# Who Google's AI Recommends for Legal Help in Ottawa

Source: https://enginely.ai/reports/ottawa/legal-ai-visibility/

> A citation study of Google AI Overviews across 7 Ottawa sub-markets, measuring which firms AI-generated answers name and cite. 65 firms, 233 citations, 21 queries, captured August 2, 2026.

A citation study of Google AI Overviews across seven Ottawa sub-markets and three practice areas — real estate, personal injury and family law — measuring which firms AI-generated answers name and cite.

21 client-intent cost queries. 233 citations captured. 65 Ottawa firms named, and 29 of them also appear in our July 2026 Greater Toronto Area study. The same domains, answering in two cities 450 kilometres apart.

## Headline finding

**54% of the law firm citations in Ottawa's AI answers go to firms that are also cited in Toronto's.** In AI search, the two largest legal markets in Ontario have effectively merged into one answer set.

| Figure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Ottawa firms cited | 65 |
| Citations to firms also cited in Toronto | 54% |
| Firms in two or more sub-markets | 45 |
| Firms cited across all three areas | 0 |

## What did this study measure?

We ran 21 client-intent cost queries through Google across seven Ottawa sub-markets — what a real estate lawyer costs, what personal injury lawyers charge, and what a divorce costs — and recorded every source cited by the AI Overview each one returned.

- **21 of 21 queries** returned an AI Overview — every cost question we asked
- **233 citations captured**, de-duplicated so a firm cited twice in one answer counts once
- **88% pointed at firm websites** — the highest own-site share of any Ottawa vertical we measured
- **65 distinct Ottawa firms** were named across the seven sub-markets
- **29 of them also appear** in our July 2026 Greater Toronto Area legal study, by exact domain match
- **Single point in time** — captured August 2, 2026, and generated answers vary between runs

_This measures Google AI Overviews only. It does not measure ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Copilot, which use different retrieval systems and require separate tracking._

## Findings

### Ottawa and Toronto now share an answer set

29 of the 65 firms cited in Ottawa also appear in our Greater Toronto Area study — the same domains, in both datasets. Together they take 110 of Ottawa's 205 firm citations, or 54%.

### Personal injury is the most merged

71% of firm citations on personal injury queries go to firms also cited in Toronto, against 37% for real estate. Injury work travels; conveyancing is stickier, because a real-estate answer has to survive contact with provincial land registry detail.

### Within Ottawa, geography does nothing

45 of 65 firms appear in more than one sub-market and many in all seven. Kanata, Orléans and Barrhaven return substantially the same firms as downtown. The distinct-firm count almost equals the citation count in every sub-market: firms are rarely cited twice within one area, but the same firms recur across areas.

### Nobody covers more than one practice area

Not one of the 65 firms was cited across all three. Real estate, personal injury and family law behave as entirely separate markets, which means the fastest gain is rarely general visibility — it is one specific page, on one specific service, answering the cost question directly.

## How Merged Each Practice Area Is

Higher means more of that practice area's answer is held by firms that also answer for Toronto. This is the one chart in the series where a high figure is the problem rather than the goal.

_Share of firm citations going to firms also cited in our Toronto study_

| Topic | Citations | Local share | Most cited | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Personal injury | 92 | 71% | nelliganlaw.ca (7), ottawalawyers.com (7), fosterinjurylaw.ca (7) | The most merged area by a wide margin. Contingency-fee explainers are written once and answer nationally, so the firm with the clearest one wins in both cities. |
| Family / divorce | 54 | 48% | nathenssiegel.com (6), iqbalslaw.com (6), ottawawestfamilylaw.ca (5) | Roughly half. Divorce cost questions turn on provincial process, which gives local firms something to say that a Toronto firm's page does not. |
| Real estate | 87 | 37% | jacquesrobert.com (7), slclawyer.ca (7), ownright.com (7) | The least merged, and still more than a third. Conveyancing is the stickiest of the three — but a Mississauga firm is nonetheless among its three most-cited sources in Ottawa. |

_Based on 233 citations across 21 AI Overviews, captured August 2, 2026._

## Head Offices, Verified Individually

We verified these head offices by hand rather than inferring them from firm names, and we report only the ones we confirmed. The traffic runs both ways: Ottawa firms are winning citations in Toronto answers while a Mississauga firm is winning them here, a Kingston firm wins in both cities, and one query surfaced a San Diego firm.

