Most AEO work starts on the company’s own website — cleaner page structure, FAQ blocks, content rewritten to be easy to quote. That work is not wasted. But for the question that actually decides a shortlist, “what is the best tool for a firm like mine?”, the answer usually is not built from vendor websites at all. It is built from the listicles, directories, and review sites that talk about them.
It is worth starting with the data that cuts the other way. Profound looked at billions of AI citations this spring, and more than half pointed to brand-owned sites, with software among the most brand-heavy categories. So owned content clearly gets cited.
It gets cited when the buyer already knows your name: product questions, documentation, “does it integrate with our document management system.” The questions that build a shortlist behave differently. Walker Sands benchmarked 828 enterprise B2B companies, and the typical brand was cited in just 3% of the AI Overviews relevant to it — even though those overviews appeared on about half the pages where the same brands already ranked. Ranking on the page and being cited in the answer above it turn out to be close to unrelated.
| The buyer's question | Who usually gets cited |
|---|---|
| "What does [your product] do?" | Your site and documentation |
| "Does [your product] integrate with [tool]?" | Your site and partner pages |
| "Best [category] for a midsize firm?" | Listicles, directories, review sites |
| "[Your product] vs. [competitor]?" | Comparison pages, reviews, forums |
The split matters because most AEO budgets get spent on the top two rows. Those are the questions a buyer asks after they have already heard of you. The bottom two are where they decide whether you get a meeting at all, and that is where most legal tech companies are missing.
The closest legal data covers law firms rather than legal tech vendors, but the pattern is hard to miss. InterCore ran 540 high-intent legal queries across thirty US cities, and a directory was the first source cited nearly four times out of five. InterCore sells AI visibility audits and tested a single AI tool, so hold the precision loosely. Run the same kind of query for legal software and the pattern looks familiar: roundups and review platforms up top, vendor sites further down.
The page that decides whether you make the list may be someone else’s listicle.
Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity the shortlist question for your category — the “best tool for a firm like mine” version, as specific as a real buyer would make it. Do not look at whether you appear yet. Look at the sources it cites, and write down every directory, review site, roundup, and publication. Then check how many of them mention you at all. That is your real AEO target list, and for most legal tech companies it is short and mostly unclaimed.
The results also tell you which kind of work matters most. If the sources are mostly review sites, a stale review profile is costing you more than any page on your own site. If they are mostly trade publications, the gap is coverage — and that is a months-long relationship effort, not a content sprint.
So the work isn’t only making your own site easier to quote. It’s earning a place on the pages these tools already trust for the question that matters most: review profiles that are current, listings in the directories buyers actually use, and coverage in the trade press they read. None of it is fast. All of it compounds.
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