Start here: how far lawyers' publicity is regulated, and which pages you can build

0.1 How to use this book: it only covers where law firms differ from the General Edition

What you'll do in this section: confirm your law firm is within this book's scope and how thick the evidence is; know which General Edition sections to read first for each chapter, and what the Law Firms Edition adds; lay out the calendar in the 90-day order; remember the values already decided for law firms' ten axes; know what each of the two AI-retrieval legs cites for law firms and what to feed each one.

This book is written for Singapore local law firms (law firms, limited liability law partnerships (LLPs) and law corporations (LLCs)), for the part of their business that serves individual and SME clients; the evidence measured 9 practice areas within it (figure below). Large firms' institutional work — mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, banking and finance, international arbitration, shipping, construction, intellectual property, tax, and insolvency and restructuring — is not covered in this book, and immigration, medical negligence and defamation were not measured either. Foreign law practices, Qualifying Foreign Law Practices (QFLPs) and Joint Law Ventures (JLVs) are not covered: family, criminal, conveyancing and inheritance work in Singapore already fall outside what they are permitted to do [Statute text, LPE Rules r 50(1); see Appendix A.2]. Muslim marriages go through the Syariah Court and need their own separate set of pages; see 5.17.

The rules treat every practice area the same way; the evidence does not. Family law has 22 questions, and each of the other 8 practice areas has 2–5, so the proportions by practice area are directional only. The 5 questions under "choosing a lawyer and legal fees" ask about things that come up across every practice area (how much legal fees are, how to choose, which firm is nearby, whether no win no fee is available), so it does not count as a practice area.

Both batches of data use the same ruler:

• Family R1, R2: the public dataset, collected 2026-09-23. R1's 12 questions were put to both ChatGPT and Google AI Mode; R2's 10 questions were put to ChatGPT only; each question was asked once, with no reruns; the 18 pages cited in R1 were taken apart page by page (10 law firms, 6 government, 2 third party).
• L3: collected 2026-09-29, 30 questions (26 English, 4 Chinese). ChatGPT was asked each question twice, independently; AI Mode and Google's top-10 organic results were each sampled once. The page type of each citation was labelled heuristically by URL and title only, not taken apart page by page. L3 reran the same script to recalculate several key published numbers from the public dataset (source mix, overlap with Google's top 10, the intersection across the two engines and the two runs) — all of them matched.

In this book, the "ChatGPT leg" means the OpenAI API plus web search, and the "AI Mode leg" means Google AI Mode. L3's ChatGPT figures use run 1, with run 2 given in parentheses. The two legs have different denominators — read only "who cites what", not which number is bigger.

The Law Firms Edition does not rewrite the mechanisms, methods or general writing rules; it only gives law firms' values, bans, replacement wording and local lists. At the start of each chapter, first read the General Edition sections it links to:

Family law firms add one more step: before writing any case study or review reply, first read 1.7 and the family self-check sheet in Appendix B.4. When you can only do three things, follow this order: 0.2 → chapter 1 → 2.1 → the 48-hour baseline in → General Edition 4.8 Two shortcuts and this chapter's checklist → 2.4 → first thing, 3.1–3.2 (facts page + one page per lawyer) → second thing, 5.1, 5.2, 5.4–5.5 (fee guide page + single-matter fee page) → third thing, 3.4, 6.1, 6.3 (alignment with the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA), the sign-off gate before sending, the Law Society directory listing and ranking-guide submission) → 7.1–7.2.

Why the order cannot be swapped: freezing the baseline after the door is already fixed freezes a shelf you have already changed yourself, so before and after cannot be compared; for the mechanism, see → General Edition 0.1 The book in one sentence, and the 90-day reading order. For the day-by-day plan for week one, see 2.1. The day you fix the door is recorded as the split day: W1 counts from that day, and the before-and-after comparison at the week 13 settlement also uses it as the dividing line. Law firms often have a main site plus one or two keyword microsites, and you fix the door domain by domain (2.4).

