This chapter's numbers use two short source labels. "L3" = the 30 questions collected on 2026-09-29 (8 practice areas other than family law, plus 5 questions on choosing a lawyer and legal fees that come up across every practice area; 26 English · 4 Chinese): ChatGPT was asked each question twice, independently — the main text gives run 1, the number in brackets gives run 2; AI Mode and the Google top 10 were each asked once per question. "The family set" = the 22 family-law questions from the public dataset R1/R2 (collected 2026-09-23, each question asked once; AI Mode ran only the 12 questions from R1). L3's page types are all labelled heuristically by URL and title, not taken apart page by page by hand; where this matters, it is marked "heuristic". The family R1 cited pages were taken apart page by page; where this matters, it is marked "taken apart page by page".
5.1 The first page is always the fees page: ChatGPT mostly visits law-firm websites when asked about price
What you'll do in this section: make the all-practice-areas fee guide page the first thing you write, starting in book-wide W2 (W1 counts from the day you fix the door); publish the English version first, and add a Chinese version only if the firm has Chinese-speaking clients (see 5.3). First work out why this is the firm's first page: the door through which ChatGPT enters a law-firm website is mainly this one — asking about price. When you're done, you'll have a fee guide page that is live and logged in the page register, with all three specs checked off one by one.
The door in the figure comes from the measured numbers. In L3 run 1, ChatGPT cited law-firm websites in 12/146 citations, all falling into four question types: price 5/23 citations (3 of 5 questions), near me 3/8 (2 of 2 questions), "is this firm good" 3/11 (1 of 2 questions), "who's best" 1/12 (1 of 3 questions); the five types process, rules, checklist, definition and calculation together came to 0/92. Run 2 has roughly the same shape, but not exactly: price 6/26, "is this firm good" 2/10, "who's best" 2/14, checklist also picked up 1/19, and the 2 near-me questions came to 0/8 this time; every other type was 0. The family set gives the same conclusion: across 6 fee questions, ChatGPT cited a law-firm page for 3; the 13 questions on process, requirements, definitions, rules, statistics, calculation and checklists came to 0/13. For the type-by-type bar chart, see chapter 4, 4.2.
The AI Mode leg is different: in L3 it cited law-firm websites in 47/122 citations, and at least one firm was cited in 24 of the 30 questions; in family R1 it was 29/52. It cited a law firm's own page across all 9 question types, and more than half of those were explainers (26/47, heuristic) — that part is handled by the explainer pages in 5.9–5.17. For the ChatGPT leg, fee questions are the widest and steadiest door: they account for 5/12 and 6/11 of its law-firm citations across the two runs, the most of any type in each; near-me questions were 3 citations in run 1 and 0 in run 2 — not steady. This only shows where the door is; it does not guarantee ChatGPT will cite your page.
The reason for law firms is different from what → General Edition 5.12 Price guide page (1): why it is always the first page (pt02) says: it is not that compliance has locked up the off-site price-comparison slots — in the family set, a third-party fee guide from 2022 is cited by both legs (single case) — it is that ChatGPT mainly enters a law-firm website when asked about price in the first place. The fees page does not feed ChatGPT alone either: of the 47 law-firm pages AI Mode cited in L3, 9 were fee-type pages (heuristic).
AI builds its own market-rate table; what you control is the shape of the raw material
For L3's 5 fee questions, ChatGPT gave 10 answers across the two runs, and all 10 built their own fee table; the family set's two legal-fee questions do the same, drawing on several firms' self-published prices and that 2022 fee guide as raw material. How the market rates get reported is not up to the law firm; what the law firm can control is whether its own price appears in that raw material in the shape of "service tier + defining conditions + fixed fee or range + what's included".
