When a Malaysian consumer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity to recommend a law firm, the answer they get depends heavily on which AI they asked. Across 20 client-style queries (things like "best divorce lawyer in Kuala Lumpur" or "corporate law firm for a Malaysian startup"), the three platforms surfaced different firms, cited different sources, and structured their answers in fundamentally different ways. Simaia ran this test as part of its ongoing work auditing how B2B and professional services brands appear in AI search, and the pattern is consistent with what we see across every industry we audit: AI platforms are not interchangeable search engines, they are separate recommendation systems with separate rules, and firms that only optimize for Google are invisible to a growing share of prospective clients. This matters for Malaysian law firms specifically because 89 percent of Malaysian internet users now use AI daily, and 81 percent of Malaysian SMEs have adopted AI into their operations. For a law firm competing for new client instructions, that is no longer a niche channel. It is becoming a default research step, the same way Google search once was.
