# Who Google's AI Recommends for Lawyers in Vancouver

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

> A citation study of Google AI Overviews across 7 Metro Vancouver sub-markets, measuring which firms AI-generated answers name and cite. 41 firms, 273 citations, 21 queries, captured August 2, 2026.

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

21 client-intent fee queries. 273 citations captured. 41 Metro Vancouver firms named — alongside notaries public, six realtor brokerages, two legal-education charities and a directory that publishes no address of its own.

## Headline finding

**A directory that publishes no address of its own is the second most-cited source in Vancouver legal — ahead of every law firm in the city.** Only 38% of citations reach a firm with a Metro Vancouver office.

| Figure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Metro Vancouver firms cited | 41 |
| Citations to Metro Vancouver firms | 38% |
| Citations to sources that are not firms | 24% |
| Firms cited across all three areas | 0 |

## What did this study measure?

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

- **20 of 21 queries** returned an AI Overview; the miss was the divorce question in North Vancouver
- **273 citations captured**, de-duplicated so a firm cited twice in one answer counts once
- **38% pointed at Metro Vancouver firm websites**, 29% at Google listings, 24% at non-firms, 7% at firms with no local office and 2% at BC notaries public
- **41 distinct Metro Vancouver firms** were named across the seven sub-markets
- **BC notaries reported as their own category**, because in British Columbia they may lawfully handle residential conveyancing
- **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

### A directory outranks every firm in the city

bclegalservices.ca — which describes itself as an independent directory and publishes no street address anywhere on its site — takes 13 citations. The most-cited law firm in Metro Vancouver takes 7. Add Reddit (8), the Law Society (6), Clicklaw (5) and two Justice Education Society sites, and 24% of Vancouver's legal answers never reach a practising firm at all.

### British Columbia has a competitor no other province has

In BC, notaries public may legally handle residential conveyancing, and 4 notary practices are cited on the real-estate question. They are small in volume — 5 citations, 2% — but they are structurally new. This category of competitor simply does not exist in our Toronto, Ottawa or Calgary studies.

### Realtors take the real-estate fee question here too

Six realtor and brokerage domains hold 15 citations, all on real estate. Combined with Reddit and the directories, 20% of real-estate citations go to organisations that cannot do the work. Metro Vancouver firms hold only 30% of that question, against 51% of divorce.

### Listings are concentrated on the North Shore

North Vancouver alone returned 33 Google Business Profile citations — more than any other sub-market in any city we have studied. Vancouver, Richmond and Surrey returned none between them. Every listed business was named exactly once.

## Three Practice Areas, Three Different Fights

Each question loses ground to a different competitor: realtors and notaries on real estate, public legal education and a US state law library on injury, an insurer and government explainers on divorce.

_Share of citations going to a firm with a Metro Vancouver office_

| Topic | Citations | Local share | Most cited | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Family / divorce | 41 | 51% | dsgfamilylaw.com (5), ylaw.ca (5), englandlam.com (2) | The strongest question, and it returned no listing citations at all — so it is won purely on published content. 34% still goes to non-firms and 15% to firms outside the region. |
| Personal injury | 93 | 44% | hansonco.ca (7), taylorandblair.com (7), sidhulegal.com (3) | Loses a quarter of its citations to public legal education — the Law Society, Clicklaw, the Justice Education Society and, oddly, the Maryland People's Law Library. 23% goes to listings. |
| Real estate | 139 | 30% | bcrealestatelawyers.com (7), winrightlaw.com (7), opendoorlaw.com (6) | The weakest and the most crowded: conveyancing firms compete with notaries (4%), realtors, a directory and Reddit for the same answer, and 41% of it is Google listings. |

_Based on 273 citations across 20 AI Overviews, captured August 2, 2026._

## Notaries Public Are Cited Alongside Law Firms

British Columbia is the only province where notaries public may handle residential real-estate conveyancing without being lawyers. Google's answers reflect that: on the real-estate fee question, notary practices are cited alongside law firms, and a prospect reading the answer has no way to tell which is which.

| Notary practice | Verified office | Citations | Sub-markets |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| jurisnotary.com | Burnaby — 9920 Lougheed Hwy | 2 | 2 |
| coquitlamnotary.com | Coquitlam — 2992 Glen Dr | 1 | 1 |
| kfwnotary.ca | Surrey — 5661 176A St | 1 | 1 |
| uptownnotaries.ca | Burnaby — 2849 North Rd (+ New Westminster) | 1 | 1 |

_Five citations is a small share of the market. It is included because a competitor category that does not exist elsewhere in Canada is worth naming before it grows, not after._

## 9 Firms, 20 Citations, 7% of the Market

Every domain below was opened and its published address recorded. calljmb.com is John Michael Bailey Injury Lawyers of Memphis, Tennessee. It is cited in two Metro Vancouver personal-injury answers and cannot act for a British Columbia claimant. Victoria, Chilliwack and Abbotsford are in British Columbia but outside Metro Vancouver, and are named rather than folded in.

