The legal profession has always been a highly competitive field. If you're a lawyer or law firm, you probably already know that Google is the number one place to get potential clients. It's obviously the most popular search engine and has become the go-to source for information on legal services. Though Google is a great resource, there are other places where you can find out about lawyers and law firms- namely, review sites.
Attorney review sites are an excellent way to get more referrals and for clients to find good attorneys. There are many different types of lawyer review sites: Some are just for people that want to know about the lawyers in their area, and others are for attorneys themselves. However, it can be challenging to know which is the best for bringing in new clients and it can be overwhelming when you have to sift through so many options. To help you out, we've put together a list of the top 10 lawyer review sites.
Top 10 Best Lawyer Review Sites
Are you looking for a lawyer? It is not uncommon for consumers to search for a lawyer online when seeking legal services, in fact, 82% of clients consult the Internet for help. Not to mention, over half of all clients read reviews before choosing a lawyer.
Lawyer review sites aid clients in finding the best lawyer for their needs. Remember, third-party reviews on these sites hold more weight than those on your own website. Choosing the right review sites can be tricky. We'll discuss 10 top options and provide tips to boost your lawyer ratings.
1. Avvo
Although Avvo reviews are prominent in legal circles, they hold less significance for the majority of consumers. As a highly regarded directory for attorneys, Avvo serves as a trusted platform where clients can discover respected legal professionals. Lawyer reviews on Avvo are determined by individual ratings and feedback from past clients and colleagues.
Avvo automatically creates a profile for you. The profile showcases you to users to help them make informed decisions when hiring an attorney. Users can search for a lawyer based on location (city or state), practice area, name, or zip code. The easy-to-navigate website even shows potential clients.
How to Increase Your Avvo Attorney Rating
Avvo has a variety of metrics and tools that are valuable for lawyers to use that can be found on the site. Increasing your Avvo rating is a simple process and can be done in several ways.
1. Claim Your Lawyer Profile
As mentioned above, the site generates a profile. You just have to claim it. Then, add more information to your profile to give potential clients a better sense of your experience and qualifications. What should you add?
- A bio. Write about yourself and give clients an insight into your services.
- Practice areas. Specify your expertise. On Avvo, your cases are shown in a pie chart. The chart groups them and lists how many cases you have taken from each practice area—for instance, child custody: 25%.
- Contact. The address of your law firm, website, phone number, email address, etc.
- Resume. This part lists your experience, publications, and awards from over the years.
- Cost. State pricing for your services and even write down perks like ‘Free Consultation’ if you offer them.
2. Get the Endorsement of Your Colleagues
You can connect with other attorneys and professionals to build your network. A section on your profile allows your colleagues to leave an endorsement for you, and you can also leave online reviews about them.
3. Request a Review on the Avvo Website
Client reviews are the most important factor in determining your rating, so encourage satisfied clients to leave a review. These online reviews from past clients allow new clients to see how other people feel about your services before contacting you for their needs.
2. Martindale-Hubbell
Martindale-Hubbell is the most well-known and respected legal directory. It's used to search for legal information and to find a lawyer. Martindale-Hubbel is considered the standard to which other directories have to aspire.
The online reviews are based on a five-point scale and are broken down into various categories:
- Legal Knowledge: An attorney's familiarity with the laws that apply to their field of practice.
- Analytical skills: The ability of a lawyer to think outside the box when analyzing legal matters and apply expert knowledge.
- Judgment: A lawyer's overview of the key elements influencing the outcome of a case
- Communication Skills: The ability of a lawyer to converse persuasively and credibly.
- Legal Experience: The amount of experience a lawyer has in the area of law that they practice in.
How to Increase Your Martindale-Hubbell Law Firm’s Rating
The site features lawyer profiles with contact information.
Clients can leave online reviews based on the scale above depending on their satisfaction with your service. You should direct clients to your profile's ‘Client Reviews' section, where they can click ‘Write a Review.' Clients must choose which practice areas they used your firm for, and they can leave written comments that appear in the review. Following the reviewer's verification, the client review will be posted on Martindale profiles within 24 hours.
Peer reviews are useful for getting a broad perspective on a lawyer's work. Before you go on how to increase your rating, you need to understand how the attorney ratings work:
- (4.5-5.0) AV preeminent rating shows that you are an elite and your peers rank you at the highest level of professional conduct.
- (3.0-4.4) BV Distinguished rating shows excellence amongst your peers.
- (1.0-2.9) Rated is not a bad rating; it shows that you met the criteria of ethical conduct.
