AI Search Visibility for a Law Firm
Law firm AI search visibility / GEO case study: rebuilt firm and attorney entity, practice-area schema, and legal citations to grow prospective-client mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
Halberd & Cline Law
A Chicago based mid-market law firm on a custom site delivering employment, commercial litigation, and estate work. Strong local reputation and referrals, near-zero presence in AI answer surfaces where prospective clients were increasingly researching counsel.
Industry
Law Firm
Focus
AI SEO & GEO
The Challenge
The site had thin Organization + LegalService schema, weak Person + Attorney schema for the partners, inconsistent citations across legal directories, no structured practice-area content, and no monitoring across AI engines clients were using.
Halberd & Cline Law
Well-known through referrals, invisible when the same clients asked ChatGPT which firm to call first.
The Strategy
Fixed the firm + attorney entity schema
Rebuilt Organization, LegalService, Person, and Attorney schema across the custom site so every partner, every practice area, and every case-result summary parsed consistently, and cleaned Martindale, Avvo, Justia, and Google Knowledge Graph entries to match.
Earned authoritative citations in legal publications
Placed partner-authored commentary in independent legal publications, bar-association resources, and industry-specific outlets AI engines cite, standardising firm name, city, and practice-area framing everywhere.
Restructured practice-area content for AI extraction
Rewrote practice-area pages, 'do I need a lawyer for X' pages, and partner bios around clean definitional first paragraphs, FAQ blocks, and short evidence tables reviewed by the firm's partners so ChatGPT could quote them verbatim.
Set up monitoring across AI engines
Instrumented weekly tracking of 26 real prospective-client prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, with share-of-voice comparison against the top 8 competing mid-market Chicago firms.
(ChatGPT)
Halberd & Cline Law
- —No firm mention in shortlist
- —Sources: 4 competing firms
- —Partners not surfaced by name
- —No AI Overview coverage
(ChatGPT)
Halberd & Cline Law
- ✓Cited in top 5 shortlist
- ✓Named partners surfaced with credentials
- ✓Practice-area framing quoted verbatim
- ✓Also cited in Google AI Overview
AI answer mockup - ILLUSTRATIVE ChatGPT answer to 'best mid-market employment litigation firm in Chicago' now cites Halberd & Cline Law.
Keyword Movement
| Keyword | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| best employment lawyer chicago mid market | not cited | cited (ChatGPT + Perplexity) |
| commercial litigation firm chicago | not cited | cited (ChatGPT + Gemini) |
| do i need a lawyer for a non compete illinois | cited (1 engine) | cited (4 engines) |
| estate planning attorney chicago | not cited | cited (Google AI Overview) |
Representative results based on comparable engagements.
Ethics rules briefly stalled every practice-area rewrite.
Illinois legal ethics rules limit how firms describe results and testimonials, and the first draft of the practice-area pages triggered internal counsel objections. I rewrote every page inside a proper ethics framework with the firm's general counsel, added a canonical disclaimer, and got the pages live inside six weeks with no compliance issues.
Referrals still bring us most of our work, but the number of new clients who arrive citing an AI answer has gone from zero to something we now track weekly.
Client name changed for privacy.
Ready to be the next case study?
Book a consultation with me on Upwork.
I'll personally scope your project before any engagement. No account managers, no hand-offs.
First audit call is free, no commitment.
What happens next
Typical engagement: 4-6 months. First deliverable in week 1: an AI-visibility audit across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews for your top 20 buyer prompts, with a prioritised entity, schema, and citation plan.