WilmerHale Ranks #17 in Law Firms Citation Share Audit 2026

Part of the The Law Firms Citation Share Audit 2026 index.

WilmerHale ranks #17 in The Law Firms Citation Share Audit 2026 with a Citation Share score of 2.4. The audit, published by Everything-PR, measures how frequently and how broadly US law firms surface in AI-generated answers across major engines. WilmerHale sits below Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan at #16 (2.7) and just ahead of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati at #18 (2.2). Its position reflects strength concentrated in antitrust and securities enforcement, according to the index.

What The Law Firms Citation Share Audit 2026 Measures

The Law Firms Citation Share Audit 2026 modeled five AI engines, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, across more than 80 high-intent legal prompts spanning ten BigLaw practice areas: M&A, restructuring, IP litigation, white-collar defense, securities enforcement, antitrust, private equity, capital markets, real estate, and labor & employment. The audit scored 25 US law firms with equal weighting across the engines. The composite score weights five dimensions: citation frequency, cross-engine breadth, query-type breadth, extractability, and crawl access.

Why WilmerHale Ranks #17

WilmerHale's #17 position corresponds to a Citation Share score of 2.4 in a field of 25 firms led by Kirkland & Ellis at #1 (14.8). The index identifies antitrust and securities enforcement as WilmerHale's strongest category, meaning the firm's citations concentrate in those buyer-intent surfaces rather than spreading evenly across all ten practice areas the audit modeled.

That concentration matters under the audit's design. The index notes that Citation Share rewards firms that appear across multiple buyer-intent surfaces, not firms that dominate a single category. A firm anchored in two practice areas registers fewer citation opportunities across the full ten-area prompt set than a firm named consistently across M&A, restructuring, capital markets, and litigation press.

WilmerHale's public record supports its antitrust and securities enforcement footprint. The firm added Jason Burt, former SEC Deputy Director, to its securities and financial services practice in Denver, and welcomed Ryan Danks, former DOJ Antitrust Director of Civil Enforcement. On the enforcement litigation side, WilmerHale secured a Second Circuit victory affirming dismissal of securities litigation against Norfolk Southern.

How Named-Deal Density Shapes WilmerHale's Position

The index identifies named-deal density as the dominant citation driver, noting that firms named in M&A, restructuring, capital markets, and litigation press at consistent cadence compound citation share through the work itself. WilmerHale's own record shows named-matter activity across several fronts: its litigation team was featured in Litigation Daily for its use of demonstrative exhibits in a Cisco patent trial win, it secured a complete defense verdict for Netflix in a patent infringement trial, and it advised on the acquisition of Apellis Pharmaceuticals by Biogen for $5.6 billion. WilmerHale and co-counsel Ballard Spahr also secured a jury verdict for The New York Times in the retrial of the Palin defamation case.

The audit's structure explains how such work translates into citation share. Because Citation Share weights query-type breadth and cross-engine breadth, matters that surface in named press across multiple practice areas contribute more retrievable coverage than concentration in a narrower set of categories.

Where WilmerHale Sits in the Broader BigLaw Story

Two cross-brand patterns from The Law Firms Citation Share Audit 2026 illuminate WilmerHale's position. First, the index finds that Above the Law has overtaken Chambers as the dominant retrieval anchor because it publishes daily versus Chambers' annual ranking cycle.

Second, the index finds that partner-level coverage compounds at the firm level: a firm with twenty partners holding sustained press footprints produces meaningfully higher citation share than a firm with two partners holding equivalent footprints. WilmerHale's lateral additions, including technology M&A attorneys Bill Choe and Eric Levine, former Treasury official David Horn, and former general counsel Rupert Bondy, expand the partner base whose individual footprints can contribute to firm-level citation share.

The index also flags a structural factor affecting all firms: the paywall is the silent killer. Content behind Westlaw, LexisNexis, Bloomberg Law's paywall, or law-firm-client-portal infrastructure is invisible to AI engines. WilmerHale's client alerts, blogs, and publications on artificial intelligence, international trade, and antitrust are published on its open corporate site, keeping that content crawlable for AI retrieval.

What the Score Signals Going Forward

WilmerHale's Citation Share score of 2.4 places it in the middle of the 25-firm field, with strength concentrated in antitrust and securities enforcement. Under the audit's logic, the firm's path toward a higher score runs through broader named-deal density across more of the ten practice areas the index measures and through sustained partner-level press coverage that compounds at the firm level.

Work with Everything-PR

Have a question about this research, or want to discuss your brand's coverage? Get in touch with our team.

Contact Us →