For how to judge the ten axes and why each one moves rankings, see → General Edition 8.3 The ten axes (1): page types, containers, anchors, regulation, question shapes and → General Edition 8.4 The ten axes (2): decision-makers, capacity, attribution, half-life, language. Of the ten cells, only "shelf page-type mix" and "language fork" are backed by measurement; the rest are judgement calls:

• Shelf page-type mix (L3, heuristic): of ChatGPT's 146 citations on run 1, 96 were government and public-body guide pages; of AI Mode's 122, 45 were explainer articles; "best X" list-type pages accounted for only 3/146 and 5/122 on the two legs respectively.
• Language fork: for L3's 4 Chinese questions, ChatGPT cited Chinese pages 0/47 across both runs, AI Mode 5/22 (Chinese pages labelled heuristically by title and URL); of the 28 citations for family law's 3 Chinese questions, only 1 was a Chinese page, cited by AI Mode (single case). So a Chinese page is optional: build it only if the firm has Chinese-speaking clients, and accept it against the AI Mode leg only (5.3).
• Question shape is the mix we used when writing the questions, not buyers' real distribution; recalculate it against the frozen question pool once you start.
• Decision-makers and attribution are not measured, only experience-based judgement: divorce is decided by one person alone (the other party is the opposing party), wills and LPAs are often decided by a couple together, corporate matters go through the board, and criminal matters involve the individual plus family. So that cell reads "varies by practice line".

Three sentences the figure cannot show. The main front splits by leg: the ChatGPT leg rests on the fees page, the office page and the Law Society directory listing; the AI Mode leg rests on explainer articles with a question-title heading and a conclusion block; the first page to build is the fee guide page. Law firms' official anchor is the LSRA's "Search for a Lawyer or Law Practice" page, but whether it has a publicly citable number field is still to be verified — until it is verified, write only "LSRA register lookup link + check date", not a number (3.2); you cannot reuse the General Edition's line that the official registration number gives you the strongest anchor for free. From early 2027 there is one more anchor: the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) Directory of Specialists for family law (1.6). The cell that gets stuck most often: for process, definition, rule and calculation questions, ChatGPT never once cited a law firm's own website across these two batches of data (L3's 15 questions in these four types: 0 citations across both runs; family law's 13 questions on process, requirements, definitions, rules, calculations and checklists: 0 of them cited a law firm). Write these pages anyway, but do not promise the client that ChatGPT will cite them.

The numbers behind the figure (L3, 2026-09-29; family, 2026-09-23): the ChatGPT leg citing government and public-body pages — L3 115/146 (run 2: 125/161), family R1 48/60, R2 50/59; family's ChatGPT citations of legislation numbered 12, all 12 anchored to a specific provision. The ChatGPT leg citing law firms' own websites — L3 12/146 (run 2: 11/161), family R1 4/60, R2 4/59. The AI Mode leg citing law firms' own websites — L3 47/122, family R1 29/52. URLs shared by both engines for the same question — L3 17/251, family R1 6/106 — so feed each leg its own material; do not expect one page to serve both. The "who's best" row rests on a thin sample, so treat it as directional only: L3 has 3 questions; of ChatGPT's 12 citations on run 1, 9 were government and public-body pages and 1 was a ranking guide (run 2: 8 and 3 of 14); every ranking-guide citation fell on the one question asking about criminal lawyers (single case); family has 1 question (single case), and of ChatGPT's 6 citations, 4 were Doyle's Guide (×2), Legal 500 and Chambers. For the mechanism behind the two legs, see → General Edition 1.2 Two legs: ChatGPT looks for the source, AI Mode for second-hand summaries.

"Professional" in this book refers only to content form: cross-industry research finds that professional services win in AI Mode through educational content (the research did not include Singapore; 75% confidence; evidence in → General Edition A.2 Evidence for picking targets, writing pages, off-site and retests); law firms fall under this form, so in chapter 7, when a month cannot fill three tasks, go to fallback A first and thicken the explainer pages. But keep the figure above in mind at the same time: in law firms, explainer pages feed the AI Mode leg only — the ChatGPT leg depends on the fees page, the office page and the directory listing. For how content form translates onto the page, see → General Edition 5.9 Content form, FAQ, Chinese pages and other-language pages.