Example (L3 commercial contract review, single case) In the fee table in its answer, ChatGPT wrote "one Singapore firm publicly lists S$<amount> for review/advice on most contracts, excluding amendments and certain transaction-heavy agreements" (amount withheld) — the price, scope and exclusions all came from a fee sentence on that firm's own practice-area page, and AI carried them straight into the table, with the source attached.
Fee sentences do not only get picked up from the fees page: of the 5 law-firm pages cited for fee questions in L3 run 1, 3 were practice-area pages, 1 was a fees page and 1 was an engagement-terms page (heuristic). So it is not only the fee guide page — wherever the firm's own fees appear, write them in the same format as chapter 1, 1.2.
The firm's own fees can be written as a fixed fee, or as a range or a "from" price, immediately followed by the defining conditions and the variables that would push up the total [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), 75% confidence. To the client, say only "we found no rule that prohibits it", never "the rules allow it". Write the page as "billing method + fixed fee or range + what's excluded + the final fee set out in the letter of engagement", and do not build an eye-catching price poster [Conservative line (not statute text)] (60% confidence: based on the dignity judgement of the Law Society of Singapore (the Law Society) on price lists in TV advertisements, and its advice that detailed fee information is best explained to the client in person; rule text in Appendix A.3). For the table header, the sentence and the blueprint, see 5.4.
The most-cited page: do not copy its market-range half
The most-cited law-firm URL in the family set is a firm's own divorce practice-area page (3 citations across 2 questions, cited by both engines, single case): under the H2 on price, the first sentence gives a sourced market range, immediately followed by a table setting the firm's fixed price against the market range. This is exactly the wording switch E (peer comparison banned) bans: comparison of the fees charged by other lawyers [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; treating an unnamed market range as this kind of comparison too [Conservative line (not statute text)] (85% confidence). It only proves that the sentence shape "the firm's own price + conditions" works — the market-range half cannot be copied: leave no room for a peer range on the fees page; for the replacement wording, see chapter 1, 1.3.
Three specs: law firms change only the one about the official benchmark
Not a single peer's number goes on the page (switch E, see the previous subsection). Putting court fees in the same table as the firm's own fees, in a column of their own [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; check date: 2026-09-29). For the 2 family R1 questions about legal fees, ChatGPT cited the fee table on the court's simplified-procedure page as the official basis both times (the same page); AI Mode did not cite it for either question. Court fees are always copied from the court's page that same day, with the fee-table name, a link to the court's page and the date the figures were taken; if the original table cannot be obtained, do not write a number — give only the link (→ General Edition 0.4 The three labels for compliance sentences, and the stop-and-escalate rule: "never estimate an official figure, and never carry over an old value").
Which firms this section does not apply to, and when this page must be rewritten
- Law firms that will not publish their own fee basis: these are already downgraded at the second start gate in chapter 0, 0.2 — no fees page is scheduled; the first page becomes the office page and an explainer page instead, and acceptance is judged on the AI Mode leg alone. This section governs only firms that have passed the second gate.
- Reclassification: if law firms are moved to the strictly regulated side, the fee guide page and every single-matter fee page must be rewritten in full. We have not read the more than 100 pieces of written ethics guidance in the Law Society's members' area, or the 2019 and 2020 Ethics Digests [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]; if any of them contains a ruling that "fee ranges or price lists on a website are unbefitting the dignity of the profession", this book moves law firms to the strictly regulated side in that quarter, and this page changes to state only tiered fixed prices — no ranges, no "from" prices. If the firm has completed the start-checklist step of exporting this guidance with its members' account, search it for fee-related rulings before this page goes live; if it has not, write to this book's default wording and log "members' area guidance not checked" in the page register.
Scheduling, verdict and results
The 30-day writing order and the three mechanical gates (the ranking gate, the language gate and the video gate) follow → General Edition 5.4 The 30-day writing order and the three mechanical gates; how the language gate changes for law firms is in 5.3.
