Research
AI at the front door of 97 of the world's largest law firms.
We read all 97 sites on September 14 and 15, 2026, looking for a chat window, an AI assistant, or a text line. We found none.
9797 of the world's largest law firms. We read every one of their websites.
7676 put a link to a contact page on the homepage.
4646 have a form, almost always on the contact page.
3030 show a phone number on either page.
1212 mention a client portal or a client login.
00 have a chat window, an AI assistant, or a text line.
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So what
Their AI is inside the firm.
These firms do use AI. They use it on matters they've already taken on, and a lawyer checks the output.
The website has no need to talk to a visitor. Clients come by referral, and a new matter starts with a conflicts check, which a public chatbot can't run.
The same day, at a different kind of firm.
The 97 largest firms
- 0
- chat windows or AI assistants
- 0
- text lines
- 88
- cookie-consent managers
The largest US personal-injury firm
- Chat
- staffed by a person
- Text
- a line open around the clock
For a law firm
None of the 97 has put an AI assistant on its website. The first one to do it will have to work out conflicts, privilege, and unauthorized practice before anything goes live, and that is most of the work.
For a company choosing counsel
An empty homepage doesn't mean a firm is behind on AI. If you want to know, ask what they use once a matter is open, and what it has changed.
For anyone buying intake AI
The intake tools that work run inside the firm, on matters it has already accepted. The number to watch is how long it takes to get from the first interview to a draft a lawyer will sign.
Beyond the largest firms.
In October 2026 we read the websites of more than 93,000 US law firms of every size. 6.1% offer a chat window, 0.3% an AI assistant that answers visitors and 4.3% a way to text the firm. Chat peaks at firms of 10 to 49 lawyers, at 10%. What those websites show about AI.
- Chat1 lawyer: 3.4%2 to 9: 8.9%10 to 49: 10%50 to 99: 6.7%100 or more: 2.2%
- AI assistant1 lawyer: 0.6%2 to 9: 0.2%10 to 49: 0.2%50 to 99: 0.3%100 or more: 0.3%
- Text the firm1 lawyer: 4.2%2 to 9: 4.7%10 to 49: 3.2%50 to 99: 1.4%100 or more: 1.4%
fulkersonadvisors.com
We've built this kind of intake agent.
For a top-5 US law firm. The case file covers the problem, what we built, and what happened. The Build puts a system like it into production in twelve weeks, and our page on AI consulting for law firms covers where else AI fits in a firm.
The data.
We read 97 homepages and 74 contact pages, one firm at a time. This covers every firm on the list.
Download the data (CSV)The findings in six sentences
- None of the 97 firms has a chat window, an AI assistant, or a text line on its homepage or its contact page.
- 21 of the 97 homepages have no link to a contact page.
- A phone number is on 8% of the homepages. Counting the contact page too, it is 31%.
- 47% have a form a visitor could fill in, almost always on the contact page.
- 88 of the 97 sites load a cookie-consent tool and 33 load LinkedIn's ad tag. None loads a chat tool from any vendor.
- 70 of the 97 homepages put a lawyer directory in the main menu. 26 put a contact link there.
How we measured
We started from Wikipedia's list of the world's 100 largest law firms by revenue, which follows the AmLaw Global 200 for 2025, as it stood on September 14, 2026. Of the 97 sites we could read, 76 belong to US firms and 15 to UK or UK-US firms. The rest are in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, and South Korea.
For each firm we used the website recorded on Wikidata, or the firm's own domain where Wikidata had none, and confirmed it loaded. For Linklaters (Wikidata sitelink pointed at the German site) and Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy (Wikipedia row linked the country, not the firm) the address we had recorded was wrong, so we corrected it by hand and read the right sites on September 15, 2026. 2 sites blocked the automated browser but opened in a normal Chrome, so on September 15, 2026 we checked those by hand, running the same detector in the page and following the same steps: White & Case and Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani. 3 sites could not be read: Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer (asked for a human-verification checkbox in both browsers, which we did not complete), Yingke (did not answer from the United States), O’Melveny & Myers (asked for a human-verification checkbox in both browsers, which we did not complete). Every count on this page is out of the 97 we could read.
We ran Google Chrome under automation in a 1366 by 900 window, from Boston, on September 14, 2026 between 7:59 pm and 8:22 pm Eastern, and again at 10:40 pm the same night. The night run reached 93 of the sites and found no chat window on any of them. For each firm we loaded the homepage, waited, accepted the cookie banner where one appeared so that anything gated behind consent could load, scrolled, waited again, then did the same on the contact page linked from the homepage. We recorded every script and frame, every fixed element and its text, the text inside every frame including shadow roots, phone links, forms and their fields, and any client-portal wording.
We counted a chat window when a known chat or messaging vendor appeared in the page's scripts or frames, or when a fixed launcher or frame invited a conversation. Marketing copy that only mentions chat did not count. We tested the detector on sites known to run Intercom, Zendesk, and HubSpot chat, which it caught, and on a consumer firm with a hand-built widget, which it missed on the first pass, so a hand-built widget can slip through. As a second check we looked at the screenshots of all 97 homepages for a launcher in either bottom corner.
We did not send any message, open any widget, log in anywhere, or test non-English versions of the sites.
The data is the table below and the CSV, released under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to Fulkerson Advisors.