0.2 How tightly law-firm publicity is regulated: you can publish fee ranges, but not compare yourself with other firms, cite success rates or pay for referrals

What you'll do in this section: on the day you start, fill in the three essentials — the regulator, the publicity rules, the official register lookup — in full (law firms add a fourth row, expertise and titles), and go through the six switches one by one; know that law firms fall on the lightly regulated side, on what basis, at what confidence, and what would change that; tell the client this section's six uncertainty sentences word for word; ask the three start-gate questions face to face.

The answers to law firms' four questions:

• Question one, yes: lawyers must be on the roll of advocates and solicitors and hold a valid practising certificate (Legal Profession Act 1966 (LPA), s 32(1)); law firms must apply to the Director of Legal Services for a licence and an approved name (s 131(1); ss 138 and 153 for LLPs and LLCs) [Statute text; see Appendix A.2].
• Question two, yes [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: PCR 2015 in full, all of the Council's Practice Directions and Guidance Notes on publicity, the revoked Publicity Rules; check date: 2026-09-29), 75% confidence. The only place that touches price presentation is PD 6.2.1 D: listing a price list in a TV advertisement is unbefitting the dignity of the legal profession, and the same paragraph advises that fee details be discussed with the client in person rather than featured in the advertisement — the latter is advice, not a prohibition [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]. Applied to a fees page, we do not build a price poster, and we state that the final fee is set out in the letter of engagement [Conservative line (not statute text)], 60% confidence (1.2).
• Question three, limited: testimonials carry no prohibition provision under either the current Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules 2015 (PCR) or the revoked old rules (searches for "testimonial" and "endors" both return 0); they are governed by confidentiality (r 6, r 43(1)(b)(i)), the ban on success rates (r 43(1)(b)(ii)), and verifiability and unjustified expectations (r 44(2)(c)(d)). Comparison is banned on only two dimensions: the fees charged and the quality of the services provided (r 43(1)(c)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]. Under the General Edition's question three, "banning only part of comparison" counts as limited — that is this book's reading of r 43(1)(c).
• Question four, yes: you must not make any comparison or criticism of another lawyer's fees or quality of service; switch E (peer comparison banned) is on [Statute text, r 43(1)(c); see Appendix A.1].

Rechecking against the three criteria in → General Edition 8.2 Five steps to decide the side, and three criteria: there is a written publicity rule (PCR Part 5, r 37–49, plus the Council's Practice Directions), so the first is met; the penalties spell out fines and terms, so the second is met: disciplinary action can strike a lawyer off the roll, suspend them from practice for up to 5 years, or impose a penalty of up to S$100,000 (LPA s 83(1)); the Council itself can impose a penalty of up to S$10,000; penalty orders and reprimands are published in the Gazette, warnings are not (s 88) [Statute text; see Appendix A.2]. Whether the party publishing on the firm's behalf is a liable party: not at the PCR layer, but yes under specific statutory provisions — switch A below spells this out.

What each regulator covers: the Council of the Law Society enforces PCR Part 5, issues Practice Directions and takes complaints (LPA s 85); the Professional Conduct Council makes the PCR under LPA s 71(2); the LSRA (part of the Ministry of Law) issues law firm licences and approves names; the Supreme Court handles practising certificates and has the final say on discipline; family law also has the Family Justice Courts, which hear cases in private and can make orders restricting publication (Family Justice Act 2014 (FJA) s 10) and publish the list of touts (FJA s 39). Why a Practice Direction counts: a PD stays in force until it is revoked (LPA s 71(7)–(9)), and the Council may determine that a manner of publicity is undesirable (r 44(1)(c)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1, A.2]; where a PD writes "should" or "advisable", quote it as written, but state that it is advice (1.1). The SAL Directory of Specialists had 121 entries as at 2026-09-29, 0 of them family law.