To obtain a Martindale peer review rating, follow a few simple steps. These steps will also help to improve your current rating:
1. Contact the customer support team at Martindale to request a rating. Use Martindale's customer service team at ratings@martindale.com or 800-526-4902. You must provide the following information:
- Your given name
- The name of your firm
- Your email
- Status of your subscription
You can obtain a rating without being a subscriber.
2. Collect and submit all of your peer references. Martindale's own peer review ratings and reference nomination tool will be made available to you by the customer support team. The tool requires a minimum of 18 references. Keep in mind that the minimum threshold for an attorney peer review rating is not private. So the more references you have, the better.
3. Get in touch with your references. According to Martindale's research, lawyers are more likely to receive peer review ratings if they inform their references after submitting their list. Martindale allows at least two weeks for references to respond to its inquiries. It will send you status updates as needed.
3. Thumbtack
Thumbtack is one of the popular lawyer review sites that help connect clients with the best possible professionals for their needs. Thumbtack is a directory that gives the opportunity to promote services not only to lawyers, but to other service providers as well. The site boasts almost 5 million user online reviews, including more than 300,000 lawyers. That's not surprising, given that it's free to post your firm on Thumbtack and only costs $250 per hour for a potential client.
Thumbtack is an excellent resource that allows clients to find lawyers by their reviews, price, and other criteria, whether they are looking for legal guidance, advice, or representation.
The attorney reviews are rated on a scale of one to five stars.
How to Optimize Your Thumbtack Profile to Get More Lawyer Reviews
If you have an active Thumbtack profile and are not getting the results you hoped for in terms of client reviews, there are a few tweaks that could improve your performance.
To begin with, be sure to use Thumbtack's built-in online reviews template when asking for feedback from your previous clients so that the review is uniform across the site and it is easier for clients to leave feedback:
- Fill out as much information as possible on your profile page. Make sure your profile has all the pertinent information about your law firm and experience. People want to know who they are hiring for their case and what services you offer. Also, update your profile information at least every three months so that your law firm details are always up-to-date and accurate.
- Use a professional high-quality profile photo, so clients know who they are hiring for the job. Also, update your photos regularly.
- Write a compelling description that describes why people should hire you. You can work with Thumbtack to add tags in the Services section of your profile to related services like a corporate law attorney or criminal defense attorney. This could help attract more lawyer reviews as well! Be sure to include an extensive list of your services and costs for these services so that potential clients know what it will cost them to hire your firm.
- Get customer reviews from people you've worked with. This is the most important part. Ask clients you have previously worked with to leave a review on your profile.
4. FindLaw
FindLaw is one of the best attorney review sites for finding the best attorneys in any field. It's a trusted review site used by both lawyers and law firms. FindLaw allows users to search for attorneys by their names, the legal issue, or through their law firms.
Suppose you're not using FindLaw correctly. You could be missing out on many potential client leads and, even more importantly, reviews that will bring in even more leads.
How to Optimize Your FindLaw Profile to Get More Attorney Reviews
A good FindLaw profile can help you get more client referrals and increase your online presence.
Here are some tips to help you make the most of your FindLaw profile:
- You must check that ratings and reviews are enabled on your profile. Direct your previous clients to the ‘Write a Review' button at the top of your FindLaw profile once you have verified that reviews are enabled so they tell you about their personal experiences.
- Fill out all fields in your profile. If a customer is searching for an attorney and finds an incomplete profile, they might think that an attorney isn't as professional as others and move on to someone else. This could mean losing a potential client for no reason other than not filling out all their required information!
- Be sure your attorney review has an active link to your website or social media pages (if you have them). This will help customers find more information about you and how to contact you if they want to learn more about your services and rates before making an appointment.
- Make sure all information on your profile is up-to-date, including contact information and relevant photos (if applicable).
5. Better Business Bureau
The Better Business Bureau is an American consumer organization that compiles client review ratings of local and national businesses. Founded in 1912, BBB has been around for 100 years and has millions of members across North America. As a result, consumers often use the BBB as a resource to find out how trustworthy businesses are.
The BBB is a good lawyer review site because they maintain a web of trust ratings which can help find a good lawyer. A good BBB rating can significantly improve your lawyer website's SEO, increase your local search rank, and help you attract more clients.
The website has a reliable law firm section that includes reviews, ratings, and rankings with contact information for each firm. This is a great tool for identifying top law firms and deciding which law firm to choose.
How to Increase Your Law Firm’s Better Business Bureau Rating
1. Understand how the BBB ratings work and what they include. A rating system used by the Better Business Bureau is based on 2 key elements:
- How fast the law firm addresses customer complaints
- How fairly a law firm handles clients' complaints
The BBB grades its members from A+ down to F. A+ means a law firm consistently offers excellent customer service and promptly reacts to complaints. C indicates that the law firm's performance in dealing with clients is subpar, D shows that BBB has determined that the firm is not abiding by the law or the BBB Code of Ethics, and so on.
