We Asked AI to Recommend Solicitors in 10 Major UK Cities — Here’s What It Said

What We Did

We used TendorAI’s AI visibility testing system to ask three leading AI assistants — ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude — the same question:

"Can you recommend a conveyancing solicitor in [city]?"

We repeated the query across 10 major UK cities: Cardiff, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Exeter and Swansea.

Each assistant was prompted in a clean session to avoid memory bias. We did not ask for “top-rated” firms or “cheapest” options — just straightforward recommendations for a conveyancing solicitor.

The goal was simple: identify which firms AI systems surface when a user asks for a local conveyancer.

What We Found

1. The Same 5 Firms Per City

Across all three AI systems, recommendations clustered heavily around the same 5 firms in each city.

In London, for example, the overlap was significant. In Cardiff and Manchester, the pattern repeated. Typically, AI would name five firms with minor variation in ordering, but rarely introduce new or lesser-known practices.

These firms shared common characteristics:

• Strong domain authority
• Structured data on their websites
• Clear SRA registration information
• Published pricing pages
• Mentions in Legal 500 or similar directories
• Occasionally, Wikipedia presence

The pattern was not random.

2. Smaller Local Firms Were Invisible

In nearly every city, there were well-reviewed local firms with competitive fees that were not mentioned at all.

Many had:

• 4.8+ star Google reviews
• Dozens of recent testimonials
• Lower advertised conveyancing fees

Yet they did not appear in AI recommendations.

Visibility in traditional search results does not automatically translate into visibility in AI-generated answers.

3. Data Quality Beats Reputation

The strongest predictor of recommendation was not review volume or even pricing transparency. It was data consistency and structured presence.

Firms that were:

• Properly registered and indexed with regulatory bodies
• Marked up with schema.org structured data
• Listed in recognised legal directories
• Cited in authoritative publications

Were significantly more likely to appear.

This led to a clear conclusion:

"AI doesn’t recommend the best solicitor. It recommends the solicitor it has the best data for."

That distinction matters.

Why This Happens

AI systems like ChatGPT do not crawl the web in real time in the way Google Search does.

Instead, they rely on:

• Structured datasets
• Training corpora compiled from authoritative sources
• Regulatory registers
• Public databases
• High-trust publications

If your firm has:

• CQS accreditation
• Accurate and accessible SRA registration data
• Published fee transparency
• Structured schema markup on your website
• Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data

You are far easier for AI systems to identify and confidently recommend.

By contrast, a firm with a basic five-page website and no structured data may exist online — but it exists as unstructured text. That makes it harder for AI systems to extract and validate.

AI prioritises clarity, consistency and verifiability.

It does not interpret reputation the way humans do. It processes signals.

What It Means for UK Solicitors

If You’re Not in the Data, You Don’t Exist

If your firm is not present in the datasets AI systems rely on, you are unlikely to be recommended — regardless of how good your service is.

This is not a reflection of legal quality. It is a reflection of data visibility.

The Gap Will Widen

As AI-driven discovery grows, the firms currently being recommended will accumulate more mentions, more citations and more secondary references.

That compounds advantage.

The firms AI already “knows” will become more embedded in its responses. Firms outside that loop risk long-term invisibility.

Structured Advantage Is Time-Sensitive

There is still a window.

AI recommendation systems are not fully locked. Visibility patterns can shift. But as models retrain and reinforce existing citation networks, it becomes harder to break in later.

Waiting means competing against firms that have already built structured authority.

How to Check If AI Recommends Your Firm

Most solicitors have no idea whether they appear in AI-generated recommendations.

You can check in 60 seconds.

Run a free AI visibility report at https://tendorai.com/aeo-report. No credit card required.

It shows whether ChatGPT and other AI systems recognise your firm — and where your visibility gaps are.

AI recommendations are already influencing how consumers shortlist solicitors.

The firms being surfaced today are not necessarily the best. They are the most structured, the most cited, and the most machine-readable.

That distinction is now commercially significant.