Switch A (agency liability) falls into the "principal bears it alone" cell for law firms: publicity someone else publishes on a lawyer's behalf counts as the lawyer's own, and the lawyer bears full responsibility for it (r 42(1)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; at this layer, the PCR governs only the lawyer and does not shift liability onto us. There is no statutory letter of appointment of the kind dental clinics have. We can publish on a law firm's behalf [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: PCR 2015 in full; check date: 2026-09-29), 85% confidence — r 42(1) itself says "by any other person on the legal practitioner’s behalf", which already anticipates this situation; the basis is not r 41(b) or r 46. Each batch of material is signed off by a partner or director — this is our own control gate, not a legal formality [Conservative line (not statute text)].

What the figure does not show are the criminal provisions that fall on us directly: they do not require the lawyer to have broken a rule first, and a lawyer's signature cannot shield us from them [Statute text; see Appendix A.2, A.4].

• Placing a lawyer's services at someone's disposal for a fee (LPA s 33(3)): a company faces a fine of up to S$25,000 for a first offence and up to S$50,000 for a repeat offence (s 33(6)), with the directors and employees involved separately liable (s 33(7)); if we are a partnership or an LLP, the partners are personally liable too (s 33(7A), (8)).
• Implying we are qualified to practise (s 33(1)(b)): our own sales material, case-study pages and landing pages never say things like "our legal team" or "free legal consultation" [The offence is Statute text; the specific wording is Conservative line (not statute text)].
• Family-law content: publishing information that could identify a child or young person involved in the proceedings makes "the person who publishes or distributes it" guilty under Children and Young Persons Act 1993 (CYPA) s 112(5)(b), with a fine of up to S$5,000 for a first offence and up to S$10,000 for a repeat offence; websites and messaging systems both count as publishing. Anyone who breaches a Family Justice Court order restricting publication faces a fine of up to S$5,000, up to 3 years' imprisonment, or both (FJA s 10(5)).

So we charge law firms only a fixed service fee: never per lead, per case, per number of signed clients, or as a percentage of legal fees. Charging in any of these other ways risks an offence under s 33(3) on our part; if the law firm's side pays us a percentage of legal fees, that breaches r 19 (not sharing legal fees with a non-lawyer), and if it pays us per lead, per case or per signed client, that breaches r 39(2)(b) (no commission or other form of consideration for a referral) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1, A.2]. The fixed service fee itself [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: all of LPA s 33; check date: 2026-09-29), 70% confidence; have legal review the quote and the contract.

The other five switches:

