Ask AI assistants who should handle your estate planning in Tampa and two names come back more than any others: Mortellaro Law and Elaine McGinnis P.A., each named in 28 of the 112 AI answers we collected, 25% apiece. Fuentes & Kreischer is next at 18. And of the 50 largest Tampa estate practices we additionally screened, 47 never appeared in a single answer.
The headline numbers
- Mortellaro Law and Elaine McGinnis P.A. tied as Tampa's most AI-recommended estate planning firms, each named in 28 of 112 answers (25%).
- Fuentes & Kreischer appeared in every one of the 4 Google AI Overviews that showed for our Tampa questions.
- 94% of the 50 Tampa estate practices we screened separately (47 of 50) never appeared in a single AI answer.
- The engines disagree: ChatGPT's most-named Tampa firm (Tampa Bay Elder Law Center) is different from Gemini's (Mortellaro Law) and Perplexity's (Elaine McGinnis P.A.).
- 45% of US consumers used AI for a local business recommendation in 2026, up from 6% a year earlier.
How we measured it
Between August 4 and 7, 2026, we asked five AI systems the questions real clients ask when they are ready to hire: ChatGPT (OpenAI, with live web search), Anthropic's Claude (with live web search), Perplexity, Google Gemini (with Google Search grounding), and Google AI Overviews. Nine questions, asked three times each per engine, because AI answers vary between runs. That produced 112 usable answers for Tampa. We then counted, for every firm, how many of those 112 answers named it. A count of "28 of 112" means exactly that: the firm appeared in 28 answers.
The nine questions, verbatim:
- "best probate attorney near Tampa with good reviews"
- "elder law attorney in Tampa who handles Medicaid planning and asset protection"
- "where can I find a trusted estate planning lawyer in Tampa for my family"
- "my mother passed away in Tampa without a will, which probate lawyer should I hire"
- "recommend an estate planning attorney in Tampa to set up a living trust"
- "top rated wills and trusts lawyers in Tampa"
- "which law firm in Tampa is best for wills, power of attorney, and estate planning"
- "affordable probate attorney in Tampa, who do you suggest"
- "I need a lawyer in Tampa to help my elderly parents protect their assets, who should I call"
The firms AI names most in Tampa
| Firm | Named in | Share of answers |
|---|---|---|
| Mortellaro Law | 28 of 112 | 25% |
| Elaine McGinnis P.A. | 28 of 112 | 25% |
| Fuentes & Kreischer P.A. | 18 of 112 | 16% |
Counts are across all five engines combined, and the top two are a genuine tie. Next among law firms: AWS Law Firm and Tampa Bay Elder Law Center, each named in 15 of 112 answers. (The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, a professional association rather than a firm, also appeared 15 times.)
The engines do not agree with each other
Every engine has a different Tampa favorite. Google Gemini leaned hardest into Mortellaro Law, naming the firm in 16 of its 27 answers. Perplexity favored Elaine McGinnis P.A., 11 of 27. ChatGPT named Tampa Bay Elder Law Center most, 7 of 27. Google AI Overviews only appeared for 4 of our 9 questions at all, and Fuentes & Kreischer was in all 4. Claude was the most cautious engine in Tampa, frequently pointing to neutral resources like the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys directory instead of naming individual firms.
This split matters for one practical reason: a firm can be highly visible on one engine and close to invisible on another, because each engine reads different sources before it answers. Being recommended by AI is not one game. It is at least five.
The number that should get every other firm's attention
Two firms each appear in a quarter of everything the engines say about Tampa estate planning. At the other end, we ran a shorter five-question screen across the 50 largest estate planning practices in the Tampa market: 47 of the 50, that is 94%, never appeared in a single answer.
This is the defining pattern we see in every market we measure: AI recommendations concentrate hard. A small group of firms collects most of the mentions, and the majority of the market is simply absent from the conversation. Absence is not a verdict on anyone's lawyering. It means the sources these engines read before answering, the directories, review profiles, rankings and articles, do not surface those firms often enough to be named.
Why this matters right now
45% of US consumers used AI for a local business recommendation in 2026, up from 6% a year earlier, according to BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey. Across 350,000 US business locations, SOCi's Local Visibility Index found ChatGPT ever recommends only about 1.2% of them. To be fair to the other side of the argument: traditional Google search still handles vastly more queries than AI assistants do. But the AI channel is growing fast, it is high intent, and as the numbers above show, it is winner-take-most. The firms named today are compounding an advantage.
What decides who gets named?
Not advertising: none of these engines sell placement in organic answers. The engines answer from what they can retrieve and trust: legal directories, review platforms and their volume and recency, "best of" articles and local rankings, consistent business information across the web, and content on the firm's own site that directly answers the questions people ask. Firms that show up tend to be strong across several of those sources at once. That also means visibility is buildable. It is plumbing, not magic.
Common questions about this study
Does appearing here mean these are the best estate lawyers in Tampa?
No, and we want to be precise about this: these are counts of how often AI assistants named each firm in answers to our questions on specific dates. They measure visibility, not legal ability, service quality, or results. Plenty of excellent attorneys are invisible to AI today.
Would I get the same answers if I asked ChatGPT today?
Not necessarily. AI answers vary by session, phrasing, location and date. That is exactly why we ask each question multiple times across five engines and report counts across the whole answer set instead of quoting any single answer.
Did the named firms pay to be included, or participate?
No. No firm participated in, paid for, or endorsed this study. Firm names appear solely to report factual measurement results, the same way a survey reports its findings.
My firm is not named. Can I find out my own numbers?
Yes. We run the same measurement for individual firms at no charge: your mention count, your closest competitors' counts, and which sources the engines read before answering. Use the contact button below and mention Tampa.
Methodology notes
Measured August 4 and 7, 2026. Engines: ChatGPT (OpenAI API, live web search), Claude Sonnet (Anthropic API, live web search), Perplexity Sonar, Google Gemini Flash with Search grounding, and Google AI Overviews. Usable answers per engine: ChatGPT 27 of 27, Claude 27 of 27, Perplexity 27 of 27, Gemini 27 of 27, and Google AI Overviews 4 (an AI Overview appeared on 4 of 9 queries; the rest are excluded from all denominators, never counted as misses). Queries embedded Tampa, Florida, and location was set to Tampa where the API supports it. Counts are mention counts of the answers we collected via each engine's API, an unpersonalized baseline; consumer apps may differ. Results describe only these engines, these questions, and these dates. Firm name usage is nominative and factual. This study is independent research by Maxera LLC and is not legal advice, a lawyer rating, or a referral service.
By Max, founder of Maxera. We measure how often AI assistants recommend local businesses, and we help the ones who want to show up more often.