AI Is Becoming Part of the Referral Process for Lawyers

For many founder-led law firms, new business still begins with another person. A colleague sends a name. A former client makes an introduction. An accountant, financial adviser or real estate professional tells someone whom to call.

Clio's 2025 Legal Trends for Solo and Small Law Firms report found that 59% of solo and small firms said referrals were their top source of leads, and Clio said many focus on word of mouth and established networks. In its conversations with lawyers, Position Strategy Group has similarly found that founder-lawyers rely heavily on referrals from colleagues, past clients and professionals in adjacent fields.

What is changing is what happens around that referral. Before calling a lawyer whose name they received, a prospective client can ask ChatGPT, Gemini or another AI assistant who the lawyer is and what the firm handles.

Are people asking AI about legal problems?

Yes. According to Clio's 2026 Legal Trends Report, nearly one in four U.S. adults has used AI to answer a legal question, and 46% said they would consult AI before contacting a lawyer.

Clio said this is changing the early stages of the legal journey, with implications for how firms attract prospective clients. But AI is not replacing judgment about the lawyer. In the same report, consumers put the quality of legal services, the lawyer's experience and cost first when choosing a lawyer; only 6% named modern technology or AI as a deciding factor.

A 2026 survey by iLawyer Marketing, a legal marketing firm, measured what 1,110 U.S. adults ages 18 to 65 said they would do if they needed to hire a lawyer for a very important legal issue. Of those surveyed, 41.9% said they would use ChatGPT, up from 28.1% in 2025 and 9% in 2023. In all, 50.1% said they would use at least one AI answer engine. Google remained the most used source at 71.9%, down from 86.7% the year before, while referrals and word of mouth were the most common write-in answers.

Is AI replacing referrals?

No. AI is becoming another source people can consult before or after receiving a personal referral.

Someone may get a lawyer's name from a friend and then ask an AI assistant about that lawyer before calling. Or a person may ask an AI system for names first and later check those names with people they trust.

The scale of the systems makes that behavior relevant. OpenAI said in February 2026 that ChatGPT had passed 900 million weekly users. Google said in July 2025 that AI Overviews, the AI summaries at the top of Google results, had more than 2 billion monthly users.

Why does the AI answer itself matter?

The answer matters because people do not always click through to the websites behind an AI-generated response.

Pew Research Center, using browsing data from 900 U.S. adults in March 2025, found that Google users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits, compared with 15% when no summary appeared. They clicked a link inside the AI summary in 1% of visits.

In those searches, the answer itself increasingly does the introducing. For a referral-driven firm, that means an AI system may be asked to describe a lawyer, confirm what someone else said about the lawyer or suggest the lawyer without the prospective client first visiting the firm's website.

Can ChatGPT and other AI systems read every law firm website?

No. Some AI crawlers cannot see important website content if it appears only after JavaScript runs, and some websites block those crawlers entirely.

Vercel and the analytics firm MERJ reported in December 2024 that none of the major AI crawlers they studied rendered JavaScript, including OpenAI's GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User, Anthropic's ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot. ChatGPT's and Claude's crawlers may download JavaScript files without running them, according to Vercel, making text that appears only after JavaScript runs invisible to them. Google's Gemini uses Googlebot infrastructure, which does render JavaScript.

Access can also be blocked. Cloudflare, which says it handles traffic for about 20% of the web, announced on July 1, 2025 that new domains added to Cloudflare block AI crawlers by default unless the site owner changes the setting.

Vercel also found that every crawler it measured respected robots.txt. Blocking GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot there therefore keeps those engines out.

What should a law firm check first?

The first step is to make sure AI systems can access the firm's important information and find it in the HTML they receive.

• Check robots.txt and any firewall or Cloudflare bot setting to confirm GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot are allowed.
• Put the lawyer's name, practice areas, city, courts or jurisdictions served, bar admissions and contact information in plain text in the page's HTML, not only after JavaScript runs or inside images.
• Create one page for each practice area, stating plainly what kinds of matters the firm takes and for whom.
• Publish a full biography for each lawyer, including education, admissions, years in practice and notable matters the lawyer is free to describe.
• Answer questions about cost structure, timeline and the first meeting in plain sentences, with one question per heading.
• Use schema.org markup such as LegalService and Person, with the same name, address and phone number shown on the page and in directory listings.
• Keep the firm's name, address and phone number consistent everywhere they appear online.

What does Position do for law firms in AI search?

Position helps law firms show up when prospective clients ask ChatGPT, Google AI and other assistants about lawyers. It measures how those engines describe and recommend a firm, then fixes the website and builds the evidence that supports recommendations. To review a complimentary audit, email Victoria at victoria@positionstrategygroup.com. The audit asks the questions prospective clients ask, shows whether and where the firm is named, and checks whether AI crawlers can read the firm's website.