AI is handing out names. Is it yours?
You already know AI is changing how people search. That is not news to anybody at this point.
So let me skip the headline and get to the question you are actually asking. How do you get AI to send those clients to you instead of the firm across town?
We have been telling our private clients this exact thing was coming for many years now, long before it showed up in everybody’s feed. It was always going to land here, and the firms that got ready early are the ones getting named right now.
Attorneys are having new clients walk in and say AI told them to call. Not Google. Not a referral. They asked ChatGPT, Claude, or one of those AI answers sitting at the top of the page, who to call, and it handed over a name.
So how does AI decide whose name to hand over?
Well there are a lot of moving parts, but one of the big levers that you can start with are reviews.
It is not the firm with the biggest pile of reviews. A hundred reviews that all landed two years ago read as old news. What the AI trusts is freshness and steadiness, a few new reviews coming in every couple of weeks, quietly telling it you are active, you are trusted, and people are still walking out happy.
Which means every little thing your team does now counts. A caller who has a rough moment with your front desk can post about it, immediately after hanging up, and that review does not just sit on your profile. It shows up in your Google results, your AI results, and your paid ads all at once. One bad morning, three places it stings.
Flip it around and it is the best news you have heard all week. Every call handled with a little grace is a five star review waiting to happen, and those reviews are the exact thing feeding the machine that decides who gets recommended.
One more thing you should absolutely take a look at. You cannot lean into a lead source you cannot see. If I asked you today how many of your new clients came from AI, could you tell me?
Most firms have no way to answer that. And that blind spot is quietly costing them.
It really goes back to knowing your numbers. AI has turned into a referral source, and it rewards the firms that stay consistent, not the ones who collected a big number once and coasted. Steady, intentional reviews are what keep you in the answer when your next client asks the robot who to call.
You do not need to blow everything up. You need to make the steady things actually steady, and make sure the machine can see them. That starts with a system of actually asking for review, do you have one, and most importantly is it actually happening?
Still two steps ahead of the robots,
Laura Lee