We Asked Four AI Platforms to Recommend a Lawyer in Chicago. They Named 116.

Kirkland & Ellis is a global law firm with $6 billion in revenue, offices on three continents, and clients that include Fortune 100 companies. It handles billion-dollar mergers and complex litigation that takes years.

It also showed up when we asked AI platforms to recommend a lawyer in Chicago.

So did a solo practitioner who handles traffic tickets. And a legal aid hotline. And a family law attorney. And a personal injury firm that advertises on highway billboards. All mixed together, sometimes in the same list, as if they were interchangeable options for someone who just needs help.

We tracked dozens of queries across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok. What came back was unlike anything we expected.

How AI Recommends 116 Firms for the Same Question

Across all four platforms, a total of 116 different law firms and attorneys were recommended. Gemini alone named 58. ChatGPT named 30. Perplexity named 21. Grok named 24. The overlap between them was minimal.

Only one firm managed to appear consistently across all four platforms. Clifford Law Offices showed up on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok. No other firm came close to that kind of cross-platform presence. Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard made it onto three out of four. After that, it was a free-for-all.

AI Doesn’t Know What Kind of Lawyer Someone Needs

This was the finding that stopped us.

Someone typing “best lawyer in Chicago” could need help with a divorce, a car accident, a startup incorporation, a criminal charge, or an immigration case. These are entirely different specialties staffed by entirely different people. But AI treated them all as one question.

Gemini recommended Kirkland & Ellis (a firm where partners bill $2,000 an hour for corporate M&A work) in the same list as a legal aid hotline that provides free services to low-income residents. Same query. Same response.

ChatGPT did something similar, mixing personal injury firms with corporate defense attorneys and family law practices. The firms themselves would find it absurd to be considered alternatives to each other. They serve completely different clients with completely different problems at completely different price points.

A new parent going through a custody dispute doesn’t need to scroll past billion-dollar M&A firms to find a family lawyer. But that’s what AI returns.

Why ChatGPT and Gemini Recommend Completely Different Firms

Mayer Brown appeared in 62% of Gemini responses but was invisible on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok. A firm with over 1,800 lawyers worldwide, absent from three out of four platforms.

Power Rogers appeared in 38% of ChatGPT responses. Nowhere else.

Beermann LLP appeared in 75% of Perplexity responses yet never showed up on ChatGPT or Gemini.

Each platform has access to different data sources and weighs them differently. The result is that a person asking Perplexity for a lawyer recommendation gets a completely different answer than someone asking ChatGPT. Neither one is wrong, exactly. They’re just working with different information.

A potential client who opens Gemini will almost certainly hear about Mayer Brown. A potential client who opens ChatGPT won’t. Same city, same week, same question.

The name confusion problem made things worse. One attorney appeared under three different entries. “Law Offices of Andrew M. Weisberg” in one response. “Law Office of Andrew Weisberg” in another. “The Weisberg Law Group” in a third. Same person. Three entries. Visibility split three ways.

Romanucci & Blandin had two entries. Goldberg appeared in three variations. Skadden showed up once as “Skadden” and separately as its full name “Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher.” AI treated the short version and the long one as two different firms.

What Happens When Someone Asks ChatGPT for a Lawyer

Hiring a lawyer might be the most trust-dependent transaction a person ever makes. A wrong choice in a legal matter can mean lost custody, a criminal record, or financial ruin.

People making this decision are increasingly starting with ChatGPT. “Best divorce lawyer Chicago.” “Top criminal defense attorney near me.” “Lawyer for car accident.” Real queries from people in real situations, often stressful ones, looking for a starting point they can trust.

What they get back is a list that mixes corporate megafirms with solo practitioners, combines unrelated specialties, and changes entirely depending on which app they open. The confident tone of the response masks how thin the reasoning actually is.

What a Lost Client Costs a Law Firm

A personal injury case can generate $50,000 to $500,000 in contingency fees. A corporate client relationship can be worth millions over years. Even a standard family law case runs $5,000 to $25,000.

Most firms invest heavily in referral networks, Google Ads (where legal keywords cost $50 to $200 per click), bar association listings, and reputation management. Almost none are tracking whether ChatGPT mentions them when someone in their city asks for help.

The data suggests they should be. Of 116 firms that appeared in our tracking, the vast majority showed up exactly once. A single mention on a single platform, for a single query variation. That’s noise, not presence.

The one firm that dominated across all platforms had something the others didn’t. Consistent, detailed, fact-rich information across multiple independent sources. Not just a website and a Google listing. Coverage in legal directories, editorial mentions, case result summaries that AI could cite with confidence.

How to Check If ChatGPT Recommends a Law Firm

The simplest version takes five minutes. Open ChatGPT, type in the kind of query a potential client would ask, see if the firm appears. Then do the same on Gemini. Then Perplexity. We wrote a step-by-step walkthrough that works for any business.

But as the data here shows, checking one platform catches only a fraction of the picture. A firm could dominate Perplexity (like Beermann at 75%) and be invisible everywhere else. Or dominate Gemini (like Mayer Brown at 62%) with zero presence on ChatGPT, where most consumer traffic goes.

Reachd.ai tracks how any business appears across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI platforms, showing which competitors show up for which queries, how often, and what’s driving the difference. For a business where a single new client can be worth tens of thousands of dollars, knowing whether AI recommends the firm has become a practical question with a dollar sign attached.

Because right now in Chicago, someone is describing their legal problem to ChatGPT. And whether the answer includes a particular firm depends less on that firm’s track record than on which sources AI happened to find this week.