| Firm domain | Head office | Ottawa citations | What it shows |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| nelliganlaw.ca | Ottawa | 7 | Ottawa firm also cited in Toronto answers |
| burntucker.com | Ottawa | 5 | Ottawa firm also cited in Toronto answers |
| ahinjurylaw.com | Ottawa | 5 | Ottawa head office, offices across Ontario |
| slclawyer.ca | Mississauga | 7 | Toronto-area firm cited in Ottawa answers |
| bergeronclifford.com | Kingston | 6 | Outside both markets |
| oatleyvigmond.com | Barrie | 2 | Outside both markets |
| lernerspersonalinjury.ca | London | 1 | Outside both markets |
| jurewitz.com | San Diego, USA | 1 | Outside Canada |

_Being the best-known practice on your own street no longer protects the answer. It was never a ranking factor in a generated summary; it was a proxy for the map pack, and the map pack is not what is being read here._

## Every Ottawa Firm Cited, Ranked

All 65 Ottawa law firms cited across the 21 queries analysed, ranked by how many generated answers cited the firm's own website. Firms marked “yes” in the final column were independently cited in our Greater Toronto Area study — the same domain, in both datasets.

| # | Firm | Location | Citations | Sub-markets | Practice area | Missing areas | Also Toronto |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | findlaylaw.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 7 | 7 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 2 | fosterinjurylaw.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 7 | 7 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 3 | jacquesrobert.com | Ottawa (Central) | 7 | 7 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 4 | nelliganlaw.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 7 | 7 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 5 | ottawalawyers.com | Ottawa (Central) | 7 | 7 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 6 | ottawarealestatelawyers.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 7 | 7 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 7 | ownright.com | Ottawa (Central) | 7 | 7 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | YES |
| 8 | slclawyer.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 7 | 7 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | YES |
| 9 | bergeronclifford.com | Ottawa (Central) | 6 | 6 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 10 | iqbalslaw.com | Kanata | 6 | 6 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | YES |
| 11 | maanalaw.com | Ottawa (Central) | 6 | 6 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 12 | nathenssiegel.com | Ottawa (Central) | 6 | 6 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | YES |
| 13 | ahinjurylaw.com | Ottawa (Central) | 5 | 5 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 14 | bhardwajco.ca | Nepean | 5 | 5 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | YES |
| 15 | burntucker.com | Ottawa (Central) | 5 | 5 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 16 | guertinpoirierlaw.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 5 | 5 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 17 | ottawawestfamilylaw.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 5 | 5 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | - |
| 18 | taggart-law.com | Ottawa (Central) | 5 | 5 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 19 | crepinlaw.com | Kanata | 4 | 4 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 20 | gtrlaw.ca | Kanata | 4 | 4 | Family / divorce, Real estate | Personal injury | - |
| 21 | lmspersonalinjury.com | Nepean | 4 | 4 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 22 | ottawa-attorneys.ca | Kanata | 4 | 4 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 23 | preszlerlaw.com | Ottawa (Central) | 4 | 4 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 24 | wanneslaw.com | Ottawa (Central) | 4 | 4 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 25 | barnettlaw.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 3 | 3 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | YES |
| 26 | daviesfamilylaw.com | Ottawa (Central) | 3 | 3 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | - |
| 27 | kellysantini.com | Ottawa (Central) | 3 | 3 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 28 | krol.ca | Orléans | 3 | 3 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | YES |
| 29 | lawbooth.ca | Orléans | 3 | 3 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | YES |
| 30 | marwahlaw.com | Nepean | 3 | 3 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 31 | ottawainjurylawfirm.com | Ottawa (Central) | 3 | 3 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 32 | rglaw.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 3 | 3 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | - |
| 33 | stephendurbinandassociates.com | Nepean | 3 | 3 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | - |
| 34 | aglawfirm.ca | Nepean | 2 | 2 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | YES |
| 35 | badrelaw.com | Kanata | 2 | 2 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 36 | bogoroch.com | Vanier | 2 | 2 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 37 | diamondlaw.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 2 | 2 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 38 | mirianlaw.com | Nepean | 2 | 2 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 39 | noblerealestate.ca | Nepean | 2 | 2 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | YES |
| 40 | oatleyvigmond.com | Ottawa (Central) | 2 | 2 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 41 | ottawainjury.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 2 | 2 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 42 | rpblaw.ca | Nepean | 2 | 2 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | - |
| 43 | rsoicalaw.ca | Barrhaven | 2 | 2 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | YES |
| 44 | shulman.ca | Ottawa (Central) | 2 | 2 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | - |
| 45 | woolcott.ca | Kanata | 2 | 2 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 46 | avagiolaw.com | Orléans | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 47 | bunningfarnand.com | Nepean | 1 | 1 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 48 | cloudlaw.ca | Barrhaven | 1 | 1 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 49 | compellingcounsel.com | Kanata | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 50 | hshlawyers.com | Hunt Club | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 51 | jurewitz.com | Vanier | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 52 | juzkiwlaw.com | Ottawa (Central) | 1 | 1 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 53 | keyfamilylaw.com | Hunt Club | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | - |
| 54 | lernerspersonalinjury.ca | Nepean | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 55 | merovitzpotechin.com | Kanata | 1 | 1 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 56 | nanda.ca | Barrhaven | 1 | 1 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | YES |
| 57 | neinstein.com | Vanier | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | YES |
| 58 | nussbaumlaw.ca | Orléans | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | YES |
| 59 | oshawalawyers.com | Orléans | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 60 | russellalexander.com | Hunt Club | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | - |
| 61 | sginjurylaw.ca | Vanier | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 62 | solowaywright.com | Vanier | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Family / divorce, Real estate | - |
| 63 | suttonlawyers.ca | Hunt Club | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | - |
| 64 | tdjlaw.com | Nepean | 1 | 1 | Real estate | Family / divorce, Personal injury | - |
| 65 | torontodivorcelaw.com | Kanata | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Personal injury, Real estate | YES |

