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Custom Legal Marketing Releases First Public Report on AI Rankings from Its Sequoia Platform

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GOOGL The article discusses Google AI Mode's recommendations for law firms, noting significant differences compared to ChatGPT and Claude. While not directly evaluating Google's performance, it places Google AI Mode as one of the key AI platforms analyzed in the study. GOOG The article discusses Google AI Mode's recommendations for law firms, noting significant differences compared to ChatGPT and Claude. While not directly evaluating Google's performance, it places Google AI Mode as one of the key AI platforms analyzed in the study.

Custom Legal Marketing Releases First Public Report on AI Rankings from Its Sequoia Platform ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI Mode recommend almost entirely different sets of law firms. A study conducted through Custom Legal Marketing's Sequoia platform pushed 9,600 queries across 100 U.S. cities and 32 practice areas and analyzed more than 100,000 citations.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESS Newswire / July 29, 2026 / Custom Legal Marketing has released its first study exposing AI ranking and recommendation behavior. The research, conducted through the company's AI marketing platform for lawyers, Sequoia, reports that the three most widely used AI platforms almost never recommend the same law firms.

CLM has studied AI recommendation behavior through Sequoia and trains their systems on that data on a regular basis. The majority of Sequoia's discoveries are implemented internally for the benefit of CLM and its clients.

The law firm marketing company has released multiple studies throughout the year relating to Google rankings and traditional law firm SEO. This report is the first of that body of research to be released publicly that relates to AI answer engine optimization.

The study submitted 3,200 identically worded questions to ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI Mode, for a total of 9,600 queries. The questions covered 100 of the largest cities in the United States and 32 legal practice areas, ranging from car accident and criminal defense to probate and wrongful termination, and were phrased as a consumer would phrase them. Researchers recorded every website each platform cited and the order in which it was cited, producing 107,716 citations for analysis.

Across the full study, the three platforms recommended 19,692 distinct law firm websites. Only 2.9 percent of cited law firms were recommended by all three AI platforms.

The disagreement was more pronounced at the level of individual questions. When two platforms answered the same prompt about the same city, the share of law firms appearing in both answers ranged from 2.8 percent to 8.6 percent. Claude and Google AI Mode returned no law firm in common in 70.6 percent of questions. When the analysis was limited to the first law firm each platform named, all three selected the same firm in 0.9 percent of questions, or 24 out of more than 2,500.

The report identifies differences in source material as a likely driver. Each platform relied on a different set of legal directories. Avvo appeared in 87.1 percent of Claude's answers but 5.4 percent of Google AI Mode's. Super Lawyers appeared in 62.8 percent of Google AI Mode's answers and in none of Claude's. Martindale appeared in more than half of Claude's answers and in approximately one tenth of one percent of Google AI Mode's. Google AI Mode also cited Yelp and Reddit regularly, while neither chat assistant cited either source.

Agreement also varied sharply by practice area. Corporate law produced the highest rate of three way agreement at 45.2 percent, followed by car accident at 32 percent and personal injury at just under 30 percent. Estate planning produced no agreement at all, with the three platforms never converging on a shared firm across any of the 100 cities tested. Probate and trust queries produced agreement rates of 2.5 percent and 3.3 percent.

Answer engine optimization, especially for law firms, has developed with comparatively little published data behind it, and much of the guidance available to law firms rests on assumption rather than measurement. Asked why the company chose to publish this particular study after keeping its AI research internal, CLM co-founder Jason Bland pointed to that gap.

"We hold most of this back because it is what our clients are paying for," Bland said. "But there is a lot of confident advice circulating about AI visibility that nobody has actually tested, and firms are making budget decisions based on podcaster pontifications rather than real data."

The full report, Do ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI Mode Recommend the Same Law Firms?, can be read on Custom Legal Marketing's website.

About Custom Legal Marketing

Custom Legal Marketing is a law firm marketing company 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

https://custom.legal/

Media Contact

Jason Bland

800-789-6451

SOURCE: Custom Legal Marketing