The Reputation Risks Most Law Firms Discover Only After a The Reputation Risks Most Law Firms Discover Only After a negative review Goes Unanswered Goes Unanswered

For most prospective legal clients, hiring a lawyer is one of the highest-stakes decisions they will make. Before they call your office, they have almost certainly read your reviews, checked your rating on at least one directory, and formed a preliminary judgment about whether they trust you.

This behavior has direct consequences for your local search visibility. Google's Map Pack algorithm uses review signals — specifically review count, recency, and rating — as ranking inputs for local queries like "divorce attorney near me" or "DUI lawyer in [city]." A competitor with 80 reviews and a 4.7 rating will typically outrank a firm with 15 reviews and a 4.2, holding other factors equal.

Beyond rankings, reviews function as social proof that converts searchers into inquiries. Industry benchmarks suggest that legal consumers read multiple reviews before contacting a firm, and that a pattern of unanswered negative reviews meaningfully reduces contact rates — even when the overall rating is acceptable.

The compounding risk: law firms that treat reputation management as a crisis-only task are always reacting. Firms that treat it as an ongoing practice — generating reviews consistently, monitoring platforms weekly, responding thoughtfully — build a review profile that becomes a durable competitive asset over time.

This page covers the three core components of attorney reputation management: ethical review generation within bar guidelines, responding to negative reviews without waiving attorney-client privilege, and maintaining a presence across legal directories that supports both trust and organic search authority.

This content is educational and does not constitute legal advice. Rules governing attorney advertising and client confidentiality vary by jurisdiction. Verify current requirements with your state bar before implementing any review solicitation program.

ABA Model Rule 7.1 prohibits any communication about a lawyer's services that is false or misleading. State bars that have adopted this model rule — or their own equivalents — apply it to online reviews and testimonials. This means you cannot offer incentives for reviews, coach clients on what to say, or publish testimonials you know to be inaccurate.

What you can do is ask satisfied clients, in a straightforward way, to share their honest experience. The practical question is when and how to ask.

Timing That Works

• At matter close: When a case resolves favorably, there is a natural window of client goodwill. A brief, personal email or in-person request at this moment converts at a higher rate than a generic follow-up weeks later.
• After a positive touchpoint: If a client expresses satisfaction — verbally or in writing — during the representation, that is an appropriate moment to mention that reviews help other people find your firm.
• In your client survey: A post-matter satisfaction survey can include a single line inviting clients who feel comfortable to leave a public review, with a direct link to your Google Business Profile.

Platforms to Prioritize

• Google Business Profile — highest impact on local Map Pack rankings and most visible to searchers
• Avvo — widely used by legal consumers for attorney research; peer endorsements and client reviews are separate features
• Martindale-Hubbell — carries weight with referral sources and B2B legal buyers
• Facebook — relevant for consumer-facing practices like family law, criminal defense, and personal injury

Avoid any language in your request that steers clients toward positive content specifically. "Share your honest experience" is compliant. "Please leave us a five-star review" is not. Some state bars — California and New York, for example — have supplemental guidance on attorney advertising that may impose additional requirements. Verify current rules with your licensing authority before launching any solicitation program.

A negative review is publicly visible to every prospective client who searches your firm's name. Leaving it unanswered signals either that you don't monitor your reputation or that you have no good response. Neither impression helps you.

The challenge for attorneys is that a natural response — one that explains what actually happened — often requires confirming the person is a client and disclosing case-related information. Both of those actions can constitute a waiver of attorney-client privilege in many jurisdictions. The professional responsibility risk is real.

The solution is a non-confirmatory response: a reply that addresses the concern at the level of your firm's values and process, without acknowledging whether the reviewer is or was a client, and without referencing any specific matter details.