In this quarter's off-site verdict, this page counts as one item: whether the fee guide page (English; plus Chinese if the firm has Chinese-speaking clients) is live and logged in the page register, with all three specs checked off one by one. It does not look at whether a third party accepts your submission, only at whether you did the work yourself; the rest of the nine-item verdict follows → General Edition 6.8 Off-site verdicts, common mistakes and rituals to cut.
Whether it is working is checked separately: whether the 2–3 unique fact strings logged for this page (for example, a fixed-fee sentence for one of the firm's tiers) can be found by string search in the raw ChatGPT answer text saved to disk this month. How to read this is in chapter 7.
5.2 The skeleton of a law-firm page: where law firms change the seven general rules
What you'll do in this section: carry over, unchanged, the General Edition's seven skeleton rules that hold for every page type, and change only six places to fit a law firm's rules; family law firm pages get one extra step, a de-identification check. Once you've made these six changes, you can write every law-firm page straight off the general skeleton, with no separate set of rules to remember.
The above is the General Edition's seven-rule skeleton; law firms use it exactly as is, changing only the six places below.
H2 focus: a law firm's content form is professional (see → General Edition 5.9 Content form, FAQ, Chinese pages and other-language pages), and the H2s are arranged around these five things (the figure leaves out the last one): billing method and fees, procedure steps and typical duration, statutory conditions and time limits, what the firm does and does not handle, and what documents to bring. Statutory conditions and time limits carry the section or rule number; the number and the original sentence are written only after being checked against SSO that same day — where they cannot be checked, no number is written (see chapter 1, 1.8). "What the firm does and does not handle" goes in the same paragraph, with no asterisked footnote: a Law Society Practice Direction gives failing to state that a practice handles only uncontested divorces as an example of a TV advertisement that misleads by omitting a material fact [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]; applying this to a website — stating clearly what is and is not handled — [Conservative line (not statute text)] (85% confidence).
Byline: the byline goes on the first line under the H1. Where the lawyer wrote it themselves, use Written by <name>, <designation> (admitted <year>) · Updated <month year>; where we drafted it and the lawyer reviewed it, use Reviewed by <name>, <designation> (admitted <year>) · Updated <month year> — never describe something we drafted as written by the lawyer themselves [Conservative line (not statute text)]. Take the designation only from the approved list in chapter 1, 1.6. At the end of the line, link to this lawyer's LSRA register lookup page and the check date; whether the register lookup page has a number field that can be publicly cited has not yet been verified [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6] — until it is verified, do not write any number.
A byline is not a condition for being cited: of the 10 cited law-firm pages taken apart page by page in the family set, only 2 had a named author. In one case, a firm's blog post on whether you can divorce without a lawyer names its author at the top, and the author states up front that, as a lawyer, they have a conflict of interest — it was cited by AI Mode (single case). The reason a law firm needs a byline is so readers can check who is speaking, and until when the statement still holds: guidance from the Law Society's Ethics Committee under the old rules recommends periodically reviewing whether the general legal information on a website is still accurate [Conservative line (not statute text)] (guidance from under the old rules, see Appendix A.6). So the Updated cell is a visible date, changed every time the page is reviewed.
Outbound links: the threshold of at least 3 outbound links per page to checkable original text does not change; law firms take them from the four kinds in the figure and the matching government pages (the Ministry of Law, the Ministry of Manpower, ACRA and the like). Link legislation to that section on SSO (a ?ProvIds= URL), never to the whole Act: when ChatGPT cites legislation itself, it mostly anchors to a section or a Part — citations carrying ProvIds: 12/12 in the family set, 4/5 in L3 run 1 (run 2: 8/11). For the Law Society's Legal Costs / Disputes page, ChatGPT cited it in 5 questions in each L3 run (3 price questions, 1 rules question, 1 checklist question); link the fees page to it as the official channel for fee disputes. An outbound link is itself not a condition for being cited (see → General Edition 5.7 Seven rules that hold for every page type) — linking to the section is so both the reader and the AI can check it.