• Switch B (legally required fields), partly on: there is no general required field of the "every piece of publicity must carry a registration number, and missing it is a breach" kind — only five places with a fixed, condition-triggered wording: an LLC's name carries "LLC" or "Law Corporation" wherever it appears (LPA s 154(3)); a team page listing an unregistered foreign lawyer copies out the minimum disclosure wording (PD 6.2.3 B); an LLP's or LLC's invoices and formal letters carry the limited-liability statement (s 139(2), s 154(4), not on web pages); flyers and TV advertisements state at least the firm's name (PD 6.2.2 C, PD 6.2.1 D(c)); a Chinese firm name needs written approval before it can be used (LPE Rules r 7) [Statute text; see Appendix A.2, A.3]. Extending the requirement to state at least the firm's name to every piece of publicity is our own practice [Conservative line (not statute text)]. A title can only be chosen from the approved list (r 33 + PD 3.5.2) — that is a restriction, not a required field, and belongs under 1.6.
• Switch C (regulated products), off: law firms only sell legal services; PCR r 34 and the First Schedule govern property agency and debt-collection work that a lawyer carries on alongside practice.
• Switch D (spans two sides), depends on the client, off by default. It is on when the same site also promotes the law-related services in the Fourth Schedule (intellectual property, tax, company secretarial work, litigation support and the like) or a non-legal business, when a foreign law practice and a local law firm share the same brand (JLV, Formal Law Alliance (FLA)), or when a family law firm's site also promotes non-lawyer "divorce consultants" or counselling; when it is on, write the whole site to PCR Part 5.
• Switch E (peer comparison banned), on: it covers comparing other firms' fees or quality of service, whether the firm is named or can be identified [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; do not write an unnamed market range either [Conservative line (not statute text)].
• Switch F (referral commissions banned), on: what it bans is "commission or other form of consideration" (r 39(2)(b)), plus r 19, LPA s 83(2)(d)(e), s 33(3), GN 6.1.1 paras 35–36 and PD 6.1.2 [Statute text; see Appendix A.1–A.3]; LPA s 83(7) empowers the Minister to make exemption rules, and as at the check date not one has been made. We do not pay even a fixed entry fee to referral, case-assignment or matching platforms [Conservative line (not statute text)]. The only paid placement worth considering is the Law Society's own "Find A Featured Lawyer/Law Firm" directory (the Featured directory) [Conservative line (not statute text)], 70% confidence: the Law Society's page states that "the listings are paid by advertising", listed by practice area, chosen by the reader, with no referral or case assignment visible on the page. Buying this kind of display-only slot at a fixed rate card [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: PCR r 39, GN 6.1.1 paras 33–37, PD 6.1.2, the Law Society's Featured directory page; check date: 2026-09-29); the rate-card terms were not obtained [Original text not obtained], see 6.2.

The two and a half tactics taken away: results and success rates (r 43(1)(b)(ii), with no exception in the rule text) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1], and referrals billed per lead or for any consideration [Statute text; see Appendix A.1, A.2] — one tactic each; lists are cut down to only your own entry in a third party's list, counted as half a tactic [Conservative line (not statute text)]. Asking clients to leave reviews [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: PCR 2015 in full, the revoked Publicity Rules, all of the Council's Practice Directions and Guidance Notes on publicity; check date: 2026-09-29), 70% confidence; when you ask, keep to the four conditions (offer no incentive, don't write the review for them, don't ask only satisfied clients, don't dictate the content) [Conservative line (not statute text)], see 1.5. For how each tactic affects rankings, see → General Edition 8.6 Seven tactics: how regulated and unregulated sides differ, and why each moves rankings.

The three family-law rules tighten the wording within each cell; they do not change the side. For family law firms, the case-study, republished-review and review-reply cells work like this:

• Default to the strictest wording: no case studies, no republishing, replies use only a fixed template. Relaxing any one of them needs a written sign-off from a partner or director, item by item [Conservative line (not statute text)].
• Two of them come from the legislation itself, and no one's sign-off can release them: nothing that could identify a child or young person involved in the proceedings is ever published (CYPA s 112); nothing a Family Justice Court has restricted from publication is ever published (FJA s 10) [Statute text; see Appendix A.4]. Custody and access proceedings within a divorce case also follow the child rule [Conservative line (not statute text)].
• So every family case study, and every review to be republished or replied to, first goes through our own de-identification check (Appendix B.4) before it is sent for sign-off; if it fails any item, it is not sent for sign-off.
• A lawyer's signature does not take on our liability: these two rules punish whoever publishes, and if we publish, we are that person.

A written sign-off resolves only the stop-and-escalate situations; it never turns something banned as Statute text into something publishable (see 1.1).

