AI Recommends a Lawyer, Not a Law Firm. We Asked It 1,000 Times in Florida.

Honestly? I was curious. We'd been looking at how AI recommends law firms, and I wanted to know if there was a pattern. Who does it name in each city? What does it look at when it does? And does the answer change when you ask the same thing a different way, or does it stay the same?

I'm going to tell you what we found, city by city, with the actual numbers. But first, the part that surprised me.

When someone gets arrested and asks ChatGPT "who should I call?", you'd expect it to answer the way a directory does. Firm names. Logos. "The X Law Group." It doesn't. Most of the time it answers like a friend would: call Douglas Rudman. Call James Barnes. Call Lee Viacava.

A person. Here's why that matters...

Which lawyers does AI recommend?

AI names a small group of lawyers in each city, and it names them as people. In 16 of the 19 Florida cities we counted, one practice showed up in at least half of the 50 answers. And for 20 of the 22 practices AI named most, the majority of answers used the lawyer's own name rather than only the firm's.

Some of those are lawyers whose firm is their name, so you'd expect it. Robert David Malove in Fort Lauderdale. James R. Barnes in Pensacola. Fine.

But look at the ones with a separate firm brand. In Boca Raton, The Rudman Law Group was named in 43 of 50 answers, and 30 of those wrote "Douglas J. Rudman". In Tampa, Brancato Law Firm was named in 33, and 28 of those wrote "Rocky Brancato". In Gainesville it was Landsman Law in 31, with "Matt Landsman" in 27.

A firm can spend years building its brand. In these answers, AI mostly went straight past it to the lawyer.

Does AI ever name the lawyer and skip the firm entirely?

Yes, a lot. In 152 of those 646 mentions, the answer named the lawyer and never wrote the firm's name at all. If the person reading that answer googles the name, they land on whatever comes up for that person, not necessarily on the firm.

Two examples from the same run:

• Fort Myers. Lee Viacava was named in 32 answers. In 21 of them, the firm's name never appeared. Just him.
• Pensacola. James R. Barnes was named in 35 answers. 30 of them named him as a person, and in 21 his practice's name never came up.

And often AI writes the full name, middle name and all: "James Richard Barnes", "Robert Denis Foley III", "Sean Keith McQuaid", "Gregory Curtis Rosenfeld". That's not how most lawyers sign their emails.

So what does that mean for a firm? Your brand is still worth something. Absolutely. But if AI is the new referral, the referral is going to a NAME, and that name is a person.

Who did AI name in each Florida city?

Here's every city, with the practice AI named most, how many of the 50 answers named it, and how often it used the lawyer's own name. These are counts from one run on Nov 9, 2026. They are not a ranking of who is good at their job. Where two names are within a few answers of each other, treat it as a tie.

How to read a row: in Boca Raton, 43 of the 50 answers named Douglas J. Rudman or The Rudman Law Group, and 30 of those 43 wrote his name as a person. "Next most-named" is the practice named in the next-highest number of answers.

Two things jump out.

The top spot isn't close in most cities. Boca Raton's 43 against 21. Tampa's 33 against 19. Orlando's 34 against 17. That's not a coin toss.

And the assistants agree with each other more than you'd think. In Boca Raton, all five named Rudman in 8 to 10 of their 10 answers. In Tallahassee, all five named Pumphrey in 7 or 8 of 10. Other studies say AI assistants rarely agree on a law firm, and per single question that's true. Across ten ways of asking, in one city, they land on the same names.

Why is Melbourne missing?

Because AI thought most of the people asking were in Australia. We ran Melbourne, Florida like every other city. Eight of our ten questions just say "Melbourne". In 30 of the 50 answers, the assistants recommended criminal lawyers in Melbourne, Australia, and five more mixed the two countries. Only the two questions that said "Melbourne, FL" reliably got Florida answers.

So we didn't count Melbourne. The table has 19 cities, not 20.