Ranking guides, find-a-lawyer platforms and other firms' pages do not count towards these 3 links, and are not put into an explainer as an endorsement [Conservative line (not statute text)]; only your own entry gets written: an individual's tier goes on the lawyer's own page, the firm's tier goes on /facts, written as "listed in × guide × year × category × tier" with a link (see chapter 3, 3.3). The regulatory original text is itself a trust signal:
Example (fees page, the sentence under the table) "Under Singapore's professional conduct rules, we do not publish success rates or compare our fees with other firms'. What we can show you is how we charge and what is included." followed by an outbound link to PCR r 43 on SSO. Both things the page leaves out have a rule behind them [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; writing it as a sentence of explanation on the page is this book's own approach [Conservative line (not statute text)].
Firm name: write the approved full name on every page [Conservative line (not statute text)] (85% confidence: Practice Direction PD 6.2.2 C's own sentence, "At the very least, the name of the law practice should be stated in the flyer.", applies only to flyers and uses "should"; rule text in Appendix A.3), matching the approved wording character for character [Conservative line (not statute text)] (75% confidence). A law corporation (LLC) carries "LLC" or "Law Corporation" everywhere; the suffix must not be dropped from structured data, the footer or business profiles [Statute text; see Appendix A.2]. Do not insert the firm name into the first sentence of every H2; it appears only in the four places the General Edition uses (see → General Edition 5.6 Two legs, two kinds of sentence): the subject of the fee sentence, the lawyer actually handling the matter, the byline, and the organisation facts [Conservative line (not statute text)] (no dedicated rule on the law-firm side; not measured).
Reviews block: explainers, process pages and the fees page never carry a reviews block — no aggregateRating, no star-rating widget and no client testimonials. Among law-firm questions, reviews are cited only when a question names a firm and asks "is this firm good": in L3 run 1, review-type pages accounted for 2/146 citations, both in the 2 questions of that type (run 2: 0/161, heuristic). Platform ratings appear only as one line, "platform · number of reviews · rating · check date", on the reputation and credentials page (see 5.21) [Conservative line (not statute text)]; how to judge whether a single review can be republished, and how to reply to it, is in chapter 1, 1.5.
In-page splitting: split by who makes the decision; the mechanism follows → General Edition 5.5 The page unit: one intent cluster, one page. For law firms, these patterns are all judgement calls, not measured: divorce is decided by one person (the other side is the opposing party, not a co-decision-maker), so it is not split; wills and LPAs (Lasting Powers of Attorney) are usually decided by a couple together, so they are not split, and both people's concerns are covered in full; corporate and commercial matters go to a board of directors, so H2s are split by role, each with its own rule number or source; criminal matters usually involve the individual plus family, so the page splits into an individual section and a family section.
Example (family law) For the buyer type "uncontested divorce", the questions in the question pool sort into the four decision stages, and each non-empty cell is one page: ① price and cost breakdown — how much legal fees cost, how much court fees cost, how much the online and physical routes differ ② selection and option comparison — simplified procedure or normal procedure, doing it yourself or hiring a lawyer ③ eligibility · process · duration — what conditions must be met, how many steps, whether a court appearance is needed ④ remedy · second opinion — what to do if the other side won't sign, wanting to change lawyers.
Length does not change: length is set by page type; stop when the page is written, following → General Edition 5.7 Seven rules that hold for every page type.
Conclusion block, density gate, source gate: the three facts law firms use in the conclusion block
The general way to write the conclusion block, the density gate and the source gate follows → General Edition 5.8 The conclusion block, the density gate and the source gate; law firms change only the three facts the conclusion block draws on:
Take a law firm's exclusive checkable facts from the seven categories in chapter 1, 1.8; if, after deleting everything that hits a ban, you still have fewer than 5, go back and change the intent cluster instead — never relax compliance, and never pad it out with generic legal education. On a firm's own page where switch E is on, do not write any market sentence; swap the subject for the court, the legislation or the procedure, and write it as an official-basis sentence (for the sentence pattern, see → General Edition 5.6 Two legs, two kinds of sentence); a court figure inside an official-basis sentence is likewise copied from the court's page, word for word, that same day.
