The Reputation Risks Most Law Firms Discover Too Late

Online reviews do two separate jobs for a law firm: they influence where you appear in local search results, and they influence whether a prospective client calls you once they find you. Most firms focus on one or the other. The ones consistently winning new clients manage both.

Google's local ranking algorithm weighs review signals — quantity, recency, rating average, and keyword content within reviews — as part of how it scores your Google Business Profile relative to competing firms in the same practice area and geography. A firm with 80 reviews averaging 4.7 stars will generally outperform an equally optimized profile with 12 reviews, all else being equal.

On the conversion side, industry benchmarks consistently show that legal consumers read reviews before contacting a firm. The specific numbers vary by study and market, but the pattern is consistent: prospective clients use your review profile as a proxy for trustworthiness before they've had any direct interaction with you.

The practical implication is straightforward: reputation management is not a PR exercise for lawyers — it is a revenue function. A firm that generates a steady stream of honest client reviews, responds professionally to negative feedback, and maintains accurate listings across directories will outperform a firm with equivalent legal skill but weak review infrastructure.

What this page covers: ethical review solicitation under bar rules, how to respond to negative reviews without triggering confidentiality violations, platform prioritization, and how to handle the crisis scenarios most firms are not prepared for.

Disclaimer: This is educational content, not legal or ethics advice. Bar rules vary by state. Verify your jurisdiction's specific advertising and solicitation rules with your state bar's ethics counsel before implementing any review strategy.

The most common question firms ask is simply: Can I ask clients to leave a review? In most jurisdictions, yes — with specific conditions attached.

Under ABA Model Rule 7.1, a lawyer cannot make false or misleading communications about their services. This means you cannot coach clients on what to write, offer incentives for positive reviews, or selectively ask only the clients you know are satisfied in a way that creates a misleading overall impression. Rule 8.4 prohibits conduct involving dishonesty or misrepresentation, which extends to review practices.

What is generally permissible across most state bar interpretations:

• Asking a client, after matter resolution, whether they would be willing to share their honest experience online
• Sending a follow-up email with a direct link to your Google Business Profile review form
• Mentioning in your client satisfaction process that reviews help other people find your firm

What tends to create ethical exposure:

• Offering discounts, gift cards, or any compensation in exchange for reviews
• Asking staff to post reviews posing as clients
• Asking clients to leave reviews before a matter is concluded (creates appearance of contingency)
• Responding to a reviewer's claims with facts that confirm or deny a representation relationship

A few states — California and New York among them — have issued specific ethics opinions on online reviews that go beyond the ABA Model Rules. If your firm operates in a state with a history of aggressive advertising rule enforcement, check with your bar's ethics hotline before building a systematic review outreach process.

Timing matters too. The best moment to ask is immediately after a positive case outcome, when the client's experience is fresh and goodwill is highest. Waiting weeks or months reduces follow-through significantly, in our experience working with law firms across practice areas.

A negative review lands on your Google profile. Your instinct is to explain what actually happened — to defend the work, correct the record, provide context. That instinct, if acted on, can create a bar complaint more serious than the review itself.

Attorney-client privilege and Rule 1.6 confidentiality obligations do not pause because someone posted an anonymous complaint online. Revealing any information that confirms someone was your client, describes the nature of their matter, or discloses communications — even in general terms — is a confidentiality violation in most jurisdictions.

The ethical response framework for negative reviews has one rule: respond to the reader, not the reviewer. Your response is not really for the person who left the one-star review. It is for the prospective client reading that exchange six months from now. Write accordingly.

A general acknowledgment template that works across most negative review scenarios:

"We take every client experience seriously and are sorry to hear this feedback. Our firm is committed to responsive, professional service. We encourage anyone with concerns about their experience to contact us directly so we can address them properly."

Notice what this response does not do: it does not confirm a representation relationship, does not reference any case facts, and does not challenge the reviewer's account. It signals professionalism to readers without creating ethical exposure.

For reviews that contain factually false statements about your firm — not about a client matter, but about your business practices, hours, or staff — you have more latitude to clarify. Even then, keep it brief and factual.

What you should never do in a review response:

• Confirm or deny that the reviewer was your client
• Reference case outcomes, settlements, or strategy
• Describe the reviewer's conduct or character
• Threaten legal action against the reviewer in the response

If a review contains what you believe are defamatory statements, consult your bar's ethics counsel before responding at all. The response itself can complicate a potential defamation claim.

Not all review platforms carry equal weight for law firms. Where you focus your effort should depend on whether you are optimizing for local search rankings, directory visibility, or general trust signals.