Non-Confirmatory Response Framework

A compliant response typically follows this structure:

1. Acknowledge the experience without confirming the relationship. "We take all feedback seriously and are sorry to hear about this experience."
2. Restate your firm's standard of care. "Our commitment to every client is [clear communication / responsive service / honest counsel — choose what applies]."
3. Invite offline resolution. "We'd welcome the opportunity to discuss this directly. Please contact our office at [phone or email]."
4. Do not elaborate on facts, outcomes, or the reviewer's identity. Full stop.

This approach accomplishes three things: it demonstrates to prospective clients that you are professional and responsive; it avoids any privilege-related professional responsibility exposure; and it creates a record that you took the concern seriously.

Before publishing any response to a review that involves a potentially sensitive matter, have your response reviewed by your firm's ethics counsel or state bar's ethics hotline. Most state bars offer informal guidance on specific situations at no charge.

This is general educational guidance, not legal or professional responsibility advice. Privilege rules and waiver standards vary by jurisdiction.

Google is where most prospective clients start, but it is not the only platform that shapes how your firm is perceived. Legal directories carry their own domain authority, often rank for practice-area and attorney-name queries in their own right, and feed into the research process that precedes a hire decision.

Directories Worth Active Management

• Avvo: Avvo generates attorney profiles automatically using public bar records. If you have not claimed your profile, your rating, listed disciplinary history, and contact information may be inaccurate. Claim and complete your profile, add peer endorsements where appropriate, and monitor for new client reviews.
• Martindale-Hubbell: Peer review ratings (AV Preeminent, BV Distinguished) carry credibility with referral sources and corporate clients. Client reviews are a separate, more recent feature. Both matter depending on your practice area.
• FindLaw and Justia: These directory placements often rank for hyper-local and practice-specific queries. Maintaining consistent NAP (name, address, phone) across both supports your broader local SEO citation footprint.
• Google Business Profile: Technically a directory. Covered in depth in the GBP optimization page within this cluster — but the review strategy here applies directly.

Consistency Matters for Local SEO

NAP consistency across directories is a local ranking factor. If your firm's address, phone number, or practice name appears differently across platforms — even minor variations like "Suite 400" vs. "Ste. 400" — it creates citation ambiguity that can suppress local rankings. Audit your directory listings at least twice per year.

Peer endorsements on Avvo and LinkedIn are ethically distinct from client reviews — they come from other attorneys or professionals, not clients, and do not typically implicate the same advertising rules. They are worth cultivating, particularly for referral-dependent practice areas like estate planning, business law, and family law.

Most reputation damage to law firms is not dramatic — it is gradual. A negative review sits unanswered for three months. A directory listing shows the wrong phone number for a year. A news article about a case outcome ranks on page one for an attorney's name and never gets addressed. These are preventable problems that become entrenched through inaction.

A structured monitoring routine requires roughly 15-20 minutes per week and catches issues at a stage where you can respond effectively.

What to Monitor Weekly

• Google Business Profile reviews: Check directly in the GBP dashboard or set email notifications for new reviews.
• Avvo and Martindale-Hubbell: Check for new client reviews and any changes to automatically generated profile data.
• Google name searches: Search your firm name and each attorney's full name in incognito mode. Note what appears on page one — reviews, news, directories, social profiles.
• Google Alerts: Set alerts for your firm name, each attorney's name, and key variations. Free, and catches mentions you would otherwise miss.

What to Monitor Monthly

• Full directory audit — NAP accuracy across Justia, FindLaw, Yelp, Facebook, and any practice-specific platforms
• Review velocity — are you maintaining a steady cadence of new reviews, or has your profile gone stale?
• Competitor review profiles — understanding how your review volume and recency compare to top local competitors helps you calibrate your solicitation efforts

When a new negative review appears, the response window matters. A reply posted within 24-48 hours demonstrates active management. A reply posted six weeks later, after the review has been seen by hundreds of searchers, still matters — but the reputational exposure has already occurred.

Reputation management integrated with your attorney SEO program — rather than bolted on as a separate task — produces the most consistent results, because review generation, directory management, and monitoring are built into recurring workflows rather than handled reactively.