search results, users click traditional results only 8% of the time, compared with 15% when no summary is shown. Combined with Gartner’s prediction of a 25% decline in traditional search engine volume by the end of 2026, it’s clear that we need to do something on top of our core SEO.
It’s all about focussing on how to utilise the positives, and they’re to be found in click quality. Firms that are cited within AI Overviews experience 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid search clicks from the same queries. Fewer clicks overall, but dramatically higher quality. The mathematics of legal marketing are shifting from volume to relevance.
Comparing traditional SEO to GEO
| Traditional SEO | GEO (AI Search Optimisation) |
|---|---|
| Rank for keywords | Be cited in AI-generated answers |
| Optimise for Google’s algorithm | Optimise for LLM trust signals |
| Backlinks for authority | Third-party validation + peer recognition |
| Keyword density matters | Natural language and Q&A format |
| 10 blue links per page | 3–4 cited sources per AI query |
| Traffic volume is the metric | Conversion rate is more important |
| Focus on clicks | Focus on visibility |
Best practices: How to get your firm found on AI
This is the practical core of what needs to change, and none of it requires you to become a technical expert. It does require consistency, clarity, and a willingness to think about your content from your client’s perspective.
What are the questions clients are actually asking?
AI models are built to answer questions. So your content needs to answer questions clearly, directly, and at the very start of each section rather than buried at the end of several paragraphs of explanation.
Think about the questions your clients actually ask when they first pick up the phone. Questions like:
- ‘How long does conveyancing take?’
- ‘Do I need a solicitor for probate?’
- ‘What does no win no fee actually mean?’
- ‘How much does a divorce cost?’
- ‘Can I claim unfair dismissal if I’ve only been employed for six months?’
Each of those questions is a piece of content waiting to be written. And if you answer it directly, plainly, and helpfully, you’re giving an AI model exactly the kind of citable response it’s looking for.
Build your authority signals
AI tools have been designed to prioritise high authority sources. This isn’t just about your website and its backlinks, it’s about how your brand appears across the entire web.
For UK law firms, the most powerful authority signals include your Law Society membership, Lexcel accreditation, and Chambers or Legal 500 rankings. These translate as peer reviewed recognition, and AI models treat them accordingly. They prove that your firm has been verified by sources that other sources trust. So make sure these signals are visible.
Beyond formal rankings, Google reviews matter more than ever. AI models read review sentiment. A firm with 80 detailed, positive reviews is a far more trustworthy citation than one with none, regardless of how good the website looks. Encourage clients to leave reviews, respond to every one of them, and treat your Google Business Profile as an ongoing resource, not a listing.
Author bios with credentials on every piece of published content also matter. An article on employment law that’s attributed to a named, qualified solicitor or professional writer with a verifiable profile is far more citable than an anonymous piece. This is one of those things that feels like small detail but makes a significant difference.
The return of traditional PR
While we’ve all been building backlinks as standard as part of traditional SEO, at Leapfrog we’re predicting a resurgence of PR as a vital activity for building trusted visibility for solicitors across online sources (read our legal case study here). Work to get your firm’s news stories, opinions, and brand to appear in multiple high authority sources such as news sites and online industry publications. This supports your visibility across all AI queries.
And don’t overlook reputation beyond your own content: mentions in Reddit threads, industry forums, and Glassdoor all feed AI training data. Your presence across the wider web matters more than it used to.
Structure your content for AI
AI crawlers love structure. Not because they’re lazy, but because clear structure makes content easier to extract and cite, which is exactly what they need to do when answering a user’s question.
Use a consistent heading hierarchy (H1 to H2 to H3 never skipping a level). Use tables and bullet points for comparisons and lists rather than burying the same information in dense paragraphs. Add FAQPage, Article, and LegalService schema markup to signal to AI crawlers what type of content each page contains.
One practical step that’s often overlooked is to install an llms.txt file on your website. This is a simple text file that tells AI crawlers which parts of your site are most useful and how to navigate your content.
Don’t Neglect Local Search
A lot of legal services are inherently local. A solicitor in Lincoln cannot always help someone in Bristol, and AI models understand geography. Local visibility remains as important as ever, and AI models use Google Business Profile and Maps to inform their answers.
Keep your NAP data (name, address, phone number) consistent across every directory, your Google Business Profile, and your website. When a user asks ChatGPT or Copilot for a conveyancing solicitor in a specific town, the AI draws from the same local signals that Google uses. Your Google Business Profile accuracy and local content pages (‘conveyancing solicitor in [town]’) remain entirely relevant.
Leap on GEO opportunities with Leapfrog
People facing legal problems want clear answers and someone they can trust. That hasn’t changed. What’s changed is the first step in their journey. When those with fewer clicks are now converting at up to 400% higher rates, it’s clear that investing in GEO alongside SEO is the obvious evolution to your legal marketing strategy.
Maintain solid SEO foundations. Layer in GEO best practices. Invest in the third-party authority signals that AI trusts. And treat your website as a destination worth visiting, not just a page that ranks. At Leapfrog, we’ve been navigating these changes and refining our expertise to help you in exactly these things.
If you’d like to add GEO to your marketing repertoire and get back to receiving online sales leads from your website, get in touch to have a conversation.
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