The following six sentences are this book's account of its uncertainty; they appear here word for word, and you say them to the client in exactly these words too:

1. This book places Singapore law firms on the lightly regulated side, with 75% confidence. On 2026-09-29 we checked, rule by rule, the PCR 2015, the Legal Profession Act and its subsidiary rules, the Law Society Council's 12 Practice Directions and 2 Guidance Notes, and SAL's current specialist accreditation page. What we have not read are the more than 100 pieces of written ethics guidance in the Law Society's members' area and the 2019 and 2020 Ethics Digests, which may contain case-specific rulings on website fee pages or client reviews.
2. Where this book says you 'can' do something (publish your firm's fee ranges, ask clients to leave reviews, advertise a free first consultation, publish on a firm's behalf), the basis is always 'no current rule prohibits it', not 'a rule allows it'. To the client you may only say 'we found no rule that prohibits it'; you may not say 'the rules allow it'.
3. Family cases carry three extra rules: the Family Justice Courts hear cases in private and can make orders restricting publication (FJA s 10); no one may publish information that could identify a child involved in the proceedings (CYPA s 112); and the lawyer's duty of confidentiality (PCR r 6). For family law firms, case studies, republished reviews and review replies follow the strictest wording. Under the child-identity rule, whoever publishes bears the criminal liability personally, and a lawyer's signature cannot shield us from it.
4. The evidence covers only 9 practice areas serving individuals and SMEs: 22 questions for family law and 2–5 questions for each of the other 8 areas, so the proportions by practice area are directional only.
5. If any of the following happens, this book moves law firms to the strictly regulated side in that quarter: the members' area guidance or an Ethics Digest contains a ruling that 'fee ranges or price lists on a website are unbefitting the dignity of the profession' or that 'lawyers may not ask clients for reviews'; the Law Society issues a new Practice Direction on publicity; or the PCR is amended. If a client firm's compliance officer sets out a stricter position in writing, that firm follows the stricter position.
6. Today no family lawyer can describe themselves as an Accredited Specialist in Family Law: SAL's Family Law specialist accreditation only opened for applications in July–August 2026, and the first results are due to be announced at the Opening of the Legal Year 2027.

The documents not read in sentence 1 account for the entire margin in that confidence figure. So when you take on a law-firm client, the start checklist includes one item: ask the client to use their Law Society members' account to export the written ethics guidance in the members' area and the two Ethics Digests and hand them to us; if you find a stricter position than this book's, that firm follows the stricter one, and the rest of the book does not change.

The strongest objection (full text and sources in Appendix A.6): law firms, or at least family law firms, should run the whole site on the strictly regulated side — fees and quality of service, the two things r 43(1)(c) bans comparing, are exactly the two things buyers most want to compare; family clients' identities are confidential, and case studies are governed by two criminal-law rules besides; the Council's "dignity" standard has consistently read stricter than the rule text, and Practice Directions have found flyers, letterbox drops to HDB households, a firm's name on camera and TV price lists all unbefitting; when unsure, you should start on the stricter side. We do not adopt it:

• The first two points govern the wording within each cell, and this book already writes each cell to the strictest reading. Reclassifying the whole site would, in substance, only add two further restrictions — no price ranges, no asking for reviews — and it so happens that the rule text bans neither; banning them anyway would mean adding a rule the regulator never made.
• Every dignity finding whose original text we could check targets offline distribution, in-person solicitation and television. For websites, the Council instead states that "A law practice’s website can be used as an advertising tool" (GN 6.1.1 para 31), and flyer content may also go on the firm's own website (PD 6.2.2 A) [Statute text; see Appendix A.3].
• "When unsure, start on the stricter side" governs situations where the judgement is uncertain. All four questions have rule text to answer them; the only uncertain judgement is how a fees page should present itself, and that cell is already written to the strict reading.

The three gates are questions 2, 3 and 4 of the twelve pre-start questions (→ General Edition 4.1 The full target-picking process and the twelve pre-start questions), asked face to face; the other nine are asked in 2.1. The second gate asks "can you give the firm's own fee basis" (billing method, fixed fee or range, what's included and charged separately), not "are you willing to write a fixed price": a law firm can publish a range, and using a fixed price as the threshold would wrongly screen out a client who is actually compliant. If they cannot give one, downgrade — the reason is a real number: all 12 of ChatGPT's run-1 citations of law-firm websites in L3 (2026-09-29) fell into four question types — price 5/23, near-me 3/8, "is this firm good" 3/11, "who's best" 1/12; without a fees page, this leg barely gets in at all, so the first page becomes the office page and the explainer page instead, and you accept it against the AI Mode leg only. The third gate has no downgrade path: the sign-off sheet is our own control gate — no sign-off, no publication; charging per lead or per completed engagement is our own criminal liability (s 33(3) above).