| Firm domain | Verified head office | Citations | Sub-markets | Cited for |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| bhardwajco.ca | Edmonton, AB | 5 | 5 | Real estate |
| creaseharman.com | Victoria, BC | 5 | 5 | Family / divorce |
| alpinelawyers.com | Chilliwack, BC | 2 | 2 | Real estate |
| calljmb.com | Memphis, Tennessee (USA) | 2 | 2 | Personal injury |
| kmsc.ca | Grande Prairie, AB | 2 | 2 | Personal injury |
| kwasnickilaw.com | Calgary, AB | 1 | 1 | Personal injury |
| lamontlaw.ca | Hamilton, ON | 1 | 1 | Personal injury |
| oatleyvigmond.com | Barrie, ON | 1 | 1 | Personal injury |
| safilawgroup.ca | Edmonton, AB | 1 | 1 | Personal injury |

_One further domain, khakilaw.ca (1 citation), blocks automated retrieval; we report it as unverified rather than assume a location._

## Every Metro Vancouver Firm Cited, Ranked

All 41 Metro Vancouver law firms cited across the 21 queries analysed, ranked by how many generated answers cited the firm's own website. Office addresses were read from each firm's own site, not inferred. National firms with real published Metro Vancouver addresses are counted as local.

| # | Firm | Location | Citations | Sub-markets | Areas won | Missing areas |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | bcrealestatelawyers.com | Coquitlam | 7 | 7 | Real estate | Personal injury, Family / divorce |
| 2 | hansonco.ca | North Vancouver | 7 | 7 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 3 | taylorandblair.com | Vancouver | 7 | 7 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 4 | winrightlaw.com | Vancouver | 7 | 7 | Real estate | Personal injury, Family / divorce |
| 5 | opendoorlaw.com | Vancouver | 6 | 6 | Real estate | Personal injury, Family / divorce |
| 6 | dsgfamilylaw.com | Langley | 5 | 5 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |
| 7 | peaklaw.ca | Langley | 5 | 5 | Real estate | Personal injury, Family / divorce |
| 8 | ylaw.ca | Vancouver | 5 | 5 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |
| 9 | limelaw.ca | Vancouver | 5 | 4 | Personal injury, Real estate | Family / divorce |
| 10 | nilaw.ca | Richmond | 4 | 4 | Real estate | Personal injury, Family / divorce |
| 11 | rdmlawyers.com | Langley | 4 | 3 | Family / divorce, Personal injury | Real estate |
| 12 | ngsidhu.com | Surrey | 3 | 3 | Personal injury, Real estate | Family / divorce |
| 13 | personalinjurylawbc.com | Vancouver | 3 | 3 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 14 | sidhulegal.com | Surrey | 3 | 3 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 15 | triviumlaw.com | Richmond | 3 | 3 | Real estate | Personal injury, Family / divorce |
| 16 | englandlam.com | Vancouver | 2 | 2 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |
| 17 | holnessandsmall.com | Vancouver | 2 | 2 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 18 | lofrancolaw.com | Surrey | 2 | 2 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 19 | cubelaw.ca | Surrey | 2 | 1 | Family / divorce, Real estate | Personal injury |
| 20 | ataclaw.ca | Burnaby | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 21 | bislaw.ca | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 22 | btmlawyers.com | Coquitlam | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 23 | coteevans.ca | Surrey | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |
| 24 | divorce.bc.ca | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |
| 25 | epsteinlawcorp.com | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 26 | fairinheritance.com | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 27 | fastandco.ca | Burnaby | 1 | 1 | Real estate | Personal injury, Family / divorce |
| 28 | golbey.com | Coquitlam | 1 | 1 | Real estate | Personal injury, Family / divorce |
| 29 | hamiltonduncan.com | Surrey | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 30 | hammerco.ca | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 31 | harpergrey.com | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 32 | lakeswhyte.com | North Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 33 | legalbird.ca | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |
| 34 | merchantlaw.com | Surrey | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |
| 35 | millsfamilylaw.ca | North Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |
| 36 | preszlerlawbc.com | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 37 | silawgroup.ca | Surrey | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |
| 38 | silverlaw.ca | North Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Real estate | Personal injury, Family / divorce |
| 39 | warnetthallen.com | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 40 | watsongoepel.com | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Personal injury | Real estate, Family / divorce |
| 41 | westsidefamilylaw.ca | Vancouver | 1 | 1 | Family / divorce | Real estate, Personal injury |

_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. 22 of 41 firms (54%) were cited exactly once, the top ten hold 56% of firm citations, and not one firm appears across all three practice areas — in Calgary two firms did. Captured August 2, 2026._