_Bar length is scaled to the highest citation count in the study. Repeat citations of the same domain within a single answer are counted once. “Also Toronto” is a domain match against our July 2026 GTA study, not a claim about head office. Captured August 2, 2026._

## The Same Firms Recur Across Every Sub-Market

Note how the distinct-firm count equals the citation count in every sub-market: firms are rarely cited twice within one area, but the same firms recur across areas. Geography inside Ottawa does almost nothing to change the answer.

| Sub-market | Firm citations | Also cited in Toronto | Distinct firms |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Ottawa (Central) | 28 | 14 | 28 |
| Kanata | 27 | 12 | 27 |
| Nepean | 34 | 17 | 34 |
| Orléans | 33 | 19 | 33 |
| Barrhaven | 26 | 17 | 26 |
| Vanier | 32 | 17 | 32 |
| Hunt Club | 25 | 14 | 25 |

## The 12% That Never Reaches a Firm

28 citations (12%) went to something that is not a law firm. Reddit is again the most-cited non-firm source, and real estate queries pull in brokerages and mortgage portals — parties with no legal role in the transaction.

| Source | What it is | Citations |
| --- | --- | --- |
| reddit.com | Community forum | 7 |
| claritydivorce.com | Online divorce service | 2 |
| lawtimesnews.com | Legal trade press | 2 |
| injurylawyercanada.com | Portal | 2 |
| wowa.ca | Real estate portal | 1 |
| ottawapersonalinjurylawyernetwork.com | Lawyer network / portal | 1 |
| fairstone.ca | Lender | 1 |
| canadalife.com | Insurer | 1 |
| realestatelawyers.ca | Portal | 1 |
| ottawafirsttimebuyer.ca | Real estate portal | 1 |
| capitalproperties.ca | Real estate brokerage | 1 |
| teamrealty.ca | Real estate brokerage | 1 |

## Method

1. Ran 21 client-intent cost queries through Google with city-level location targeting across seven Ottawa sub-markets: Ottawa Central, Kanata, Nepean, Orléans, Barrhaven, Vanier and Hunt Club.
2. Tested each sub-market with the same three practice areas — real estate, personal injury and family law, so every area was asked identical questions.
3. Captured the complete search result page for each query, including the AI Overview block, its generated text, and every source it cited.
4. De-duplicated citations per answer, so a firm cited twice within a single AI Overview counts once.
5. Established the Toronto overlap by exact domain match against our own July 2026 Greater Toronto Area legal study, and verified the head offices in the table above individually.
6. Classified each cited source by hand as a firm's own website or a third party — forum, portal, brokerage, insurer, lender or trade press.
7. Crawled on August 2, 2026 without personalisation, and recorded the crawl window so any figure can be re-checked against the day it was captured.

