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Law Firm Leadership Review Checklist: Is Your Content AI Friendly?
This Checklist is designed to help law firm leaders identify basic issues that may reduce the likelihood of their law firm’s content being cited by tools like Google AI Overviews and in responses from AI Chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Evaluate the current signals your law firm is sending to search engines and chatbots. Delegate follow-up tasks to complete the necessary action items.
ON THIS PAGE
01 Is your law firm’s website accurate?
Inaccuracies and inconsistencies in your practice areas, attorney roster, and attorney licensures can negatively impact online visibility.
ACTION REQUIRED
Review firm practice areas, current attorneys, and applicable jurisdictions and assign for necessary updates.
02 Do attorney bios demonstrate strong credentials to users and search engines?
Search engines, AI tools, and people want to see meaningful details that demonstrate attorney experience and expertise.
ACTION REQUIRED
Review attorney educational background, jurisdictional bar admissions, practice areas, publications, speaking engagements, memberships, awards, and certifications. Assign a team member to collect the necessary information and ensure that these indicators of expertise are included in each attorney bio, with links when possible.
03 Are your law firm’s blogs published under the name of a credentialed, licensed attorney?
AI tools value personal insights over generic content. Attorney bylines demonstrate legal experience and validate the trustworthiness of the content.
04 Does your law firm’s contact information (name, address, and phone, known as “NAP”) appear in an accurate and consistent format across the web?
Inconsistent details across online resources are confusing to AI tools, search engines, and people. This negatively impacts online visibility and leads.
ACTION REQUIRED
Designate a qualified individual to review and correct any inconsistencies related to your online presence:
- Develop a template for partner approval that covers exactly how the firm/attorneys should be listed and apply it to every listing (middle initial inclusion; whether “suite” is abbreviated or spelled out; phone number accuracy and use of dashes, not dots; business entity indicators such as LLC; etc.).
- Check your website, membership organization listings, legal and local directories, and the first two pages of Google search results.
- Fix any inconsistencies to align with the template, to the extent each platform allows.
05 Do you and/or your attorneys appear in common, high-quality directories for legal professionals (places search engines and potential clients would expect you to be)?
Inclusion in relevant state and affinity bar organizations and directories, like martindale.com, lawyers.com, justia.com, and avvo.com, confirms legal credentials to people, search engines, and AI tools.
ACTION REQUIRED
Delegate a person to develop targeted, high-quality listings using the template developed above.
- Tip: Avoid the use of generic directory-building services that create listings en masse in low-quality, spammy directories.
06 Is your law firm website technically sound?
The way your website is set up, managed, and maintained impacts security, visibility, and user experience and trust.
ACTION REQUIRED
Designate a qualified individual to review, fix, and manage these basic technical factors:
- Check for use of security certificate (small lock in URL bar), mobile friendliness (including menus and navigation), quick loading speed on desktop and mobile, appearance of any “404 not found” errors, etc.
- Ensure your website is regularly monitored and maintained to update content management system (such as WordPress), theme, PHP, plugins, etc.; identify and block unauthorized logins; find and replace broken links; ensure crawlability, etc.
- If problems appear, correct them and put a procedure in place for ongoing monitoring and maintenance.
Note: If you’re a TOPDOG client with an active web maintenance plan, we’ve already addressed the items in the last three bullets—and more!