All 97 firms, ranked by revenue
- United States
- 76
- United Kingdom
- 15
- Elsewhere
- 6
| Rank | Firm | Country | What a visitor gets | Vendor seen |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kirkland & Ellis | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 2 | Latham & Watkins | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 3 | DLA Piper (verein) | UK US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 4 | A&O Shearman | UK | A form | |
| 5 | Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom | US | A form | |
| 6 | Gibson Dunn | US | A phone number | |
| 7 | Sidley Austin | US | A form | |
| 8 | Ropes & Gray | US | A form | |
| 9 | Baker McKenzie (verein) | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 10 | White & Case | US | A form | |
| 11 | Morgan, Lewis & Bockius | US | A form | |
| 12 | Clifford Chance | UK | A form | |
| 13 | Freshfields | UK | A phone number | |
| 14 | Linklaters | UK | A form | |
| 15 | Hogan Lovells | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 16 | Simpson Thacher & Bartlett | US | Phone and a form | |
| 17 | Jones Day | US | A form | |
| 18 | Dentons (verein) | UK US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 19 | Goodwin Procter | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 20 | Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison | US | A phone number | |
| 21 | Greenberg Traurig | US | A form | |
| 22 | Davis Polk & Wardwell | US | A phone number | |
| 23 | Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan | US | A phone number | |
| 24 | Norton Rose Fulbright (verein) | UK | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 25 | King & Spalding | US | A form | |
| 26 | CMS ( EEIG ) | EU Germany | A form | |
| 27 | Paul Hastings | US | A form | |
| 28 | McDermott, Will & Schulte | US | A form | |
| 29 | Cooley | US | Phone and a form | |
| 30 | Sullivan & Cromwell | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 31 | Holland & Knight | US | Phone and a form | |
| 32 | Weil, Gotshal & Manges | US | Phone and a form | |
| 33 | Mayer Brown | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 34 | Milbank | US | A phone number | |
| 35 | Willkie Farr & Gallagher | US | Phone and a form | |
| 36 | Covington & Burling | US | Phone and a form | |
| 38 | Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton | US | A form | |
| 39 | Eversheds Sutherland | UK | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 40 | Debevoise & Plimpton | US | Phone and a form | |
| 41 | Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr | US | A phone number | |
| 42 | Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 43 | Dechert | US | A phone number | |
| 44 | Reed Smith | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 45 | Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 46 | Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 47 | Morrison & Foerster | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 49 | Proskauer Rose | US | A phone number | |
| 50 | Squire Patton Boggs (verein) | UK US | Phone and a form | |
| 51 | Alston & Bird | US | A form | |
| 52 | K&L Gates | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 53 | Ashurst | Australia | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 54 | Foley & Lardner | US | A form | |
| 55 | Winston & Strawn | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 56 | Perkins Coie | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 57 | King & Wood Mallesons (verein) | China | A form | |
| 58 | Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 59 | Cravath, Swaine & Moore | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 60 | Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz | US | A phone number | |
| 61 | Arnold & Porter | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 62 | Troutman Pepper Locke | US | A form | |
| 63 | Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson | US | A phone number | |
| 64 | McGuireWoods | US | A form | |
| 65 | Kim & Chang | South Korea | A phone number | |
| 66 | Clyde & Co | UK | A form | |
| 68 | Faegre Drinker | US | Phone and a form | |
| 69 | BakerHostetler | US | Phone and a form | |
| 70 | Vinson & Elkins | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 71 | Polsinelli | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 72 | Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough | US | Phone and a form | |
| 73 | Seyfarth Shaw | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 74 | Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy | US | A form | |
| 75 | Hunton Andrews Kurth | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 76 | Pinsent Masons | UK | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 77 | Slaughter and May | UK | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 78 | Katten Muchin Rosenman | US | A form | |
| 79 | Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 80 | Venable | US | Phone and a form | |
| 81 | Baker Botts | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 82 | Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman | US | Phone and a form | |
| 83 | Fenwick & West | US | A form | |
| 84 | Simmons & Simmons | UK | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 85 | Fox Rothschild | US | A phone number | |
| 86 | Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 87 | Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 88 | Gowling WLG | Canada | A form | |
| 89 | Barnes & Thornburg | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 90 | Blank Rome | US | A form | |
| 91 | Bird & Bird | UK | Phone and a form | |
| 92 | Littler Mendelson | US | A form | |
| 93 | Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart | US | A form | |
| 94 | Blake, Cassels & Graydon | Canada | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 95 | Cozen O'Connor | US | Phone and a form | |
| 96 | Husch Blackwell | US | Neither phone nor form on the pages checked | |
| 97 | Addleshaw Goddard | UK | Phone and a form | |
| 98 | Taft Stettinius & Hollister | US | A form | |
| 99 | Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo | US | A phone number | |
| 100 | Jackson Lewis | US | A form |
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, Yingke, and O’Melveny & Myers are not in the table because their sites could not be read. The method above says why.
Cite this study
Fulkerson Advisors (2026). AI at the Front Door: A Census of 97 of the World's Largest Law Firms. Checked September 15, 2026. https://www.fulkersonadvisors.com/research/ai-intake-largest-law-firms
Use any of these numbers or charts. Credit Fulkerson Advisors and link to this page. The data is under a CC BY 4.0 license.
The data is also on Zenodo, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23320174.
If you spot an error, email info@fulkersonadvisors.com.
Questions
Do any of the world's largest law firms have a chatbot or AI assistant on their website?
No. As of September 15, 2026, none of the 97 sites we could read had a chat window, an AI assistant, or a text line on the homepage or the contact page. The AI these firms use runs inside the firm.
Why don't large law firms use live chat or AI intake on their websites?
Their clients don't come from the website. A new matter also starts with a conflicts check, which a public assistant can't run safely. The intake AI that is useful to them works on matters they have already accepted.
Which law firms do use AI chat for client intake?
Firms that get clients from the public. On the day we checked, the largest US personal-injury firm greeted visitors with a chat window staffed by a person and a text line. None of the 97 firms in this study did.