What buyers ask AI before choosing a law firm

People rarely ask an assistant to pick a law firm. They ask whether they need a lawyer, what the process is, how long it takes and what it should cost, and only then do they ask who does this work. The firm that answered the first four questions is the firm that gets mentioned in the fifth.

The questions, in the words buyers use

• "do I need a lawyer for a mutual consent divorce in Maharashtra"
• "how long does a cheque bounce case under section 138 take"
• "what documents are needed to reply to a GST show cause notice"
• "what happens at the first NCLT hearing"
• "how much should a founders agreement cost to draft"
• "can I file a consumer complaint myself online"
• "difference between a legal notice and a suit"
• "which court do I go to for a rent dispute in Bengaluru"
• "I got a notice from the income tax department, what are the timelines"

These come from two directions. An individual who has just received something frightening in the post. And a company secretary or finance head who needs to know the procedure before deciding whether to brief counsel at all.

What a good answer looks like

A page that answers one of these well has four things, and none of them is a sales pitch.

The answer in the first paragraph. Not "the position depends on several factors". State the general rule, then the exceptions.

The authority named. The section, the rule, the forum, the judgment. A legal page without a citation is an opinion. With one, it is a source.

A date and an author. Law changes. A page that says when it was last reviewed and by which advocate is treated very differently from an undated one, by readers and by assistants.

The honest limit. Say plainly where a person does not need a lawyer. It costs you almost nothing, because those were never your matters, and it is the reason the rest of the page is believed.

The six parts of a procedural answer people actually need

A procedural question looks like one question and is really six. A page that covers all six is the page that ends the search.

• Which forum, named exactly, with the territorial rule that decides it.
• The limitation period, and from which date it runs. This is the single most consequential thing a person can get wrong on their own.
• The documents, listed as a list, including the ones that take time to obtain.
• The steps in order, with what happens at each and who has to be present.
• The cost structure, meaning court fees and stamp duty separately from professional fees.
• What delays it, honestly. Service on the other side, adjournments, a missing document, an objection at filing.

What the money question really is

When somebody asks what a founders agreement should cost to draft, they are asking four things: what a reasonable range is, what makes it more expensive, what they are paying for that they cannot see, and whether a template would do. You can answer three of those four without naming a figure.

• What drives the cost: the number of parties, whether there is investor money involved, how much negotiation there will be, whether it is bespoke or a standard set, and whether it has to work alongside foreign documents.
• What is separate from the professional fee: stamp duty, registration charges, court fees, notarisation, filing fees at a registry.
• Where a template is genuinely enough and where it is not, which turns on whether a judgment call has to be made about your specific situation.
• What a fixed fee can and cannot cover, since drafting can be fixed and litigation usually cannot.

Two rules of the trade belong on this page because clients ask for both. An advocate in India may not charge a fee contingent on the outcome or take a share of what is recovered. And professional fees are separate from court fees and stamp duty, which are paid to the state and not to the lawyer, a distinction many first time clients have never had explained to them.

What the rules allow you to write

The Bar Council of India's rules on advertising and solicitation restrict advertising and touting for work. Informative writing is the permitted form, which is fortunate, because informative writing is the only kind that gets quoted anyway. In practice that means: explain the law, cite the authority, name the author with an enrolment number, avoid superlatives, avoid comparing yourself with other lawyers, avoid promising outcomes, and do not write anything that reads as an offer of services attached to the explanation. Enforcement is against the advocate personally, so have your own compliance view on each page.

The questions people ask that no firm has answered

• What can I do myself at each stage, and where does it become a false economy?
• What does an adjournment actually mean for me, and how often do they happen?
• If I lose, what do I have to pay the other side?
• Can I change lawyers in the middle of a matter, and how?
• What should be in an engagement letter before I sign it?
• How do I check whether the person advising me is actually enrolled?

All six are useful, none is promotional, and every one of them is the sort of page an assistant reaches for because there is no alternative source written by somebody who practises.

A worked example

A trader in Surat receives a notice under section 138 about a dishonoured cheque he himself issued. He asks an assistant what happens next. The answer explains the provision, mentions the time limits and cites two content farm pages and one news article. One of the content farm pages is out of date on a procedural point.

A four partner firm in the same city publishes one page. It sets out what the notice means, the period within which a complaint may be filed, which court hears it, what documents the recipient should gather, what happens at the first hearing, what settlement at that stage looks like, and the plain statement that a person may appear without a lawyer at some stages and should not at others. It names the author, gives the enrolment number, cites the section and two decisions, and shows a last reviewed date.

That page is better than what existed. It is more useful, more current and attributable to somebody who appears in that court. It is also entirely within what the rules on solicitation permit, because it sells nothing. Those two properties are not in tension, which is the part firms find hardest to believe.

Where you are probably missing

The typical firm site has a practice area list and nothing that answers a question. Meanwhile the procedural questions in your area are being answered by content farms and filing websites, often out of date and sometimes wrong. That is the gap: you are the one who actually knows, and you have published nothing an assistant can read.

The second gap is authorship. Anonymous firm content is weak evidence. The same text under a named advocate, with the enrolment and practice detail on a profile page, is strong evidence.

What this does not cover

A page cannot give legal advice on a particular matter and should say so. Facts change outcomes, and a general explanation applied to a specific situation by a worried person is how mistakes happen. Every page of this kind needs a plain line saying it is general information.

This approach also does not reach the largest instructions. A company choosing counsel for a significant dispute is working from referrals, from the panel it already keeps and from who has appeared well in that forum. Procedural pages bring enquiries from individuals and from small companies, which may or may not be the work you want.

And there is a real cost. Doing this properly consumes the time of somebody who bills, and it has to be reviewed when the law moves. A firm that publishes twenty pages and reviews none of them has created a liability rather than an asset. No one can promise you a place in an assistant's answer either.

Common questions

Will publishing procedural guides lose us work people would have paid for?

The work you lose is the work that was never economic: a person who wanted twenty minutes of guidance and a form. The work you gain is the person who read your page, understood the matter was more complicated than they thought, and called the author by name. Firms that have written these pages generally report the enquiries get better, not fewer.

Can we write about a matter we handled?

Only within the limits of confidentiality and privilege, and even then with care. A safer and usually better approach is to write about the point of law or procedure without the matter, which is also more useful to the reader, because they want to know the rule and not your history.

How much detail should a fee page carry?

Enough to explain the structure and what drives it. Which basis you use, what is included, what is billed separately, and the difference between professional fees and statutory charges such as court fees and stamp duty. Keep it factual and informative rather than presented as an offer, and take your own compliance view.

Is it safe to say a person does not need a lawyer for something?

It is the most trust building thing on the page and it needs to be precise. Say where the procedure is genuinely self service, say what makes it stop being self service, and name the warning signs that mean somebody should stop and take advice. That is accurate, and it is also the paragraph most likely to be quoted.

What about regional languages?

For individual facing matters it is often the highest value thing you can add, because the person searching is frequently not searching in English and almost nothing reliable exists for them. Write the page properly in the language, do not machine translate it, and keep the citations.

What to do first

Take the ten questions your team answers on the phone every month before a matter is even opened. Write those ten pages, one question each, author named, authority cited, date shown, with a general information line at the foot. Add a page that explains how you bill without inventing a figure. Have your compliance view taken on the set before publishing.

Then read the companion page on how a law firm gets recommended by AI for the directory and syndication side, which this page deliberately leaves alone.