AI engines recommend a narrow, repeating set of established personal injury firms: named-partner trial practices with deep legal-directory profiles in their own metro. Citorian logged 359 answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews between June 13 and 15, 2026, in five US metros. Those answers named more than 500 distinct firms, and about a dozen absorbed most of the recommendations.
Firm AEO has published the directory layer behind these answers already. This post takes the other side of the same dataset, the firms themselves: who the engines named, how far one firm’s share of its metro runs, and which traits a personal injury practice can verify about itself this week.
- Citorian’s five-engine test of June 2026 logged 359 answers naming over 500 distinct personal injury firms, yet about a dozen names carried most of the recommendations.
- All ten of the most-named firms were named by all five engines, which makes AI visibility one shared contest rather than five separate ones.
- Gemini named a firm most readily at 69% of answers and Google AI Overviews least readily at 59%, with ChatGPT at 61%, Perplexity at 60% and Claude at 60%.
- The named firms were established, named-partner practices with heavy Super Lawyers and Justia profiles, the two sources carrying 33% and 20% of citations in the same study.
- Morgan and Morgan, the largest national personal injury advertiser, was named in only a handful of answers, so ad budget is not what the named firms share.
Which personal injury firms did the engines name most?
A small group of trial firms took a disproportionate share of the names. In Citorian’s June 2026 sample, Block O’Toole and Murphy appeared in 43% of New York answers and Clifford Law Offices in 43% of Chicago answers. Greene Broillet and Wheeler took 36% of Los Angeles answers, Panish Shea Ravipudi 35%, and The Lanier Law Firm 24% of Houston answers. Each was named by all five engines.
Share of answers is the metric here, not a rank. A firm appearing in 43% of its metro’s answers is being treated as a default, and a firm at 0% is not in the conversation at all. Being named is an observation about engine behaviour, not an endorsement of any firm’s legal work, and Firm AEO does not present it as one.
| Metro | Firm named most often | Share of metro answers | Engines naming it |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | Block O’Toole and Murphy | 43% | 5 of 5 |
| Chicago | Clifford Law Offices | 43% | 5 of 5 |
| Los Angeles | Greene Broillet and Wheeler | 36% | 5 of 5 |
| Los Angeles | Panish Shea Ravipudi | 35% | 5 of 5 |
| Houston | The Lanier Law Firm | 24% | 5 of 5 |
Why did all five engines converge on the same firms?
Because the engines read a common corroboration record rather than five private ones. All ten of the most-named firms were named by all five engines. The engines differ in how willing they are to name anyone, but once one decides to answer with a firm it reaches for the same short list its competitors reach for. That simplifies the problem: one record to fix, not five.
The willingness gap still matters. Gemini named a firm in 69% of answers, the highest of the five, on a smaller and partly manual sample. Google AI Overviews declined or gave only general advice on 41% of queries. A firm judging itself on Google AI Overviews alone reads a harsher picture than the chat engines give.
| Engine | Named at least one firm | Declined or gave general advice only |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini | 69% | 31% |
| ChatGPT | 61% | 39% |
| Perplexity | 60% | 40% |
| Claude | 60% | 40% |
| Google AI Overviews | 59% | 41% |
What do the firms AI names have in common?
Three traits repeat across the named firms, and none is a website trick. Citorian described the top of its list as established, named-partner practices with heavy presence in the directories the engines lean on, and found advertising volume did not sort the list. The same study put Super Lawyers at 33% of cited sources and Justia at 20%, which is why directory presence and being named travel together.
Citorian did not score each firm’s website against a checklist in this first edition, so these are observed traits of the named set rather than a tested causal model.
- A named-partner identity. Every firm at the top of the list is built around identifiable senior attorneys, which gives an engine a person-level entity to attach credentials to.
- Depth in the two directories the engines cite most. Super Lawyers and Justia carried 33% and 20% of citations, well ahead of Avvo and Yelp.
- Trial credentials that exist off the firm’s own site, where an engine can retrieve them without taking the firm’s word for it.
- No dependence on ad budget. The named set mixed heavy advertisers such as Lerner and Rowe with trial firms that advertise comparatively little.
Does a bigger advertising budget make AI name your firm?
No. Morgan and Morgan, the largest national personal injury advertiser, was named in only a handful of answers, while smaller trial firms with strong directory records were named by all five engines in their metro. What the engines weigh is corroboration that exists outside the firm’s own marketing.
Reviews act as a filter underneath that. SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, covering 2,751 brands and roughly 350,000 locations, found ChatGPT recommending 1.2% of locations against 35.9% for Google’s local three-pack, and the recommended locations averaged 4.3 stars. A firm below that rating band is filtered out before directory work can matter.
Which personal injury questions get answered with a firm name at all?
Commercial-intent questions, mostly. Citorian found phrasing decided more than the engine did: vetting and direct asks named a firm 94% of the time and specific-injury asks 79%, while question-led asks named one 23% of the time and situational asks 18%. Firm AEO treats that situational gap as its own problem and covers it separately.
Sub-practice specificity is where the winnable answers sit. Truck accident, rideshare collision, premises liability and wrongful death asks fall in the 79% band, and a single broad personal injury page competes there against firms carrying a page for each one.
How should a personal injury firm score its own metro?
Score share of answers, not presence. Run Citorian’s five query types for your own metro across all five engines, logged out, three times each, then divide the answers naming your firm by the total. That percentage is comparable to the metro shares above, and it is the number that says whether a firm is a default, an occasional mention or absent.
- Write five prompts for your metro: direct, vetting, specific-injury, question-led and situational.
- Run all five in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, logged out, three times each. That is 75 answers.
- Record which firms each answer named, in what order, and which sources the engine cited.
- Divide answers naming your firm by the total, then do the same for the two competitors named most often.
- Repeat monthly. Outputs vary between sessions, so a single run is an anecdote and a dated repeat is a measurement.
What a firm can and cannot say about being named
A personal injury firm cannot advertise an AI recommendation as a credential. Engine outputs vary between sessions and cannot be verified by a prospective client on demand, so a claim like “recommended by ChatGPT” does not meet the substantiation ABA Model Rule 7.1 expects of a communication about a lawyer’s services, and the firm’s ethics counsel decides what the firm publishes. Used as an internal diagnostic instead, dated and reproducible, the same measurement shows which competitors the engines treat as the metro default and which part of the corroboration record has to change.
Can a smaller personal injury firm displace the firms AI names now?
It can compete for sub-practice questions rather than metro-wide ones. The named firms hold their position through directory depth and trial credentials, which take time to build, but the specific-injury band that named a firm 79% of the time turns on narrower questions where fewer firms have a matching page and profile.
Does being named by an engine mean the firm is better?
No. Citorian states that the study measures how engines behave, not the quality of any firm, and Firm AEO reports it the same way. Being named is a visibility signal produced by a corroboration record, not an endorsement or a ranking of legal skill.
Which single profile should a personal injury firm fix first?
Super Lawyers, then Justia. Those two carried 33% and 20% of citations in the Citorian sample, ahead of Google at 12% and well ahead of Avvo and Yelp. A profile that matches the firm’s own site exactly does more than a paid tier carrying an old office address.
How often do these results change?
Often enough that a single snapshot expires. Citorian describes its figures as a dated snapshot from five metros and one practice area, and notes the engines change models and sources frequently. Firm AEO re-runs client measurement monthly and compares the trend rather than any one answer.