AI is literal. If you don't say which Melbourne, it picks one for you. The ChatGPT app on your phone may know where you are. Our tool asked with no location on purpose, so it had to guess, and most of the time it guessed Australia.

It's a funny result. It's also a real one. If your city shares its name with a bigger city somewhere else, someone asking AI about "a lawyer in (your city)" may be handed a list of lawyers on another continent. Naples, Jacksonville and Gainesville have namesakes too; in our run they mostly stayed in Florida (a few Gainesville answers asked whether the person meant Georgia).

Can you trust one AI answer about lawyers?

No, and you shouldn't trust one run either. AI answers change from run to run. We ran West Palm Beach twice on the same day, and the name at the top flipped. In this article's count, West Palm Beach's top two are tied at 25 answers each. Fort Myers and Sarasota are ties too.

That's why we asked ten different questions on five assistants and counted 50 answers per city. One answer is an anecdote. Fifty is a pattern. But it's still one day.

What can't this data tell you?

How we ran the study

We asked the same ten questions about each city to five AI assistants, once each, on Nov 9, 2026, and counted which lawyers and firms every answer named. That's 50 answers per city and 1,000 in all.

The ten questions, with the city filled in:

1. Who is the best criminal defense attorney in {city}, FL?
2. I was just arrested in {city}. Who should I call for a lawyer?
3. Which criminal defense attorney in {city} has the best reviews?
4. Can you recommend a good criminal defense lawyer near {city}, FL?
5. Who should I hire to fight a criminal charge in {city}?
6. Best lawyer for a drug possession charge in {city}
7. My son was arrested in {city}. Which defense attorney should we call?
8. Who are the top-rated criminal defense law firms in {city}?
9. Who is the best DUI lawyer in {city}?
10. Is there a criminal defense lawyer in {city} who offers a free consultation?

How it worked:

• The tool. We built an internal tool that asks the AI assistants the questions a real client asks, for any city, and records every answer word for word. It's the bigger version of our free AI Visibility Checker.
• The assistants. API models with live web search on: gpt-5-nano (ChatGPT), claude-haiku-5.5 (Claude), gemini-3.5-flash-lite (Gemini), sonar (Perplexity) and grok-4.3 (Grok). Each answer was capped at about 700 tokens. Each question was asked as a new user, with no history and no location.
• The count. A practice counts as named in an answer if the answer wrote the lawyer's name or the firm's name anywhere in it. When AI named a lawyer and that lawyer's firm separately, we counted them as one practice. Counted by hand from the full text of all 950 answers in the 19 cities, using the published names of each firm's lawyers to match them.
• "Used the lawyer's name" means the answer wrote the lawyer's name as a person, not only as part of a firm name like "Law Office of …".
• Cost. The whole run cost $8.14.

We kept every answer word for word. If you run a firm in one of these cities and want to see your city's 50 answers, ask us and we'll send them.

One more thing you should know. AZE sells AI visibility services to law firms, and this data came out of that work. Some of the firms in this table may hear from us. That's exactly why we publish the questions, the models and the method, so you can run the same test yourself.

Why does this matter for a law firm?

Because more people are asking AI before they call anyone. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 45% said they'd used an AI tool for a local business recommendation in the past year, up from 6% the year before. Someone who was just arrested is not going to read ten websites. They're going to ask, and call the first name that sounds right.

I get it. It's tempting to read this and think, "AI search is a gimmick, my clients come from referrals." And they probably do. But think about what a referral is: one person telling another person a NAME. That's what these answers are doing now, at scale, at 2am, to people you'll never meet.

Lawyers are already saying it out loud. On r/LawFirm this year, one wrote:

When I need an attorney (I'm one myself), I ask for referrals. I then google them. If they don't appear or don't have any reviews, I don't use them.

A former practicing attorney in the same thread put it more bluntly:

ChatGPT doesn't care how long you've practiced, it cares what it can read about you.

So the question for your firm isn't "does AI know our firm?" It's "when AI is asked about my city, whose name does it say?"

If you want the longer version of what to actually do about it, start with how to get recommended by ChatGPT.