## North Vancouver Returned More Listing Citations Than Any Sub-Market We Have Studied

Thirty-three, in a single sub-market. Vancouver, Richmond and Surrey returned none between them. Firm citations, by contrast, are almost flat across all seven — geography inside Metro Vancouver changes which listings Google shows far more than it changes which firms it quotes.

| Sub-market | AI Overviews | Firm citations | Notaries | Out of region | Listings | Distinct firms |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Vancouver | 3/3 | 16 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 15 |
| Burnaby | 3/3 | 15 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 15 |
| Richmond | 3/3 | 15 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 15 |
| Surrey | 3/3 | 17 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 16 |
| North Vancouver | 2/3 | 11 | 0 | 2 | 33 | 11 |
| Coquitlam | 3/3 | 16 | 1 | 4 | 20 | 16 |
| Langley | 3/3 | 14 | 0 | 3 | 20 | 13 |

_Sub-market labels follow Google's own location targeting rather than municipal boundaries._

## Directories, Realtors and the Maryland People's Law Library

65 citations (24%) went to organisations that are not law firms or notaries. Two entries deserve a second look: supremecourtbc.ca is not the Supreme Court of British Columbia — it is a self-help site run by the Justice Education Society, a charity — and peoples-law.org is the Maryland People's Law Library, run by the Maryland Judiciary. It has no bearing on British Columbia law and was cited four times in Vancouver personal-injury answers. It also appeared in our Calgary legal study.

| Source | What it is | Citations |
| --- | --- | --- |
| bclegalservices.ca | Directory (no address published) | 13 |
| reddit.com | Community forum | 8 |
| lawsociety.bc.ca | Regulator (Law Society of BC) | 6 |
| wiki.clicklaw.bc.ca | Public legal education (Courthouse Libraries BC) | 5 |
| bridgewellgroup.ca | Realtor / brokerage | 4 |
| peoples-law.org | US legal-information service (Maryland) | 4 |
| supremecourtbc.ca | Public legal education (Justice Education Society — not the court) | 4 |
| placerealestate.ca | Realtor / brokerage | 3 |
| strawhomes.com | Realtor / brokerage | 3 |
| familylawinbc.ca | Public legal education (Justice Education Society) | 3 |
| canadalife.com | Insurer | 3 |
| raincityproperties.com | Realtor / brokerage | 2 |
| robv.ca | Realtor / brokerage | 2 |
| lexpert.ca | Legal directory / publisher (Toronto) | 2 |
| lawyerdirectorycanada.ca | Directory (no address published) | 1 |
| kimlee.ca | Realtor / brokerage | 1 |
| fairstone.ca | Consumer lender | 1 |

## 78 Businesses Named Through a Google Listing

78 citations (29%) named 78 businesses through a Business Profile panel, each exactly once. Google is not returning to the same listings; it is filling the panel from whatever is nearby.

