The Reputation Risks Most Law Firms Discover Only After a Client Has Already Left

Most law firms treat reputation management as a PR problem — something to address when a bad review appears. In practice, your online reputation is woven into your local search rankings in ways that make neglect expensive.

Google's local ranking algorithm weights three broad factors: relevance, distance, and prominence. Prominence is largely reputation-driven. Review volume, recency, response rate, and star rating on Google Business Profile all feed into how Google assesses your firm's authority in a local market.

What this means practically: two firms with identical websites and citation profiles can rank differently in the Map Pack because one has 80 reviews averaging 4.7 stars with regular owner responses, and the other has 12 reviews averaging 3.9 stars with no responses. The first firm wins on prominence signals.

Beyond rankings, reputation influences conversion. A prospective client who finds your firm via Google will almost always read your reviews before calling. Industry benchmarks suggest review quality and recency are among the top factors influencing legal service decisions — the exact conversion lift varies by practice area and market, but the directional evidence is consistent across the engagements we've managed.

The practical implication: reputation management and local SEO are not separate workstreams. They operate on the same signals, and neglecting one limits the ceiling of the other. This page addresses both — the mechanics of building and protecting your reputation, and the specific ethical constraints attorneys operate under that make the standard marketing playbook insufficient.

Note: This content is educational and does not constitute legal or professional advice. For jurisdiction-specific advertising compliance, consult your state bar's ethics counsel.

The most common reason law firms under-generate reviews is not indifference — it's uncertainty about what's permitted. The rules are more permissive than many attorneys assume, but the nuances matter.

ABA Model Rules Framework

ABA Model Rule 7.1 prohibits false or misleading communications about a lawyer's services. Rule 7.2 governs advertising. Rule 7.3 addresses direct solicitation. None of these rules prohibit asking satisfied clients to leave a review — the constraint is on how you ask and what you imply.

Key Compliance Principles

• No quid pro quo: Offering anything of value in exchange for a positive review — discounts, gift cards, referral credit — is prohibited under most state bar rules and also violates FTC guidelines on endorsements.
• No scripted content: Providing clients with pre-written review text or suggesting specific language crosses into creating a false impression. Ask for honest feedback, not a particular narrative.
• Timing matters: Soliciting reviews during an active matter creates risk. Most ethics opinions suggest waiting until the representation has concluded.
• State variations are real: NY, CA, FL, and TX each have advertising rules that go beyond the ABA Model Rules. New York's rules on "testimonials" impose specific disclaimer requirements. California's rules around in-person solicitation are stricter than the ABA baseline. Always verify current rules with your state bar or outside ethics counsel.

Permitted Solicitation Methods

A post-matter follow-up email asking for honest feedback, a verbal request at case close, or a link in your client satisfaction survey — these are generally permissible across jurisdictions. The ask should be neutral: "If you're willing to share your experience online, we'd appreciate it" is materially different from "Please leave us a five-star review."

This is educational content. Verify current advertising rules with your state bar before implementing any review solicitation program.

A one-star review is not your biggest problem. A one-star review with no response — or worse, a defensive response that reveals client information — is.

Attorneys face a constraint that no other small business owner does: Model Rule 1.6 prohibits disclosing information relating to the representation of a client without informed consent. This means you cannot respond to a negative review by explaining what actually happened, even if the reviewer's account is factually wrong.

The Three-Part Response Framework

Despite that constraint, a well-crafted response accomplishes three things: it demonstrates professionalism to other readers, it signals to Google that you actively manage your profile, and it opens a private channel to resolve the issue.

1. Acknowledge without confirming. You can acknowledge that someone had a difficult experience without confirming or denying that a client relationship existed. Example: "We take all feedback seriously and are sorry to hear about your experience."
2. Move offline immediately. Provide a direct contact — managing partner email or firm phone — and invite the reviewer to discuss privately. "Please contact [Name] directly at [contact info] so we can understand what happened."
3. Never argue the facts publicly. Even if the review is inaccurate or defamatory, a point-by-point rebuttal that reveals case details violates Rule 1.6. Save factual disputes for the platform's removal process or legal counsel.

When to Request Removal

Platforms will remove reviews that violate their content policies — fake reviews, reviews from non-clients, reviews containing threats or hate speech. Google's removal process requires flagging the review and, in persistent cases, filing a legal removal request. Document everything. In our experience, removal is more reliable when you can demonstrate the reviewer was never a client (e.g., a competitor or disgruntled prospective client who was never retained).

Firm Policy, Not Individual Judgment

Staff members should never respond to reviews without a written protocol. A single improvised response from a paralegal or associate that mentions case details can create a Rule 1.6 issue. Build a response template library — approved language only — and designate who in the firm has authority to post responses.