Family law firm pages: the de-identification check comes before sign-off
Family case studies, republished client reviews and review replies are judged item by item, and every one needs a partner or director's written sign-off before it is published. But two rules are the legislation's own words, and no sign-off can release them, whoever signs:
- Never publish anything that could identify a child involved in the proceedings: name, address, school, and any detail that could piece together an identity [Statute text; see Appendix A.4] (CYPA s 112(1)(a)); this still applies after the child turns 18 [Statute text; see Appendix A.4] (s 112(1)(c)); custody and access proceedings in a divorce case are read under this same rule [Conservative line (not statute text)] (80% confidence).
- Not a word gets published from a family proceeding under a court order restricting publication [Statute text; see Appendix A.4] (FJA s 10(4), (5)); the Family Justice Courts hear cases in private by default [Statute text; see Appendix A.4] (s 10(1)), and hearing details are treated as not public [Conservative line (not statute text)] (85% confidence).
So every family case study or review passes our own de-identification check (the family self-check sheet in Appendix B.4) before it goes for sign-off; if any item hits, it does not go for sign-off. A lawyer's sign-off covers the lawyer's own judgement — it does not cover us: CYPA s 112(5)(b) writes "the person who publishes or distributes it" directly into the offence, and a website counts; FJA s 10(5) penalises "Any person" — we are the ones publishing, so the criminal liability falls on us too [Statute text; see Appendix A.4]. A written sign-off resolves only the stop-and-escalate situations; it never turns something banned as Statute text into something publishable. Family law also carries the separate duty of confidentiality (PCR r 6); how to judge the three together is in chapter 1, 1.7, and how to write the confidentiality one is in 1.4 and 1.5.
Every page counts as the lawyer's own publicity
The lawyer must take responsibility for every page we write and publish on the firm's behalf as if they had published it themselves [Statute text; see Appendix A.1] (PCR r 42(1)). So before every page goes live, it goes into that batch's sign-off sheet, signed by a partner or director (Appendix B.4) — the sign-off sheet is our own control gate, not a legal formality [Conservative line (not statute text)], and signing it does not transfer the lawyer's responsibility. The self-check before handing over a draft is in 5.22.
5.3 Chinese pages: for Google AI only, using only the approved Chinese firm name
What you'll do in this section: first ask whether the firm has Chinese-speaking clients — if not, do not build a Chinese page, and this does not count as a missing page; if it does, build one, but judge acceptance on the Google AI (AI Mode) leg alone — do not expect ChatGPT. On a Chinese page, the firm name uses only the firm's approved Chinese name; if none has been approved, use the approved English name — never translate it yourself. When you're done, you'll have a list of Chinese pages, decided by whether the firm has Chinese-speaking clients; every page you build clears the items below before it goes live.
Why only AI Mode: for L3's 4 Chinese questions, ChatGPT cited Chinese pages 0/47 across both runs, citing English government and court pages for Chinese questions just the same (run 1: government + public bodies 20/21); AI Mode was 5/22 citations (Chinese pages judged by whether the title contains Chinese characters or the URL contains /zh or /cn, heuristic). Across the family set's 3 Chinese questions, of 28 citations in total, only 1 was a Chinese page: a firm's Simplified Chinese "简易离婚" (simplified divorce) page, cited by AI Mode (single case). So a Chinese page feeds AI Mode alone, and the monthly retest reads only this leg too (see chapter 7). When ChatGPT cited a law-firm page while answering a Chinese question, the only case seen was an English fee table (family set, single case); for L3's 4 Chinese questions it did not cite a single law-firm page — on Chinese questions, this leg too relies on English fees pages. The ratio of Chinese questions in the question pool is in chapter 2, 2.2.
