Which NYC Lawyers Does AI Recommend? 2026 Study

Study date: November 12, 2026

We expected a list of big-name firms. New York has 190,015 resident active lawyers, more than any other state, according to the ABA's 2025 Profile of the Legal Profession. Yet when we asked ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview 10 everyday questions about hiring a lawyer in New York City, the 26 answers named just three law firms, 8 times in total.

Instead of names, the engines mostly sent people to the New York City Bar Association, the courts and lawyer directories. nycbar.org was the most-cited source, with 23 of 205 citation events.

This is the data the engines returned in one Beket AI audit on one day. It isn't our ranking of any lawyer, it isn't legal advice, and AI answers change over time.

Key numbers

Measure	Result
Study date	November 12, 2026
Location setting	New York City, New York, United States
Questions	10 unbranded questions about hiring a lawyer, in English
Engines	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview
Answers returned	26 of 30 (ChatGPT 10, Perplexity 10, Google AI Overview 6)
Law firms named	3
Law firm mentions	8
Named on all three engines	0
Directory mentions (left out of the firm count)	4, all Justia
Citation events	205
Most-cited domain	nycbar.org, 23 citation events

The three firms AI did name

Rank	Law firm	Mentions	ChatGPT	Perplexity	Google AI Overview
1	Romano Law	4	3	1	0
2	Law Offices of Julie Rendelman	2	2	0	0
3	NYIS Law Firm	2	2	0	0

Romano Law was the only firm named on two engines, with 3 mentions on ChatGPT and 1 on Perplexity. Law Offices of Julie Rendelman and NYIS Law Firm each had 2 mentions, both on ChatGPT. None of the three was named first in an answer.

That's the whole list. With so few names, a single extra mention would reorder it, so read it as who happened to surface on this day, not as a leaderboard.

Far fewer names than our other studies

The thin list stands out next to our earlier studies. In the Seattle lawyers study, the same three engines named 41 firms 241 times. In the Vancouver lawyers study, they named 39 firms 210 times. And a day earlier, with the same New York City location setting, our NYC realtors study got 287 brokerage mentions from 60 answers.

Study	Date	Questions	Answers	Businesses named	Mentions	Mentions per answer
NYC lawyers	Nov 12, 2026	10	26	3	8	0.3
NYC realtors	Nov 11, 2026	25	60	35	287	4.8
Seattle lawyers	Oct 27, 2026	25 + 4 discovery	69	41	241	3.5
Vancouver lawyers	Oct 23, 2026	25 + 4 discovery	61	39	210	3.4

These studies used different question sets and ran on different days, so this is a rough comparison, not a controlled test. But the gap is large: Seattle averaged about 3.5 firm mentions per answer, and New York averaged 0.3.

Engine by engine

Engine	Questions answered	Citation events	Law firms named	Firm mentions	Justia mentions
ChatGPT	10/10	44	3	7	2
Perplexity	10/10	110	1	1	2
Google AI Overview	6/10	53	0	0	0

ChatGPT did nearly all the naming, with 7 of the 8 firm mentions. It was also the engine that cited the fewest sources, 44 across 10 answers.

Perplexity cited the most, 110 sources across 10 answers, but named only one firm once. It also named Justia twice.

Google AI Overview answered 6 of the 10 questions and cited 53 sources, but named no law firm at all in those answers. It returned no answer for four questions: who are the best lawyers in New York City, divorce lawyers, immigration lawyers and criminal defense lawyers. We list those as missing, not as zero mentions, and the tools don't show why they're missing.

Where the answers pointed instead

The cited sources show what the engines leaned on. Of the top ten cited domains, the bar association and the courts (nycbar.org and nycourts.gov) had 29 citation events. Lawyer directories and rankings (Justia, Best Lawyers, Chambers, Doyle's Guide and Cornell's LII lawyer directory) had 28. Law firm websites had just 6: lawfletcher.com and romanolaw.com, with 3 each.

Domain	Citation events
nycbar.org	23
justia.com	14
google.com	10
nycourts.gov	6
bestlawyers.com	4
chambers.com	4
doylesguide.com	3
lawfletcher.com	3
lawyers.law.cornell.edu	3
romanolaw.com	3

The City Bar runs a Legal Referral Service that matches people with screened lawyers, and it says initial consultations are $35 or free, depending on the type of case. An answer that points there is a reasonable answer for a consumer. For a law firm, it means the AI handed the choice to someone else.

