We asked ChatGPT about 15 Indian law firms. 10 were invisible.

By Reckona AI9 August 20268 min read

For India's law firms, AI visibility isn't a marketing question — it's a business development risk. In-house legal teams, CFOs, and founders are increasingly using AI to research and shortlist firms before making first contact. Our study of 15 leading Indian law firms found that 10 were entirely absent from these queries — and 3 of the 5 that did appear were described with material errors about their practice areas, city presence, or firm identity.

How we tested

We selected 15 firms covering full-service national practices and specialist boutiques — including Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, Khaitan & Co, AZB & Partners, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, J Sagar Associates, Trilegal, Argus Partners, Luthra & Luthra, Nishith Desai Associates, S&R Associates, DSK Legal, Induslaw, Fox Mandal, Veritas Legal, and Sathyan Nair & Co.

We ran three prompt types across ChatGPT (GPT-4o), Gemini Advanced, and Perplexity:

Mandate prompts — "top Indian law firms for M&A transactions", "which Indian firm is best for cross-border private equity work?", "recommended law firm in India for FEMA and RBI regulatory matters"
Direct prompts — "what practice areas is [firm] known for?", "where does [firm] have offices?"
Comparison prompts — "[firm A] vs [firm B] for [practice area] — what are the differences in approach and client base?"

Visibility required an unprompted appearance in mandate-level category queries. Accuracy required no material error on practice strengths, city presence, or firm structure.

What we found

10 of 15 firms never appeared in any mandate-type query on any engine — invisible to the in-house counsel or founder who starts their firm research with AI before picking up the phone.
Of the 5 that did appear, 3 had material errors — practice strengths described for the wrong firm, city office coverage inaccurate, and in two cases global firms with similar names confused with the Indian entity.
Only 2 of 15 were both visible and accurately described — a 13% pass rate, and those 2 firms were precisely the ones with the most extensive public-facing knowledge content: published legal updates, authored commentary in general business media, and well-maintained Wikipedia presence.
For practice-area queries, AI engines defaulted to global firms (Latham, Clifford Chance) even when the query explicitly asked about Indian domestic counsel — suggesting Indian firms have almost no AI presence relative to their global counterparts' content investment.

What the invisible 10 had in common

Bar Council restrictions interpreted as a content ban. Rules prohibiting solicitation of legal business have been interpreted by most firms as a prohibition on any public content strategy. But there is a significant difference between prohibited solicitation and permitted thought leadership — and the firms with AI visibility operate firmly in the latter space, publishing legal analysis, regulatory updates, and sector commentary that educates rather than solicits.
Attorney expertise lives in CVs that AI can't navigate. Every Indian law firm has partners with deep expertise — but that expertise is documented in PDF CVs that describe deal experience in anonymised, client-confidential terms. AI can't synthesise a partner's authority from a list of "confidential client matters." Publicly attributed commentary achieves the same credibility signal in a form AI can use.
Deal tombstones are the only public content many firms have. A list of transactions closed — presented as deal announcements in legal trade press — represents the majority of public footprint for most Indian firms. AI engines don't convert deal announcements into practice area recommendations; they need explanatory, analytical content.
Legal ranking profiles don't feed AI answers. Chambers, Legal 500, and IBLJ rankings are the industry's trust standard — but the data in those directories doesn't reach AI training pipelines the way publicly indexed web content does. A Chambers Band 1 ranking is invisible to AI unless it's referenced in crawlable editorial content.

The referral network is not the only channel anymore. India's top law firms have historically grown through referrals, alumni networks, and investment bank relationships. Those channels still matter — but the first touchpoint is increasingly an AI query run by a GC or CFO who wants to know who the credible names are in a practice area before making the call. Invisible firms don't make that consideration set.

What to do about it

Law firms can build AI presence without violating bar council rules: publish legal updates on regulatory changes, author commentary in business publications, contribute to Wikipedia entries for practice areas and landmark cases, and build entity presence for the firm name and its partners. None of this is solicitation. All of it builds the AI footprint that referrals alone no longer guarantee. Full playbook in our Complete GEO Guide.

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