When someone asks ChatGPT for a divorce lawyer in Dallas, a handful of firms come back. CounselIndex records which ones, with the prompt, the platform, and the date. Claiming a profile is free. Corrections are free. Nothing a firm pays for changes a score.
What it is
CounselIndex is a public record of AI behavior. Each month our research team runs standardized “which law firm should I hire” prompts for a city and practice area. Each prompt runs three times. We record which firms the AI names and in what order.
Every observation gets a stable ID, a date, and a permanent page. We never edit an observation. If the answer changes next month, that is a new record, and both stay public.
Every law firm office in the index has a profile built from public sources: practice areas, locations, published reviews, and the web signals AI systems read. Firms sort into four visibility stages. Invisible. Findable. AI-Named. AI-Selected. The stage comes from recorded observations, not from anything a firm tells us.
CounselIndex is not a lawyer referral service. It does not recommend attorneys, measure legal skill, or predict case outcomes. It measures one thing: whether AI assistants name a firm when asked.
Why we built it
We spent twelve years studying how large language models decide what to cite. In 2026 we measured it for law firms. The numbers below come from our own census and a blinded study; the full method is on the index.
of 61,409 firms appeared in any recorded AI answer
The census that started the index. Roughly 70% of the firms AI names appear in exactly one market. Most firms are invisible.
average star rating at every visibility stage
Ratings are statistically flat from Invisible to AI-Selected. Reviews matter to clients. They do not separate the named from the unnamed.
more third-party community discussion for AI-named firms
In a blinded study of 400 firms, scored without knowing each firm’s stage: 43% against 12%. Accreditations ran 71% against 48%. Correlation, measured carefully. Not a promise that any tactic causes naming.
of the sources AI engines cite are third-party surfaces
University of Toronto, measured across four AI engines. Directory standing on Avvo, Justia, and FindLaw is flat across all stages. AI answers come from what other sites say about you, not from your website alone.
How it works
01
Sweep
Standardized prompts run monthly for each market and practice area, three runs per prompt, across the assistants consumers use.
02
Record
Every answer becomes a dated observation: prompt, platform, firms named, response order, and the method version in force.
03
Classify
Each firm gets a visibility stage from its recorded observations and a machine-visibility check of its website.
04
Publish
Market pages, firm profiles, and observation records go live. Each market panel links to its record so anyone can check the work.
Independence
We operate the index and we sell AI visibility services. So we wrote the firewall down and published it. Commercial status is excluded from every ranking input, for every firm, including 12AM Agency’s own clients. If our clients move up, it will be because the observations recorded it.
Claim a profile
Correct facts, add attorneys and locations
Publish an official firm perspective
Add media and an intake link
Subscribe to monthly monitoring
Change a score
Change a rank or list order
Change a rank or list order
Appear as "named" without a recorded observation
Buy, expedite, or block a correction
For law firms
Claim your profile. Free, permanent, two clicks with a firm-domain email. Claiming verifies the record AI systems read about you. It does not touch the observations.
Check your record. Every firm’s stage, its observations, and the firms named in its market are public.
Report an error. No account needed. The research team reviews every correction, and payment never gates one.
Monitor the market. Paid monitoring and dashboards exist for firms that want the monthly evidence. None of it changes a result.
Who operates it
12AM Agency is a Dallas-based agency specializing in generative engine optimization and technical SEO for law firms. The research team behind CounselIndex is the same team that produces 12AM’s AI Visibility Diagnostic.
The index measures. The agency optimizes. Governance keeps the two apart.
12AM Agency · 5830 Granite Pkwy Ste 100, Plano, TX 75024
index@12amagency.com · counselindex.ai
Get recommended
Look up your office, read the observations for your market, and claim the record. Free, no card, and nothing you do on the index changes what AI said.
Want the underlying signals engineered? The 12AM AI Visibility Diagnostic is a separate service, and it never changes an index result.
