San Francisco, California – Law firm AEO company, Custom Legal Marketing has released a study examining whether llms.txt files and “Hey AI, learn about us” footer links help law firms get recommended by AI platforms. The research found that most law firms recommended by AI have neither, and that firms with an llms.txt file appear in virtually the same position in AI answers as firms without one.

Using its CLM Sequoia AI marketing platform, the agency submitted 12,800 lawyer recommendation prompts to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok, covering 30 practice areas in 100 U.S. cities. After removing directories, bar associations, courts, government agencies, legal aid organizations, media and nonworking websites, researchers crawled the 3,212 law firm websites the platforms recommended and checked each one for an llms.txt file and for links directed at AI systems.

Key findings include:

• 63.7% of AI-recommended law firms had no llms.txt file.
• Firms with the file averaged position 2.62 in AI answers. Firms without it averaged 2.61.
• In 2,388 answers that named both kinds of firm, the firm with the file was listed higher 43.0% of the time and lower 44.8% of the time.
• Of the 93 firms recommended by all four platforms, 75.3% had no llms.txt file.
• Half of the llms.txt files found (574 of 1,146) were generated automatically by an SEO plugin.
• Only 3.8% of recommended firms had an AI-directed link, and 61.5% of those links used some version of the phrase “Hey AI, learn about us.”

The study did find that firms with an llms.txt file were recommended slightly more often on average, 5.04 times compared with 4.19. That difference appeared only among injury and criminal defense firms and was not present in family, employment, estate or business practice groups. The researchers note that the study includes only firms that were recommended at least once and that its findings describe correlation and do not establish causation.

The full report, “Does llms.txt Actually Help Law Firms Get Recommended by AI?”, is available at https://custom.legal/knowledge/does-llms-txt-actually-help-law-firms-get-recommended-by-ai/.

Custom Legal Marketing is a law firm marketing agency built for how clients actually find lawyers today. Founded in 2005, CLM combines award-winning creative with a purpose-built AI platform to help law firms stand out, get chosen, and grow in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

Custom Legal Marketing
1111 Kearny Street San Francisco CA 94133
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https://custom.legal/
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