Google Business Profile

This is the highest-priority platform for any law firm doing local SEO. Google reviews feed directly into your local pack ranking signals. They are also the most visible to prospective clients conducting a firm-name search. A strong GBP review count with recent reviews and keyword-rich content (clients naturally mention practice areas) provides compounding ranking benefit over time. Start here, stay here.

Avvo

Avvo's rating system combines peer endorsements, years of practice, bar memberships, and disciplinary records into a numeric score. The score is publicly visible and ranks prominently for attorney-name searches. Claiming your profile, completing it fully, and requesting peer endorsements from colleagues improves your Avvo rating. Client reviews on Avvo also appear in search results for your name. Worth managing, though not as influential as Google for local pack rankings.

Martindale-Hubbell

Peer review ratings (AV Preeminent, BV Distinguished) carry weight in B2B referral contexts and with sophisticated legal consumers. Less relevant for consumer-facing practices like personal injury or family law, more relevant for business litigation, M&A, and estate planning for HNW clients.

Facebook

Facebook reviews matter most for consumer practice areas where prospective clients are active on the platform — family law, criminal defense, immigration. Less relevant for B2B legal services. The visibility of Facebook reviews in Google search results has declined, but the platform remains a referral channel worth maintaining.

Yelp

Yelp's aggressive review filter often suppresses legitimate reviews from infrequent Yelp users — which describes most law firm clients. Many firms report frustration with Yelp's filtering. It is worth claiming and maintaining your profile, but it should not be your primary review acquisition focus.

Most reputation management advice for lawyers focuses on the routine: steady review generation, professional responses, accurate listings. That is the right foundation. But firms that have invested in their online presence also have more to lose when a crisis hits — and the response protocol for a crisis is different from the protocol for a routine negative review.

Scenario 1: A Bar Complaint Appears in Search Results

State bar disciplinary records are public in most jurisdictions and can surface in Google search results for your name. If a bar complaint — even one that was ultimately dismissed — ranks on page one for your firm name, it will cost you consultations. The response is not to suppress the result (that is difficult and often counterproductive) but to build enough authoritative content around your name that the result falls to page two. A well-maintained Google Business Profile, active LinkedIn presence, law firm website with author-attributed content, and citations in legal directories collectively push lower-authority pages down.

Scenario 2: A News Story About a Case Gone Wrong

Journalists writing about litigation outcomes, settlements, or client complaints may rank for your firm name. Unlike review responses, news coverage requires a communications strategy, not just an SEO response. Do not comment impulsively. Work with a PR professional if the story has significant search visibility. On the SEO side, same principle applies: build owned content that outranks the story over time.

Scenario 3: A Coordinated Negative Review Attack

Occasionally — more often in contentious practice areas like divorce law or landlord-tenant — a firm receives a cluster of negative reviews in a short period from what appear to be non-clients. Google allows you to flag reviews that violate its policies. Document the review spike, flag each review individually with specific policy violations cited, and contact Google Business Profile support. Do not respond to these reviews in a way that draws more attention to them.

In all crisis scenarios, the underlying principle is the same: protect confidentiality, respond strategically rather than emotionally, and use content and citations to build long-term search authority around your firm name.

Review management does not exist in isolation from SEO. It is one of several interconnected systems that determine whether a prospective client finds your firm and then decides to contact you.

Review signals feed into local pack rankings directly. But they also influence click-through rates from organic results — a firm with a visible star rating in search results generates more clicks than one without. More clicks signal relevance to Google, which supports rankings. The compounding effect is real, even if the precise mechanism is not fully transparent.

Ethical reputation management also connects to compliance. How you solicit reviews, what you say in responses, and whether your profile accurately represents your firm's services are all areas where bar advertising rules apply. Firms that treat reputation management as a purely technical exercise — without understanding the ethical constraints — create exposure that can be worse than the reputational problem they were trying to solve.

Local SEO and reputation are particularly intertwined. Your Google Business Profile is the primary vehicle for both local ranking signals and review visibility. Getting GBP optimization right — accurate categories, complete service listings, consistent NAP data — amplifies the value of every review you generate. A strong review profile on a poorly optimized GBP profile underperforms. Both need to be maintained in parallel.

If you are managing reputation as part of a broader SEO investment for your firm, the question worth asking is whether your current agency or internal process treats these as connected systems or separate tasks. In our experience working with law firms, the firms that see the strongest local search performance are the ones where review generation, GBP management, and content strategy are coordinated rather than siloed.

For firms evaluating what a comprehensive approach looks like, reputation management is a core component of our lawyer SEO services — alongside technical SEO, content, and local optimization.