## Limitations

This is a single-point-in-time snapshot. AI Overviews are generated fresh per query and vary between runs, so exact citation lists will differ if re-run; trends require repeated sampling. Firm identification is by website domain, and where a group operates several sites each is counted separately unless the study states a merge.

“Also Toronto” means the same domain appears in both datasets; it is not a claim about where a firm is headquartered, and only the head offices in the verification table were individually confirmed. Only three practice areas were tested; corporate, employment, immigration and criminal work may behave differently.

AI Overviews reach the largest audience of any AI answer surface — no login, no app, shown to anyone searching Google — so this is the widest-reach measurement available. It is not the whole picture, and a business performing well here may perform differently elsewhere. Every figure comes from search results captured on the date stated and can be independently checked by running the same queries yourself.

## Where your firm sits

This report shows the market. It does not show your position in it — whether you are cited at all, on which practice area, and which firms are being named in the answers your prospective clients see instead. That analysis is specific to your domain, and we produce it individually.

Two things here are worth acting on. Proximity has stopped being a moat: more than half the citations in Ottawa's answers go to firms that also answer for Toronto. And practice areas are entirely separate — not one firm in this study was cited across all three — which means the fastest gain is rarely general visibility. It is one specific page, on one specific service, that answers the cost question directly.

The work that follows from this report is a fixed-price engagement: [the AI Visibility Accelerator](https://enginely.ai/services/ai-visibility-accelerator/index.html.md). Thirteen weeks, a published price, and three separate measurements against these same queries after publication.

## Questions about this report

### Why does this report only cover Google AI Overviews?

Because an AI Overview is rendered inside a public search results page, it can be retrieved directly, for a specific city, at a specific moment — which is how every figure here was captured. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot do not publish their answers anywhere; those answers exist only when a user prompts the model, so measuring them requires running a fixed prompt set against each model repeatedly over time. That is a different instrument, and we report it separately rather than blending two methods into one number.

### Would you get the same numbers if you ran it again?

Not exactly. AI Overviews are generated fresh per query and vary between runs, so the exact citation list would differ. The structural findings — how concentrated the market is, which source types dominate, which practice areas are being lost — are stable enough to act on. Any specific firm's citation count is a snapshot, not a ranking position.

### Our firm is not in the table. What does that mean?

It means the firm was not cited in any of the 21 answers measured, in any of the seven sub-markets. It does not mean the firm is invisible in Google generally, or that it performs badly in the map pack — those are different surfaces measured differently. It does mean that for these specific cost questions, the answer a prospective client received named someone else.

### What exactly does “also Toronto” mean?

That the same domain appears in both this study and our July 2026 Greater Toronto Area legal study. It is a domain match and nothing more. It is not a claim about where the firm is headquartered — several Ottawa firms carry the flag because they are winning Toronto's answers, which is the point. Only the head offices in the verification table were individually confirmed.

### How were firms identified?

By website domain, exactly as it appeared in the AI Overview source list. Where a group operates several sites, each is counted separately unless this study states otherwise, because the citation was earned by a specific page on a specific domain.

### Can we be removed from the report?

Write to us and we will discuss it. The domains here appear because they were cited in publicly generated search results on the date stated, and the study would be less useful and less checkable without them — but we would rather have the conversation than not.

### Does being cited more often mean more customers?

We did not measure that, and we will not claim it. This study measures citations in generated answers, not clicks, calls or bookings. What it establishes is which firms are present in the answer someone reads before choosing — presence is a precondition for being chosen, not a substitute for it.

## Full report as PDF

The same study, packaged: [download the PDF](https://enginely.ai/reports/enginely-ottawa-legal-ai-visibility-august-2026.pdf). Everything in it is on this page already.

## Legal note

This report is provided for information. Firm names and domains appear because they were cited in publicly generated search results on the date stated; inclusion or absence is not an assessment of legal ability, service quality or standing. Nothing here is legal advice or a recommendation of any firm. Figures describe what Google's systems returned on August 2, 2026 and may change.