How to see which law firms ChatGPT recommends in your city

To see which law firms ChatGPT recommends in your city, ask questions that contain a practice area, a city and a client's situation. Use a fresh conversation, save the named firms and cited pages, and record the date and search conditions. Then compare the same questions on Perplexity and Google's AI.

You are checking what those services return for a defined set of questions. A mention does not tell you whether anyone called the firm, and an absent name does not establish that the firm is absent from every possible answer.

Start with the matters your firm accepts

Write five to ten questions using the language a prospective client would use. For a personal-injury practice, a broad question about local lawyers can sit alongside questions about car crashes, truck accidents or another genuine practice focus. A family-law firm needs a different set.

Use the city explicitly. “Who handles car-accident cases in Austin?” is easier to compare over time than a question containing “near me,” where the assumed location can be unclear. If language support or another service is relevant, add a question about it only when it describes something the firm provides.

Leave your firm's name out of the discovery questions. Asking an assistant to evaluate a named firm tests what it says about that firm after being prompted. An unbranded question tests whether the firm appears without that cue. Keep both kinds of research labelled if you do them.

Capture the whole answer

Open a fresh conversation and ask one question at a time. Record whether web search ran. OpenAI's web-search documentation says search results and citations appear when ChatGPT uses web search. An answer without a fresh search should not be labelled as a scan of today's web.

For each returned answer, save the full text, firm names, order of appearance and source links. Add the date, service, question and any visible search or location settings. Keep enough detail that someone else can understand the result without relying on your interpretation.

Repeat on Perplexity and Google using the same wording. If Google does not show an AI Overview, record that outcome. If a request fails, record the failure. Neither is the same as a returned answer that names other firms and omits yours.

Order is worth recording because it is observable. Do not turn it into a claim that the first firm receives most calls unless you have separate evidence about client behaviour.

Compare the firms by service

Our Austin personal-injury study used ten questions on September 27, 2026. Of 30 requested results, 27 answers returned and named 57 firms. Seven firms appeared across all three services somewhere in the test.

FVF Law Firm appeared eight times in ChatGPT, three in Perplexity and zero in the captured Google AI answers. That is a useful example of why “we checked ChatGPT” is a narrower statement than “we checked AI visibility.” It is also a dated sample from one market, not a forecast for your city.

The interactive report lets you choose a question and compare the captured answers. Read the sources alongside the names. A directory cited for one question and a firm website cited for another suggest different pages to inspect.

Turn the result into a specific next task

If your firm appears, check that the description is accurate. If it does not, inspect the sources attached to the answer. Look for factual gaps you can correct: a missing eligible directory profile, an outdated office address, an unclear practice page or inconsistent language-service information.

Being listed on a cited page does not guarantee inclusion. The citation gives you a place to investigate, not proof of why a service chose one name. Use the law-firm AEO guide to turn that investigation into a concrete improvement plan.

For an automated starting point, the law-firm recipe accepts your website or a description of your practice and city. It generates questions and checks up to five across the three services, free while in beta. No account is required; email is optional for the weekly report.

Save the first run before making edits. Use the same question set for the next review so you can compare the answers you received.

Questions

How do I check which law firms ChatGPT recommends locally?

Ask an unbranded question containing the practice area and city in a fresh conversation. Save the answer, named firms, citations, date and search conditions. Repeat with a small, fixed set of relevant client questions.

Should I check services other than ChatGPT?

Yes. Compare the same questions on Perplexity and Google's AI as well. Our Austin sample produced different lists by service, so one answer cannot establish visibility across all three.

Can I check a city other than Austin with AEO Monitor?

Yes. The Austin report is an example. Enter your firm's website or describe your practice and city to generate a question set for your own market. The free beta checks up to five questions across three services.