Does Your Law Firm Have an Estate Plan? An AEO Guide for Your Online Presence
You have probably told a client some version of this: if you die without a plan, the state writes one for you. It follows a formula. It doesn’t know your wishes or your family. The state steps in because you aren’t there to speak for yourself.
Your firm’s online reputation works the same way. When someone asks ChatGPT, “Do I need a trust or just a will?”, you aren’t in the room. An answer engine decides which firms to name, and if you haven’t clearly written down who you are, what you do, and why anyone should believe it, the engine falls back on a default.
That is the equivalent of intestacy for a law firm. The default decides, and it favors whichever firm made itself easiest to understand. If you didn’t take the time to create a plan for your firm’s online visibility, that may not be you.
The fix is answer engine optimization (AEO): becoming the firm that AI answer engines cite and recommend by name.
What Does a Firm Without a Plan Look Like?
You have seen the estate file where the will names an executor who died years ago. Firms leave the same kind of stale instructions online without noticing:
- Three different phone numbers on Google, the bar directory, and an old legal directory.
- A bio page for an attorney who left the firm.
- A website that says estate planning, while a directory still lists business litigation.
- Videos on YouTube that never appear on the matching webpage.
- A handful of old reviews, none of which mention estate planning.
AI reads all of it at once. When the pieces disagree, it has to guess, and it often moves on to a firm that didn’t make it guess.
How Do You Draft Your Firm’s Digital Estate Plan?
Every document in a client’s plan exists so their wishes are understood when they can’t explain them. Each has a counterpart in yours. We call them the seven signals.
- The will is your coherent digital presence. State what you do, for whom, and where in one sentence. Make your website, directories, and social bios say it the same way.
- The trust is trustworthiness. Keep your name, address, and phone number identical everywhere. Ask for reviews at the signing, within your state’s testimonial rules, and reply to each one.
- The power of attorney is structured data. Add standard schema markup for the firm, each attorney, your FAQs, and article dates. There is no special “AI schema.”
- The witnesses are authoritativeness. Earn mentions from sources your clients trust, such as CPAs, financial advisors, elder law attorneys, and regional publications. Swap bio links with referral partners.
- The detailed instructions are demonstrated expertise. Write what only a practitioner knows: blended families, special needs trusts, family businesses with no successor. Skip the generic explainer.
- The plain-language summary is direct, conversational answers. Put the answer in the first two sentences. Use your clients’ questions as headings.
- The letter of wishes is video with real people. Put attorneys on camera for one question at a time, one to three minutes each, with transcripts, embedded on the matching page.
None of this games anything. It makes the experience you already have easy for a machine to read.
When Should You Review the Plan?
You tell clients to revisit their plans periodically so everything stays up to date. Do the same for your firm. Put a 30-minute review on the calendar each quarter, and add one whenever an attorney joins or leaves, the office moves, or a practice area changes. Check your listings, remove departed attorneys’ bios, reply to new reviews, and update any article affected by a law change.
What Happens If You Do Nothing?
The same thing that happens to a client who never signs. Nothing, until a family needs help, asks an AI tool who to call, and gets a short list written by default.
Your firm already has the raw material: years of real cases, referral relationships, and answers clients have trusted. It needs to be written down clearly enough for a machine to read.
If you’d like help finding the path forward, Foster Consulting™ can help. For over 30 years, we’ve been helping law firms like yours optimize their online presence. We’d be glad to talk through where your firm stands today.
ABOUT FOSTER WEB MARKETING
Since 1998, Foster Web Marketing has provided boutique website design and digital marketing services to lawyers, doctors, and other professionals across the U.S. and around the world. We use our in-house website design, content writing, search engine optimization, and coaching teams to strategize more effective marketing plans for our clients. We also provide powerful marketing software that supports businesses in attracting their “perfect clients” and achieving consistent success online.