One cited domain, lawfletcher.com, had 3 citation events but wasn't extracted as a named firm in the market report. We didn't add mentions the report didn't record.

Why this matters for NYC law firms

People do ask AI about lawyers. In iLawyer Marketing's July 2025 consumer study of 1,052 US adults, 28.1% said they'd use ChatGPT to research a lawyer for an important legal issue, up from 9% in 2023. Google was still first at 86.7%.

When those answers name almost no firms, being one of the few that does surface is worth a lot. And in New York, the engines' default seems to be "use the bar referral service or a directory." So the pages AI reads about a firm include its bar and directory profiles, not only its own website.

Answers also move. Our note on why one AI check is only a snapshot explains why a single run can't tell you where you stand for good.

What an NYC firm can check

1. Ask unbranded questions in your practice area. Use questions like the 10 below, not your firm's name. Our guide to checking whether ChatGPT recommends your business shows how to do it by hand.
2. Check each engine on its own. Here ChatGPT named firms, Perplexity barely did, and Google AI Overview named none.
3. Look at what gets cited. If the answer cites the City Bar, Justia or a ranking guide, check that your listings there are accurate and complete.
4. Make your own pages answer the question. Firm websites were cited only 6 times in the top ten. A practice-area page that plainly answers "how much does a co-op lawyer cost in New York City" gives an engine something to quote.
5. Re-check over time. One run is a snapshot.

The free Beket AI audit runs 25 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview for your own brand. Beket AI Pro is $49 a month with daily re-audits, starting at 50 prompts across the same three engines.

Method and caveats

Beket AI ran one market audit for lawyers in New York City on November 12, 2026, created at 10:52 AM PT and completed at 11:07 AM PT. We used 10 unbranded questions in English, set the location to New York City, New York, United States, and used three engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview. Extra prompt generation was off, so 30 answers were requested. We picked the 10 questions for real buyer intent across the main practice areas people hire for, plus cost and how to choose, and kept them close to the wording of our Seattle and Vancouver lawyer studies. The co-op question is the New York version of the real estate question.

The final answer log has 26 answers, with no duplicate question and engine pairs and no off-topic rows. ChatGPT and Perplexity answered all 10 questions. Google AI Overview returned answers for 6.

The raw market report had 4 labels and 12 mentions. We left out Justia (4 mentions: ChatGPT 2, Perplexity 2) because it's a lawyer directory, not a law firm. Avvo, Super Lawyers and FindLaw were not extracted as names, so we report no counts for them. No name merges were needed. That left 3 law firms with 8 mentions. These are editorial calls.

Counts are mention events, not recommendation rates. One answer can name a firm more than once. Being named doesn't verify a New York bar admission, an NYC office or the quality of anyone's work. The citation domain counts come from the market report's top ten, which covers 73 of the 205 citation events, and the citation URLs we inspected were a sample of 100. A short list can also come from advice-style answers or names the report's extractor didn't catch, and we didn't fill in names from citation URLs.

AI answers change over time, and this is a single run. If your firm is in this study, or you'd like it re-run, you can ask Beket AI for another run.

All 10 questions

#	Question	Google AI Overview answered?
1	who are the best lawyers in New York City	No answer
2	personal injury lawyers in New York City	Yes
3	divorce lawyers in New York City	No answer
4	immigration lawyers in New York City	No answer
5	criminal defense lawyers in New York City	No answer
6	lawyers for buying a co-op in New York City	Yes
7	employment lawyers in New York City	Yes
8	business lawyers for small businesses in New York City	Yes
9	how much does a lawyer cost in New York City	Yes
10	how to choose a lawyer in New York City	Yes

ChatGPT and Perplexity answered all 10.

Bottom line

For New York City legal questions, the engines in this run mostly didn't recommend law firms at all. They pointed people to the City Bar, the courts and directories, and only ChatGPT named firms with any regularity. For an NYC firm, that means AI visibility starts with the sources the engines trust, and it's worth checking each engine with the questions your clients actually ask.