What we encountered
Law firms are referred to in many ways: full legal names, short names, former names, names with and without “Lawyers” or “Solicitors”, office-specific names, and sometimes the name of a principal lawyer instead of the firm.
Different firms can also have similar names, particularly across different cities or jurisdictions.
Why it matters
If name variants are not resolved, one firm’s visibility is split across several apparent entities and understated. If similar names are merged carelessly, two different firms are combined and one is credited with the other’s appearances.
Either error distorts every downstream measure — frequency, share of recommendations and comparisons with competitors.
How FirmRanker handles it
FirmRanker resolves the names found in answers to canonical firm entities, using location and practice context, while leaving the original answer text unchanged. Resolution is recorded as derived data, so it can be reviewed and corrected without altering the evidence.
Ambiguous cases are flagged for human review rather than merged silently.
What we still don’t know
How best to treat multi-office and national firms where an answer names only one office.
How AI systems themselves resolve firm identities — and whether inconsistent names across a firm’s own website and third-party profiles affect how it is represented. That is a research question, not an established finding.