A proposal for answer engine optimisation arrives, and there is no honest way for a law firm to test a single sentence in it. Every source the buyer could check is written by somebody selling the same service. Search the category and what comes back is agency service pages and ranked lists of agencies, several published by companies that appear in their own rankings, none showing where the advice came from.
There is one disinterested source, and it is the platform. Google publishes guidance on how its generative search features work, and three of the deliverables sold most often are addressed in it by name.
Three of the deliverables sold most often as answer engine optimisation are addressed directly in Google’s own guidance, which states that none of them is required for a page to appear in generative search results.
Hold the proposal next to the documentation and most of it resolves itself.
Does Schema Markup Get a Law Firm Into AI Answers?
Schema markup does not get a law firm into AI answers, and the clearest statement of that comes from Google. Its guidance on optimising for generative AI features, last updated 10 July 2026, states that structured data is not required for generative AI search and that there is no special schema.org markup to add for it.
That is narrower than the version which circulates. Google is not saying markup is useless, and the same page keeps structured data’s role in earning rich results in classic search. What the sentence rules out is the specific pitch, that adding markup is the lever producing AI citations. A proposal built on that is selling classic-search work at AI prices.
Markup on a law firm site is also rarely what the firm thinks it is, a problem worth its own look in the markup a firm’s plugins wrote without anyone asking.
The File the Crawlers Are Supposed to Want
The second deliverable is a machine-readable file placed at the root of the site, sold as the thing that lets AI systems read the content properly. It is cheap to produce and easy to demonstrate, which is most of its appeal to whoever is selling it.
Google’s guidance addresses it directly, stating that new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup or Markdown are not needed to appear in Google Search, and that creating them will neither harm nor help a site’s visibility or rankings there.
Note the scope. That sentence is about Google Search, and other engines publish their own crawler documentation. A vendor selling the file for a different engine should be asked which engine, and for that engine’s own published statement.
No Engine Asked for the Site to Be Chopped Up
The third and most expensive deliverable is a content rebuild, sold on the premise that generative systems read fragments rather than pages, so every page has to be broken into small extractable pieces.
Google’s guidance states there is no requirement to break content into tiny pieces for AI to understand it, and describes its systems as able to handle multiple topics on one page and surface the relevant part.
There is a real idea underneath the bad version of this. A page answering one question, at a URL naming that question, in the words a client would use, does get quoted more readily than a page covering six topics. That is a writing decision about how questions map to pages, covered as such in answer engine optimisation for law firms.
What it is not is a mandate from any engine to atomise a website. Restructuring a site around a requirement that does not exist is the costliest of the three to act on and the hardest to reverse.
The Claim Becomes the Firm’s Own Communication
Whoever writes a claim, the firm publishes it. Copy a vendor puts on a law firm’s website is a communication about that firm’s services, and ABA Model Rule 7.1 prohibits a false or misleading communication about a lawyer or the lawyer’s services. The rule binds the firm, not the agency that drafted the sentence.
The vendor’s own marketing sits under a different standard. The FTC’s guidance for small businesses on advertising sets out that an advertiser needs a reasonable basis, meaning objective evidence, to support a claim before making it.
A buyer does not need to litigate that. It is useful as a question. Asking a vendor what objective evidence supports a claim is asking for what the FTC says they should already hold.
How to Test an AEO Proposal Before You Sign It
Read the proposal against the documentation rather than against the pitch. Four checks, half an hour.
- Underline every claim about how an engine behaves. Anything asserting that a system prefers, requires, weights or rewards something. Those are the load-bearing sentences.
- Ask for the source and the date on each one. Engine behaviour changes constantly, so a claim with no date is a claim about a system that may no longer exist. A vendor who tests things will have the queries and the day they ran.
- Check the three deliverables above against Google’s guidance. Markup, the machine-readable file, and the content rebuild are each addressed in it by name.
- Ask what the firm owns at the end. The answer decides what a year of work is worth if the relationship ends, and it is the question buyers most often forget to ask.
Everything else on an evaluation checklist can wait until those four are answered, and the wider agency question runs through the questions worth asking before a content contract is signed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a law firm website need schema markup to appear in AI answers?
A law firm website does not need schema markup to appear in AI answers. Google’s guidance on its generative features states that structured data is not required and that no special markup exists for it, though structured data still earns rich results in classic search, which is a separate benefit.
Is an llms.txt or similar AI file worth adding to a law firm site?
Google’s guidance states that new machine-readable AI files are not needed to appear in Google Search and that creating them will neither harm nor help a site’s visibility there. A vendor recommending one for a different engine should be asked which engine and for that engine’s own published statement.
Should a law firm rebuild its content into shorter chunks for AI search?
Google’s guidance says there is no requirement to break content into tiny pieces for AI to understand it. Writing one page per client question is still worth doing, but that is a decision about how questions map to URLs rather than a technical requirement any engine has published.
Who is responsible if a vendor’s claim ends up on the firm’s website?
The firm is responsible. Copy published on a law firm’s site is a communication about that firm’s services under ABA Model Rule 7.1, whoever drafted it, so a claim a vendor wrote becomes the firm’s problem once it goes live.
What AEO Services for Law Firms Should Be Able to Show
A service worth buying can name the source and the date behind every claim it makes about engine behaviour, and can say plainly what the firm owns when the engagement ends. Neither is difficult for a vendor doing real work, and both are unanswerable for one that is not.
Take the proposal on your desk, underline the sentences asserting something about an engine, and ask where each came from.
Call 877-486-8123 or contact us online and read us the claims in your proposal, or see the content work itself.
David Arato, JD is the founder of Lexicon Legal Content, an attorney-owned legal content marketing agency serving law firms since 2012. Based in Denver, Lexicon writes for law firms and for the marketing agencies that serve them. David is a frequent contributor to Attorney at Law Magazine and Attorney at Work and a recurring guest on legal marketing podcasts.
