AI is increasingly becoming the first port of call for legal advice, raising questions about whether law firms can ensure their services are visible to AI-driven client referrals

A growing pattern in legal services is being examined by industry commentators: potential clients are turning to AI tools as their first step when seeking legal advice, using generative AI (AI systems capable of producing human-like text responses) to diagnose their legal problem before contacting a law firm. This shift raises a structural question for law firms of all sizes: if AI systems are shaping which firms a client considers before any human contact occurs, how do firms ensure they appear in those recommendations? The dynamic is distinct from search engine optimisation. AI models generating legal referrals are drawing on training data and, in some cases, live retrieval, rather than simply ranking websites by traffic. A firm's visibility to AI-generated legal referrals depends on the quality and breadth of its publicly available thought leadership, case results, and sector commentary, factors that differ from traditional marketing approaches. A parallel development tracked in the same reporting period involves AI being used by self-represented litigants (individuals who represent themselves in court without a lawyer, sometimes called pro se litigants) to file and prosecute legal claims. A trial is underway at Georgia's Statewide Business Court in the United States in which a plaintiff is representing himself with the assistance of AI tools. The case raises practical questions about the reliability of AI-generated legal arguments at trial and the courts' approach to AI-assisted pro se litigation. Taken together, these developments reflect a legal market in which AI is reshaping both the client journey before instruction and the conduct of litigation by unrepresented parties, two distinct but related pressures on the traditional legal services model.