Which wills and probate solicitors in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire do AI assistants actually recommend?

We put the 10 questions a person in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire asks before choosing wills and probate solicitor — cost, specialism, who to use, how to check them — to Claude, 3 times each, 30 answers in all, and recorded every firm the answers named. 15 firms in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire were checked against those answers. 8 of them were named at least once. The rest were not recommended in a single answer.

The league table

Firms are ranked by the number of answers that named them, then by how many different questions. The assistants do not give identical answers twice, so a difference of one or two mentions is noise; being named on questions a rival is absent from is not.

The questions we asked

1. My mother has died and I'm the executor. Which probate solicitor in Reading can help me?
2. Which solicitors in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire offer fixed-fee probate and estate administration?
3. Which solicitors in Farnham can write a will and set up a lasting power of attorney?
4. Which solicitors in Aldershot deal with probate for an estate that includes a house and investments?
5. Which probate solicitors in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire handle the whole estate administration for executors?
6. Which solicitors in Reading act for executors on probate and the sale of a house they inherited?
7. We want to protect our house for the children after a second marriage. Which solicitors near Reading advise on wills and trusts?
8. Which solicitors in Farnham help with inheritance tax planning and estate planning?
9. Which independent solicitors in Aldershot are well reviewed for wills and probate?
10. Which solicitors near Farnham make wills for couples and advise on guardianship for children?

How this was measured

• Date: 5 October 2026. This is one day, not a trend; the index is re-measured monthly.
• Sample: 10 questions × 1 assistant × 3 runs = 30 answers. 15 firms checked.
• Assistants used: Claude (Anthropic’s Sonnet model, through its API, with web search). Answers from these programming interfaces can differ from what the consumer apps show.
• Counting: a firm is counted when its name appears in an answer. Names are picked out of the answer text automatically, then matched to the firm list.
• Limits: the assistants vary between runs, so small gaps are noise. Firms that were not named may still be recommended by an assistant or a question we did not ask. National chains are left off the list.