If you missed the live session, this page covers what was discussed, the key arguments, and the practical steps recommended for firms that want to be found — and recommended — in an AI-mediated search environment.
What the session was about
Search is no longer a single channel with a single gatekeeper. For twenty years, being visible to prospective clients essentially meant ranking in Google. That assumption is now breaking down. Prospective clients are increasingly asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude to recommend a firm, and are acting on the answer without ever reaching a search results page.
This webinar examined what that shift means practically: why organic traffic is falling for firms that have done nothing wrong, which signals AI platforms appear to weigh when deciding who to name, and what a firm should do first, second and third to influence those signals.
The examples used were legal-specific, though the underlying principles apply across professional services.
The starting point: most of your future clients are not in market today
The session opened by challenging a common assumption — that marketing should be built around people ready to instruct now.
Research from Professor John Dawes at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, published in 2021 as the 95:5 rule, suggests that at any given moment roughly 5% of buyers in a category are actively in market. Dawes used legal services as one of his own examples: organisations change their principal bank or law firm around once every five years, meaning only a small fraction are shopping in any given quarter. Dawes has noted that the practical implication is that advertising works mainly by building and refreshing memory links to a brand, which activate later when the buyer does come into market.
Most firms spend their entire budget chasing the 5% and ignore the 95%. That is a defensible short-term choice — but it is also why so many firms feel they are permanently renting attention rather than owning it.
The six channels — and where AEO fits
Six growth levers were mapped, sitting underneath the broader goal of brand salience:
| Lever | What it does | Primarily reaches |
|---|---|---|
| Brand awareness | Builds mental availability over years | The 95% |
| Organic SEO | Owns practice-area and location keywords | The 5% |
| Organic AEO | Wins the AI recommendation | Both |
| Paid ads | Captures active demand immediately | The 5% |
| Social media | Credibility check, not a lead engine | Mixed |
| Referrals | Still the strongest source for most practices | The 5% |
Brand salience — drawing on the work of Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute — was described as the panacea: the position where a firm's name is the one that surfaces unprompted when someone realises they have a legal problem. It rests on three things: mental availability, distinctive brand assets, and brand authenticity (you have to be able to live up to the promise). It is built through consistency over years, and it is very hard to dislodge once a competitor holds it.
The session then focused on one lever in detail: AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation.
Why traffic is falling: the zero-click problem
Firms across the client base are seeing traffic decline without any drop in rankings. The cause is interception. When someone searches "family lawyer Brisbane," the first thing they now encounter is often an AI-generated summary rather than a list of links.
The data supports what the analytics are showing. Pew Research Center analysed the browsing behaviour of 900 US adults across nearly 69,000 Google searches in March 2025 and found that users clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% where one did not. Clicks on the sources cited inside the summary occurred in just 1% of visits. Users were also more likely to end their session entirely.
The practical consequence: the lead may never enter your ecosystem at all — not through organic, not through ads — because the decision was made upstream.
This is also driving the observed increase in Google Ads spend across the market, as firms compete for a shrinking pool of clicks. Ads still work; they simply cost more to achieve the same result.
What actually drives an AI recommendation
There is no single lever. What the analysis across the client base shows is a set of signals that accumulate. Three real examples were discussed:
- Accreditation. A Parramatta compensation practice was named as the best in its area primarily because its lawyers held Accredited Specialist status with the Law Society of NSW. Accreditation is not a measure of quality — but it is a verifiable, third-party credential, and the models weight it heavily.
- Peer-review directories. A Brisbane family law practice was recommended largely on the strength of Doyle's Guide listings. Doyle's is pay-to-play and driven by peer nomination rather than client outcomes. That critique stands. It is also, in the Australian market, currently the single most potent external signal observed.
- Google reviews. In regional markets where accreditation and directory listings are thin — the example given was Dalby — the models fall back overwhelmingly on Google review volume and recency. A hundred reviews from four years ago will not earn you a mention. Currency matters as much as count.
Where multiple firms carry the same credentials, the models begin aggregating the rest: client reviews, law society registers, published content, media mentions. And there are genuine anomalies — firms that surface for reasons nobody can reconstruct.
Worth noting alongside this: Google's own guidance for site owners states there are no special optimisations required to appear in AI Overviews, and that standard SEO fundamentals still govern eligibility. The signals above sit on top of that foundation, not instead of it.
The recommended sequence
A four-month priority order was set out. These can overlap, but this is the order of impact.
- Month one — build a review engine. Not a campaign; a repeatable monthly process. The model discussed: the practice manager sends through that month's file openings, flagging clients who had a genuinely good experience. A targeted request campaign goes out, with a follow-up or two — not a pursuit. Supplemented by QR codes at reception and on business cards handed over post-consultation. One regional client, South Geldard Lawyers in Rockhampton, went from nine reviews to more than 400 over roughly twelve months using this approach.
- Month two — authority listings. Law society registers, and the relevant specialist bodies for your practice areas: AMDRAS if you mediate, Australian Lawyers Alliance for compensation work, and so on. Check that addresses and phone numbers are consistent across every listing — discrepancies weaken the correlation the models are trying to make.
- Month three — award and directory sites. Doyle's, Best Lawyers, Martindale, and the international equivalents that matter more for US and UK firms. They cost money, ranging from roughly $5,000 to $8,000 for a listing or badge. The pay-to-play model is uncomfortable. It is also, right now, unavoidable.
- Month four — publish content, under a named author. Content signals expertise, but only when it is attributable. Author bios carrying credentials and years in practice do real work here. Equally important is being published elsewhere — commentary in respected mastheads carries disproportionate weight. Practice Proof runs listening signals for clients so that when a journalist is seeking comment on, say, surrogacy law in NSW, we can put a relevant lawyer forward. One client was interviewed in The Australian on exactly that basis.
A diagnostic you can run this afternoon
Ask ChatGPT who the best firm is in your practice area and city. If you are not named, ask it directly why your firm was not mentioned, and request the reasons.
The answers are sometimes wrong — the models hallucinate and will occasionally send you down a red herring. But often the gaps identified are real and immediately addressable.
Key takeaways
- Only a small fraction of your future clients are in market today; marketing that only targets them will always feel expensive.
- AI interception is real and measurable. Falling traffic is not necessarily a ranking problem.
- No single action wins an AI recommendation. Reviews, accreditation, directory listings, authority profiles and authored content compound.
- Review recency matters as much as review volume.
- This is moving fast enough that a quarterly check-in is no longer sufficient for firms in competitive markets.
What next
If you want to see where your firm currently sits, our AEO service page explains how we assess and build AI visibility, and the reputation management and authority building pages cover the review engine and listings work described above. For the underlying search foundation, see law firm SEO and local SEO. Firms leaning harder on paid capture while organic recovers should look at Google Ads for lawyers.
Monthly sessions like this one are available to all clients. Given how quickly this space is moving, they are worth keeping in the diary.