0.3 Which of the 46 page types a law firm can build

What you'll do in this section: check your own build list against this four-group table, first circle what you can build directly and what you can build after rewriting, then give every page type you don't build a stand-in of the same intent; do not start work straight from the General Edition's table of 46 types — law firms have their own four groups.

Where the 33 buildable types go (for the ones you can build after rewriting, the narrowed condition is given after the page type):

5.17 Muslim marriages do not take up a page type: cases that go through the Syariah Court get their own separate set of fees pages and process pages.

What these page types look like when cited in law-firm questions (page types roughly labelled by URL, heuristic): in family R1, R2 (2026-09-23), the courts' divorce-conditions page, procedure page and case summary pages were all cited by ChatGPT; law firms' single-price-list-type pages (①) got 1 ChatGPT citation, 3 AI Mode citations; law firms' "how does the divorce process work" type pages (⑬) got 5 AI Mode citations, 0 ChatGPT. In L3 (2026-09-29), ChatGPT's run 1 cited legislation text 5/146 and judgments 6/146; of AI Mode's 47 citations of law-firm pages, 26 were explainer articles and 9 were fees pages. For the same page type, ChatGPT mostly cites the court's or the government's version, so the firm's own version should say "how this step works at this firm, and how much it costs", not recopy the official procedure.

Why each one is not built, in one sentence each:

• ③ Official pricing page: package cards and a recommended ranking easily turn into comparison, and PD 6.2.1 D's dignity finding on TV price lists is unfavourable when applied to a web page too [Conservative line (not statute text)], 60% confidence — write fees instead as ① item by item (5.5).
• ⑤ List page: not self-built [Conservative line (not statute text); ranking peers against each other is itself a comparison of quality of service, hitting r 43(1)(c), which is Statute text, and no sign-off can release a publishable version]; write only your own entry in a third party's list, as in 1.6, and never quote a ranking as self-praise.
• ㉔ Third-party single-business review: reviewing another firm's service is itself a review of a peer's quality of service [Conservative line (not statute text)].
• ㉘ Review aggregate page: putting several firms' ratings side by side is itself a comparison [Conservative line (not statute text)].
• ㉜ Device and product regulatory documents: law firms have no version of this type.
• ㊲ Category list page: never list peers [Conservative line (not statute text)]; the firm's own services are instead carried by the practice catalogue and the fee guide page.
• ㊶ Verdict-first page: a verdict is itself comparison and recommendation [Conservative line (not statute text)].
• ㊷ Time-limited promotion page: no discounts, deadlines or promotional tone [Conservative line (not statute text), based on r 44(1)(b), 60% confidence]; this can be relaxed if the client gives written reasons.
• ㊻ Market observation page: law firms have no first-party market data, so writing one would be empty theorising that also easily slides into comparison.

The "who's best" sample is thin: family has 1 question, L3 has 3, so treat it as directional only. Of L3's 7 recommendation questions (near me 2, "is this firm good" 2, "who's best" 3), across both runs ChatGPT cited a law firm's Law Society directory listing page for 3 questions, and paraphrased the listing's practice areas and description in its answers — a directory listing is a legitimate channel for putting the firm's own sentences on an authoritative domain (6.3). For the General Edition's general rules on matching page types, see → General Edition 0.3 Which page types are limited for you, and what to build instead and → General Edition 5.1 The page-type map: 46 types, six families, three evidence tiers, availability by side.

0.4 What to tell the client: what we won't do, and what we are not sure about either

What you'll do in this section: on the day you start, tell the client three things — what we will not do, what we are not sure about either, and how we charge; and separate which materials and numbers are for internal eyes only and must never go into any external material.