Write the Chinese pages you do build following → General Edition 5.9 Content form, FAQ, Chinese pages and other-language pages: a separate page, changing the question wording but not the facts (reusing the same fact-table row numbers), counted as 0.8 of a page's workload, finished in the same batch as the matching English page; no bilingual text on the same page, and machine translation may not be published directly. Before it goes live, complete the items below; miss one and it does not go live:
- 1Does the firm have Chinese-speaking clientsIf not, do not build it — not a missing page
- 2Firm nameThe approved Chinese name; if none, the approved English name
- 3The three hard gatesH1 contains "新加坡" (Singapore), an S$ amount in the first paragraph, an MRT station or area named
- 4Proof the Chinese wordingAgainst the Chinese–English mapping table in Appendix B.3
- 5AcceptanceOnly whether AI Mode cites it
The three hard gates are exactly as the General Edition's: the H1 contains "新加坡" (Singapore); an S$ amount appears in the first paragraph, and the firm's own fee is immediately followed by "含 GST" (incl. GST) or "未含 GST" (before GST) — on a page about procedure, the first paragraph carries this step's court fee or the firm's own fee instead; the body text names a specific MRT station or area at least once — a generic "新加坡" (Singapore) on its own does not count.
Firm name: a law firm's name may only be registered in English, and a Chinese name needs written approval — "The name of a law firm must be stated in the English language; but the name may, with the approval in writing of the Director of Legal Services, also be stated in any of the other official languages." [Statute text; see Appendix A.2] (LPE Rules r 7; for limited liability law partnerships (LLPs) and LLCs, see r 15(1) and r 29(1) respectively). Applied to Chinese pages, Chinese business profiles and Chinese directory listings: use only the one approved Chinese name, character for character; where none is approved, write the approved English name — never transliterate, never translate the meaning [Conservative line (not statute text)] (85% confidence).
Chinese pages are governed by Singapore's publicity rules too: PCR r 49 reads "(a) publicity is conducted in a jurisdiction in which the publicity is reasonably expected to be received or accessible in the normal course of events; and (b) publicity is not conducted in a jurisdiction if the receipt of the publicity in the jurisdiction is incidental." [Statute text; see Appendix A.1] (together with r 48). A page aimed at Chinese readers in Singapore that can be opened normally in Singapore counts as publicity conducted in Singapore, and the whole of PCR Part 5 applies to it [Conservative line (not statute text)] (85% confidence). Whatever the English page may not say, the Chinese page may not say either — do not relax it just because "this page is for Chinese readers".
Chinese wording: the Chinese wording for a specialist accreditation is copied only from para 4.7 of SAL's Marketing Your Accreditation guide, which gives only three categories — construction, maritime, and data and the digital economy [Statute text; see Appendix A.5]; SAL has not yet published a Chinese translation for family law [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.5]. Today, no family lawyer holds this accreditation either (the SAL Directory of Specialists had 121 entries on 2026-09-29, 0 of them family law), so the Chinese page says nothing about it at all. Proof Chinese designations, and Chinese banned words such as "最好、第一、胜诉率、包赢、专家律师、离婚专家……" (best, No. 1, win rate, guaranteed win, expert lawyer, divorce expert …), against the Chinese–English mapping table in Appendix B.3; for a word not in the table, write the English original — never invent a Chinese rendering [Conservative line (not statute text)].
What not to build: Indonesian-language and other minority-language pages are not scheduled — neither of the two formal law-firm measurement rounds (the family set's 22 questions, L3's 30 questions) contains a single minority-language question, so there is no evidence to support them. Pages aimed at buyers in mainland China are generally not something law firms deal with; for which jurisdiction's law governs cross-border work, see → General Edition 8.9 Cross-border: whose law applies — this book does not go into it.