| Business named in the answer | Listing citations |
| --- | --- |
| GBC Law | 1 |
| Brentwood Law Corporation | 1 |
| Resolutions Law Corporation | 1 |
| Vincent Mark Law Corporation | 1 |
| Pax Law Corporation | 1 |
| Paperclip Law | 1 |
| Ratcliff LLP | 1 |
| Westcoast Wills & Estates | 1 |
| Silver & Associates Law Corporation | 1 |
| Themis Law Corporation | 1 |
| North Shore Law LLP | 1 |
| Lexeon Law Corporation | 1 |
| Jamie Taleb Notary Public | 1 |
| Peter Bonny - Wills and Estates Lawyer at Ratcliff LLP | 1 |
| Digby Leigh & Co | 1 |
| Lakes, Whyte LLP | 1 |
| ِAdam Soliman Law Corporation | 1 |
| Lucas Pearce Law Corporation | 1 |
| Sohi Law Group | 1 |
| Bahar M. Law Corporation | 1 |
| Sima Mazarei Notary Public - 1notary1.com | 1 |
| Hanson Kohan Lawyers | 1 |
| Peter Bjurman Notary Corporation | 1 |
| Fung Law Group (Ephraim Fung) | 1 |
| Jeffrey R. Horricks Law Corporation | 1 |
| macushlaw | 1 |
| Solimano Law | 1 |
| Winright Law | 1 |
| Westcoast Wills & Estates - Vancouver | 1 |
| Hughes Law Corporation | 1 |
| Oracle Law | 1 |
| Hoogbruin & Company | 1 |
| Alan Chim Law Corporation - Lawyer and Notary Public | 1 |
| Nuraney Law Group | 1 |
| Bell Alliance | 1 |
| Munro & Crawford | 1 |
| Stewart Elworthy | 1 |
| Milestone Real Estate Lawyers | 1 |
| Magellan Law | 1 |
| Magnus Law | 1 |
| Kearns & Company ~ Real Estate Lawyers ~ Langley Location | 1 |
| MBJ Law | 1 |
| Alliance Lawyers Oberoi Haban Malli LLP | 1 |
| LANGLEY NOTARIES - Roman Svirshchevs'kyy & Judith A. Piccolo | 1 |
| Merchant Law Group LLP | 1 |
| Dreyer and Associates | 1 |
| Rosberg Sawatzky, LLP Lawyers | 1 |
| Gates Law Group | 1 |
| MacLeod & Holm Law Group | 1 |
| Waterstone Law Group LLP | 1 |
| Robles Real Estate Group | 1 |
| MacCallum Law Group LLP | 1 |
| MacMillan Tucker | 1 |
| Kravetz & Co | 1 |
| Caileigh Anderson- Personal Real Estate Corp | 1 |
| Paul Kennedy | 1 |
| Mohinder Rana Law Corporation | 1 |
| Preszler Injury Lawyers | 1 |
| Spraggs Law | 1 |
| JD Law Corporation | 1 |
| BTM Lawyers | 1 |
| Alder Law | 1 |
| HS Law Corporation | 1 |
| Drysdale Bacon McStravick LLP | 1 |
| Clark Woods LLP | 1 |
| Taylor & Blair LLP | 1 |
| Rand & Fowler Insurance Ltd | 1 |
| Labour Rights Law | 1 |
| True Light Law Corporation \| Joshua Yang, Barrister & Solicitor | 1 |
| Golbey Levine Glanzberg \| Legal Counsel | 1 |
| Ng Sidhu Law \| Personal Injury, Family Law, Wills & Estates & Criminal Law | 1 |
| Sunny Dharni | 1 |
| Cadman Law Corporation | 1 |
| Marvin L. Klassen - Barrister & Solicitor | 1 |
| Ghankas Law Group | 1 |
| Garton & Harris | 1 |
| Synthesis Legal | 1 |
| Ng Sidhu Law \| Abbotsford ICBC & Personal Injury Lawyer | 1 |

_Listing panels carry no publisher domain and are reported by business name. Being named this way means Google recognises the business but is not quoting anything it has published._

## Method

1. Ran 21 client-intent fee queries through Google with city-level location targeting across seven Metro Vancouver sub-markets: Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, North Vancouver, Coquitlam and Langley.
2. Tested each sub-market with the same three questions — what a real estate lawyer costs, what personal injury lawyers charge, and what a divorce lawyer costs, 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. Opened every cited domain individually and read its published address from the organisation's own contact page. Firms with a published Metro Vancouver office are counted as local, including national firms that publish real local addresses; Victoria, Chilliwack and Abbotsford are treated as outside the region and named.
6. Reported notary practices as their own category, because in British Columbia they may lawfully perform residential conveyancing and therefore compete directly on the real-estate question; counted realtors, brokerages, directories, the Law Society, courts, public legal education charities, insurers and lenders as non-firm sources.
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.

One of the 21 queries — the divorce question in North Vancouver — returned no AI Overview and contributes no citations. One domain, khakilaw.ca, blocks automated retrieval and is reported as unverified rather than assigned to a region. Only three practice areas were tested; corporate, immigration, employment, criminal and estates work may behave differently. Sub-market labels follow Google's own location targeting rather than municipal boundaries.

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, in which practice areas, and who is being quoted in your place. That analysis is specific to your firm, and we produce it individually.

Vancouver's distinguishing feature is how much of the answer sits with organisations that are not law firms: a directory with no address, a community forum, two education charities, a US state law library, six realtors and a set of notaries. That is roughly a quarter of the market, and almost all of it is winnable with published fee content, because none of those sources is defending a client relationship.

Divorce is the cleanest place to start: the highest local share of the three, and not a single Google listing citation to compete with. The work that follows 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 20 answers measured, in any of the seven sub-markets. 22 of the 41 firms that were cited appeared exactly once, so the difference between absence and presence here is often a single page. It does not mean the firm is invisible in Google generally, or that it performs badly in the map pack.

### Why are notaries counted separately rather than as competitors or as non-firms?

Because neither would be accurate. In British Columbia a notary public may lawfully handle residential conveyancing, so on the real-estate question they are a direct competitor for the same work — which rules out the non-firm column. They are not law firms, which rules out the firm column. Reporting them as their own category is the only version that does not overstate or understate the local firm share.

### 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-vancouver-legal-ai-visibility-august-2026.pdf). Everything in it is on this page already.

## Legal note

This report is provided for information. Firm and business names appear because they were cited in publicly generated search results on the date stated; inclusion or absence is not an assessment of legal competence, service quality or professional standing. Nothing here is legal advice. Office locations were read from each organisation’s own published website on August 2, 2026 and may change. Figures describe what Google's systems returned on August 2, 2026 and may change.