Say the first line in full: publishing the firm's own fee ranges, proactively asking clients to leave reviews, advertising a free first consultation, and publishing on the firm's behalf are all things we will do [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: PCR 2015 in full, the Law Society Council's 12 Practice Directions and 2 Guidance Notes, the revoked Publicity Rules; check date: 2026-09-29; scope and confidence for each item: see Appendix A.6); to the client, say only "we found no rule that prohibits it", and also tell them which documents we checked and up to what date — what we have not read is that batch of guidance in the members' area. For what we are not sure about, say exactly the six sentences in 0.2, adding nothing and leaving nothing out.

The numbers behind the second row (L3, 2026-09-29): of ChatGPT's 146 citations on run 1, only 20 of the URLs were in that same question's Google top 10 (13.7%); yet within the Google top 10 for the same batch of questions, law-firm websites accounted for 105/299 (35.1%). Across family law's 22 questions (2026-09-23), Reddit made Google's top 10 for 12 questions, and neither engine cited it even once. Do not sell an SEO ranking as "AI will cite you".

The numbers behind the third row (L3 2026-09-29, family 2026-09-23): across L3's 15 questions in the process, definition, rule and calculation types, ChatGPT cited a law firm's website 0 times across both runs; across family law's 13 questions on process, requirements, definitions, rules, calculations and checklists, ChatGPT cited a law firm on 0 questions. Write these pages anyway, but accept them against the AI Mode leg only.

Rows five and six are about our own criminal liability, not just politeness: sales material, case-study pages and landing pages never suggest we can give legal advice [The offence is Statute text, LPA s 33(1)(b); the specific wording is Conservative line (not statute text)]; when a law firm asks "can we pay you by results?", the answer is no — charging per lead, per case, per signed client, or as a percentage of legal fees risks an offence under LPA s 33(3) on our part, and breaches r 39(2)(b) or r 19 on the firm's side (0.2) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1, A.2]. Write "fixed service fee" into the quote and the contract, in those words.

The price sentence: the first line you say to the client — even if you don't publish a price, AI quotes one for you anyway — is in → General Edition B.2 Approved wording and scripts. For law firms, add a second sentence: "we do not write a single other firm's price; we only write the firm's own fees in a shape AI can drop straight into a market-rate table" (1.3). For family R1's (2026-09-23) two questions about legal fees, ChatGPT built its own market price table straight into the answer both times, drawing on several firms' self-reported prices and one 2022 fee guide. Stop there — add no third sentence.

Use this exact script overall: "We didn't make these rules; Part 5 of the PCR and the Law Society's Practice Directions did. Where the book says 'can', what we say is 'we found no rule that prohibits it', and we state which documents we checked and up to what date. Where it says 'do not write', every item is labelled with how firm its basis is: items that are Statute text carry the rule number, and items on the conservative line say that this is our own cautious practice. The final decision rests with your firm's partner: we publish only the draft they have signed. A signature does not transfer the lawyer's own responsibility, and it does not shield us from ours; in family matters, anything that could identify a child, and anything a court has restricted from publication, is not published, whoever signs."

There are three kinds of material for internal eyes only:

• Comparison material that contains peer names or peer counts: putting it on a page or sending it out at all runs into r 43(1)(c), and the bar for a named peer to complain is only a written complaint plus a statutory declaration (LPA s 85(1)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1, A.2]. So every example in the main text is anonymised ("a certain firm", "a certain keyword microsite"), and real names and URLs never go out with the deliverables.
• The question-by-question list of Google's organic results: that is Google's own ranking; externally, state only the aggregate numbers.
• Scouting numbers: figures from a one-off run on a generic search API, with the region not locked and a single engine. These are used only to order your own build sequence and must never be stated externally as the client's current position; to use them externally, first lock the region and retest against the frozen question pool, state the retest date and engine, and cite only the post-retest numbers externally — if any one condition is missing, treat it as unusable. For how to mark numbers, see → General Edition D.1 Number discipline: how to label numbers, and what stays internal.