Findwell research highlights a gap between the visibility of Manchester law firms and the individual solicitors behind them.
Nearly two-thirds of the lawyers named by AI when asked to recommend solicitors in Manchester work at firms registered outside Greater Manchester, according to research published by Findwell.
The Manchester Law Firm Visibility Index 2026 examined 378 active law firms registered in the region, comparing how firms and individual solicitors appear in Google search results and AI-generated recommendations.
Researchers tested two versions of Claude with web search enabled, asking them to recommend individual solicitors across different areas of law. Across 68 responses, the models named 114 different lawyers, but only 41 worked for firms registered in Greater Manchester.
The remaining 73 worked for firms registered elsewhere, although some of those firms have offices in Manchester. The study’s eligibility criteria were based on registered office addresses, rather than where individual solicitors practise.
In property and conveyancing, family law and immigration, neither AI model named a lawyer from a Greater Manchester-registered firm in the searches tested.
Manchester’s most visible law firms
The findings come despite strong search visibility among some of the region’s established practices.
Slater Heelis topped Findwell’s overall visibility index, followed by Olliers Solicitors and Clifford Johnston & Co. The rankings combine Google search position, visibility across different practice areas and the number of times firms appeared in AI responses.
Competition for Google visibility was concentrated, with just ten firms accounting for 30% of the positions recorded across 18 firm-level searches.
But the research found a marked difference between the visibility of firms and the solicitors working for them. Of the 465 Google results examined, 404 led to law firm websites, while just two pointed to pages focused on a named individual solicitor.
Jordan Greenaway, founder of Findwell, said: “But across the whole market, firms are winning with their brand, not their people. Clients buy on the strength of a firm’s expertise, yet the experts themselves are almost nowhere to be found.”
The findings raise questions about whether traditional service pages and team biographies do enough to demonstrate the experience of individual lawyers, particularly when prospective clients are looking for specialist advice.
The study measures visibility within a defined set of searches, rather than the quality of legal advice or a firm’s overall online presence.
Published in September, the Manchester Law Firm Visibility Index 2026 includes the region’s top 50 firms, rankings across eight practice areas and a breakdown of how Google and AI identify legal expertise.
