The map pack, and the answer engine.
Two systems now decide whether a firm gets found. Classic local search, where a person scans a short list of firms and picks one. And the answer engines, where ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity write that short list themselves and every firm left off it is invisible. Most agencies still sell only the first half. This is both, because the same pages and the same firm record have to win in two places at once.
Two systems, one plan
Local search books the calls you get this quarter. AI search decides who gets shortlisted next year. Same site, same content, two different sets of rules, handled together instead of as separate vendors.
Pages a human wrote
Practice-area and city pages built one at a time, each with the local detail that proves it is real. Templated variations of the same page get filtered, and a filtered page costs you the pages that were working.
What you can move, and what you cannot
Proximity to the person searching is set by your office address, and no agency changes it. Everything else in local ranking is work somebody has to actually do. We spend the month on the movable parts and tell you plainly which searches your geography already decided.
Written to be quoted
Answer engines lift passages. Every article, FAQ, and practice-area page gets structured so any single block can be pulled out and still make sense, with the firm named in it.
Two halves of one search plan.
Most agencies sell you the left column and call it SEO. The right column is where firms are getting picked now, and almost nobody is doing it yet.
Both columns are earned rather than bought. Paid placements sit above them and run on a separate budget, covered on the lawyer advertising page.
Classic local search
The map pack and the ten blue links still send the calls your firm books this month.
Practice-area pages
One page per case type, written one at a time. Templated pages spun across fifty case types get filtered as doorway content and pull the whole domain down with them.
City pages
A real page for every city you actually take cases in, with the courthouse, the venue, and the local detail that proves a human wrote it.
Google Business Profile
Categories, service areas, hours, photos, services, and posts. The profile is the listing that gets you into the map pack, and most firms fill out half of it and never look again.
Review generation
Volume and recency are the two review signals local ranking reads, and the FAQ below covers the math. What we build is the operations side: who asks, at what point in the file, on what template, and what happens when nobody replies. Asking becomes a step in closing a case instead of a favor somebody remembers.
AI search
When someone asks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, or Perplexity who to hire, a short list comes back. This is the work that puts your firm on it.
Schema and structured data
Attorney, LegalService, Review, and FAQ markup so a machine reading your site knows what you practice, where, and who the attorneys are, instead of guessing from paragraphs.
Entity consistency
Same firm name, same address, same phone, same practice areas everywhere you are listed. Answer engines cross-check sources, and a firm that reads as three slightly different businesses gets dropped.
llms.txt and crawler access
A plain-text map at the root of your domain pointing AI crawlers at the pages that matter, plus a robots file that lets them in rather than blocking them by accident.
Passage-shaped answers
An answer engine lifts a passage, not a page. Every answer gets written as a self-contained block that still reads correctly with nothing around it, because that is the unit that gets quoted.
Citation tracking
We run the questions your clients ask through the major answer engines every month and report who got named. Rank is not the only scoreboard anymore.
The two columns are not two projects. Schema written so a machine can read your practice areas also tells Google what the page is. A city page good enough to rank is the same page an answer engine quotes. A firm record that matches everywhere feeds both. Nothing here gets built twice, which is why it is one retainer and not two vendors arguing about whose work moved the number.
Answer what people actually type.
Nobody types a keyword. They type a worried sentence at eleven at night. Every article we publish takes one of those sentences, gives it a direct answer in the first two lines, and then earns the rest of the page.
That first block is written to survive on its own, because it is the piece an answer engine quotes and the piece a reader decides on.
Recent pieces live on the articles page.
- How much is my car accident case worth in [city]?
- Do I need a lawyer for a first DUI in [state]?
- How is custody decided when both parents work?
- What happens at a preliminary hearing?
- How long do I have to file after a crash?
- What does a business attorney charge for a contract review?
Case-type and city variables get filled with the ones your firm takes. A question you would never sign a case from does not get an article.
Want the list built for your firm? Answer six questions and we will send back the queries you should own.
What it costs.
Monthly retainer
Local
Own your city and your map pack.
- Google Business Profile management
- Map pack and local ranking work
- Review generation system
- Two optimized practice-area pages a month
Authority
Rank across every case type you want to sign.
- Everything in Local
- Four articles a month, written for search and for AI citation
- Technical SEO and Core Web Vitals
- City and practice-area page programs
- AI search visibility tracking
A one-time technical and AI-search audit is $2,500 and is credited against the first month if you continue.
Audit both halves
Where you rank locally today, and separately what the answer engines say right now when someone asks who to hire in your city. Most firms have never seen the second one.
Fix the foundation
Schema, name and address and phone consistency across directories, site speed, crawlability, and an llms.txt so AI crawlers get a clean map of the firm.
Publish on a calendar
Practice-area pages, city pages, and articles shipped every month, each one aimed at a question people actually type rather than a keyword pulled off a list.
Report rank and citations
Map pack position, organic rankings, calls and forms from search, and a monthly check on which answer engines named the firm.
Good to know.
How much does law firm SEO cost?
High Arc Media prices law firm SEO as a monthly retainer. Local is $2,500 a month and covers Google Business Profile management, map pack and local ranking work, a review generation system, and two optimized practice-area pages a month. Authority is $4,500 a month and adds four articles written for search and for AI citation, technical SEO and Core Web Vitals, city and practice-area page programs, and AI search visibility tracking. A one-time technical and AI search audit is $2,500 and is credited against the first month if you continue.
How do law firms rank in the Google map pack?
Map pack ranking is driven by three things: how close the firm is to the person searching, how complete and accurate the Google Business Profile is, and review volume and recency. Proximity is fixed by your office address. The other two are work. That means correct primary and secondary categories, real service and practice-area entries, photos, hours, and a reply on every review, good or bad, because a wall of unanswered ones reads as an abandoned profile. Recency is the part firms get wrong. An old review counts for less than a new one, so a firm sitting on a pile it collected years ago loses ground to a firm still adding them. A burst also looks bought and gets treated that way. Steady beats spiky, which is why the ask belongs in your case-closing checklist rather than in a campaign somebody runs once.
How do you get a law firm cited by ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews?
Four things make a firm citable. Structured data on the site so a machine can read what you practice and where. Consistent firm name, address, phone, and practice areas everywhere you are listed, since answer engines cross-check sources. An llms.txt file and a robots file that let AI crawlers reach the pages that matter. And content written as self-contained passages, because an answer engine lifts a passage rather than a whole page. High Arc Media builds all four into the same retainer that handles local search.
Does attorney SEO still matter if AI is answering the questions?
It matters more. AI answers are assembled from indexed, crawlable sources, so a firm that is not crawled, structured, and quotable cannot be named in one. Attorney SEO is now the input to two systems instead of one: the search results a person clicks, and the answer a machine writes on their behalf. The traffic that survives is also further along, because someone who reads an AI answer naming your firm and then calls has already been screened.
How long does law firm SEO take to work?
The local half moves first. Profile fixes and category corrections can change map pack visibility within weeks, and the review process starts compounding from the month it goes live. Ranking new practice-area and city pages takes months, because the pages have to be published, crawled, and earn their position. AI citation sits in between and depends on how often the engines refresh their sources. Any agency promising page one in thirty days is selling you something.
What is an llms.txt file and does my law firm need one?
An llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a domain that points AI crawlers at the pages a site most wants read: practice areas, attorney bios, FAQs, and results. It is a convention rather than a rule, so no engine is obligated to honor it, and it takes an hour to add. For a law firm competing to be named in AI answers, that is a cheap bet worth taking alongside the schema and entity work that actually does the heavy lifting.