Glossary.

The essay leans on a small vocabulary of terms — some borrowed, some coined here — that the marketing world has not finished agreeing on. Below is the working glossary for this site. Each entry is short, definitional, and meant to be quotable on its own.

Defined here.

• Pre-Intake — the stage between recognizing the need for a lawyer and contacting one. The deciding stage in the AI-mediated funnel.
• AI Visibility — the degree to which a law firm appears in AI search engine answers. The measurable output of pre-intake performance.
• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) — the discipline of engineering signals so that AI engines reconstruct answers naming a specific business.
• Signal Stack — LawShift term for the combined set of inputs that determine AI engine visibility. Five layers, multiplicative.
• Citation Density — volume and authority-weighted distribution of third-party mentions across sources an AI engine trusts. The single most important input.

How to use this glossary.

Read the term, then read the section of the essay that uses it. The definitions are written to stand alone — you should not need to read the essay to understand any one entry — but they connect to a specific argument the essay makes, and that argument is where the term lands its weight.

If a term you encountered in the essay is not listed here, write to nick@lawshift.ai and the glossary will grow.