Effective reputation management starts with knowing what's being said and where. For law firms, the monitoring landscape is wider than most industries because attorneys appear on legal-specific directories alongside general consumer review platforms.

Priority Platforms by Category

• Google Business Profile: Highest priority. Reviews here directly influence local rankings and are the first thing most prospective clients see. Check weekly at minimum.
• Avvo: Still widely used for attorney research. Avvo's rating algorithm weighs peer endorsements, professional achievements, and client reviews. Claiming and completing your profile is table stakes.
• Martindale-Hubbell and Lawyers.com: Peer ratings carry weight with corporate and B2B clients. Client reviews are displayed alongside peer ratings.
• Justia and FindLaw: High-authority directory profiles that frequently rank on branded searches. Unclaimed or incomplete profiles create an impression gap.
• Yelp: Relevance varies by practice area and market. Personal injury, family law, and immigration practices see more Yelp activity than commercial litigation firms.
• Facebook: Relevant for consumer-facing practice areas. Reviews display on your business page and can appear in branded searches.

Monitoring Tools

Google Alerts (free) covers brand mentions in indexed content but misses review platforms. For consolidated monitoring, tools like BrightLocal, ReviewTrackers, or Birdeye aggregate reviews across platforms into a single dashboard. Which tool makes sense depends on your firm's size and existing tech stack — the right answer varies. What matters is that the monitoring is systematic, not reactive.

Beyond reviews, set up branded search monitoring: run your firm name and individual attorney names through Google monthly. SERP results for branded queries are what prospective clients see when they research you after a referral. If a news article, bar discipline record, or negative blog post ranks on page one for your name, that's a reputation issue that review generation alone won't solve — it requires a content strategy to push down unfavorable results.

Your firm's Google Business Profile and reviews are the most visible reputation assets, but they're not the only ones. For many law firms, the branded search results page — what appears when someone Googles your firm name — is the actual first impression for referred prospects.

A referral from a satisfied client is valuable. That referral will still Google you before calling. What they find on that SERP either reinforces the recommendation or undermines it.

What Can Appear on Your Branded SERP

• Your website (homepage and key pages)
• Your Google Business Profile and reviews
• Legal directory profiles (Avvo, Martindale, Justia)
• Social media profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook)
• News articles — positive or negative
• Bar discipline records (public in most states)
• Court records websites featuring case outcomes
• Third-party review sites and complaints boards

The Defense Strategy

You cannot remove most of what ranks for your name if it's accurate and publicly available. What you can do is give Google better, more authoritative content to rank instead. This means:

Claiming and fully optimizing every directory profile you can control — a complete Avvo profile with peer endorsements and client reviews is more likely to rank than an empty or auto-generated one.

Publishing attorney bio pages on your own site that are substantive enough to compete for individual attorney name searches. A three-sentence bio is not competitive.

Building LinkedIn presence for named partners — LinkedIn profiles rank reliably for personal name searches and give you a controlled asset on the branded SERP.

Earning press mentions through legitimate PR — attorney commentary in legal trade publications, local business press, or practice-area media creates positive indexed content that occupies SERP real estate.

The goal is to control as many of the top ten results for your firm name as possible. Each result you own is one less spot available for content you don't control.

A reputation crisis for a law firm typically takes one of three forms: a coordinated wave of negative reviews (often from a single disgruntled party or a competitor), a news story that indexes for your firm name, or a bar discipline matter that becomes publicly searchable. Each requires a different response.

Coordinated Negative Reviews

Multiple one-star reviews appearing within a short window, especially from accounts with no review history, are often fake. Document the pattern — screenshots with timestamps. Flag each review through Google's reporting process, citing the platform policy violation. If the volume is significant and the source appears to be a competitor or organized campaign, preserve evidence for a potential legal claim. Do not respond to each fake review with defensive content — this amplifies the issue in the SERP.

Negative News Coverage

A published article that ranks for your firm name requires a content response, not a PR response. Publishing a detailed, authoritative rebuttal on your own site, earning new press mentions, and strengthening other owned SERP assets are the mechanisms that push unfavorable results down over time. This takes months, not days — set realistic expectations internally.

Bar Discipline Matters

Public discipline records from state bar websites rank well due to the domain authority of bar association sites. Suppressing them is generally not possible. The realistic response is to ensure every other controllable SERP result is strong enough to provide context. Attorneys who have completed discipline and want to rebuild trust should publish content that demonstrates current expertise and professionalism — this does not erase history, but it shapes the fuller picture a prospective client sees.

The universal principle in all three scenarios: reputation recovery is a content and SEO problem more than a PR problem. What ranks is what matters. Building enough positive, authoritative content to dominate the SERP is the sustainable defense.