2. Check your law firm's BBB rating regularly. If your legal business is new, check it every few weeks until you have enough data points to get good attorney ratings.
3. Respond promptly when customers file complaints against your company or file a claim with their credit card company because of something that happened at one of your locations.
6. Yelp
Yelp has been around for years and has always been among the most popular review sites. When clients look for a lawyer, they will likely use Yelp to find reviews of the lawyer they are looking for.
How to Optimize Your Yelp Profile to Get a Better Attorney Rating
1. Finish your Yelp attorney profile. Yelp is a major source of information for both clients and lawyers alike. In order to maintain an excellent attorney reputation, creating a complete and informative Yelp business profile is necessary.
Once logged onto the site, creating your own Yelp Business Page for your office is easy and free. The critical parts are your firm's name, address, contact information, working hours, and photos. This information is what other people first see when they search for you on Yelp.
2. Include high-quality images. You should add 4-6 high-quality photos to your Yelp page, including pictures of your office building taken from the outside and inside your office with attorneys working. Your page will look good and attract visitors' eyes if it has high-quality pictures.
3. Connect to your website. Search engine rankings greatly benefit from backlinks to your website. To achieve your law firm's goal, you want visitors from different channels, and Yelp could be one of them. Also, before hiring an attorney, many people prefer to visit a law firm's website to see more information about their service.
4. Keyword concentration. Not only can this help your potential clients find your law firm, but it can also help your lawyer rating by including keywords that fit with the Yelp community. You may want to ensure it is optimized with the correct keywords to help boost your attorney rating. Here are some examples of keywords to use in your profile:
- Legal Consultants
- Criminal Defense Attorney
- DUI Attorney
- Family Law Attorney
- Personal Injury Attorney
5. Request client feedback. Yelp ratings can make or break a law firm. A low rating can scare prospective clients away, but with a high Yelp rating comes more clientele. You should seek feedback from your clients after their cases are settled or the last court date has passed. Asking for feedback will help your online reputation and allow you to pinpoint where your services need improvement. Remember encouraging reviews is essential, but soliciting reviews on Yelp is against their terms.
7. Facebook
Facebook has more than 2.5 billion users worldwide and is one of the most common ways people find new law firms and services. You can use it for targeted marketing ads of your services, getting leads, and even helping you reach out to your clients. It is no surprise many firms are opting for Facebook.
How to Optimize Facebook to Have a Better Attorney Rating
For starters, create an account on Facebook Business Manager and verify your business page with a phone number or email address associated with your firm. This will give you access to analytics data about your page, such as how many people have viewed it and what they've clicked on.
Then, follow these tips to make sure that when people search for lawyers on Facebook, they find yours:
1. Post regularly on your page. More posts mean more activity for the page and a higher likelihood of visitors seeing what your law firm offers. This is an excellent way to stay in touch with your followers and encourage them to leave a review for your law firm. It also makes it easy for potential clients to find you online.
2. Post content at the right time. While every day is an opportunity to market your law firm, some days are better than others. There are several days that are better for Facebook posts than others. To optimize your Facebook marketing efforts and get better attorney reviews, it's important to understand when your audience is online and what their behavior looks like at those times.
3. Share quality content that will engage your audience and keep them coming back for more. Here are some ideas for posts and articles that will grab their attention and make them want to come back:
- Share relevant articles that cover legal topics your audience is interested in
- Post a video of yourself speaking at a conference
- Invite a famous lawyer or judge to answer frequently asked questions
- Offer a monthly giveaway or contest to give your followers something to do
Each of these different posts can be engaging for readers and would encourage them to leave positive client review ratings.
4. Add a call-to-action at the end of each post so users know how they can contact or interact with you online. This is simple, add a link on your page to what you want visitors to do.
8. Google Reviews
Google Reviews is a public feedback-based review site. It is the most popular for online reviews, so it's crucial you have a good rating there. When someone searches for you or your law office on Google, Google Reviews are typically the first result they see. When law firms use Google Reviews, a client can share their experiences with different lawyers and provide feedback.
How to Get More Google Reviews for Your Law Firm
If you want to find more reviews, they appear in Google Search or Maps next to your Business Profile.
1. Getting many law firm reviews on Google can be tough, but you can take a few steps to help make it easier. First and foremost, always send a follow-up email with a link to your Google Business Profile and a request for feedback after meeting with a client or customer.
Here are some tips for the follow-up email to optimize google lawyer reviews:
- Use a subject line that is catchy and compelling enough to make them open it.
- In the body of the email, thank them for their patronization and include a link to your Google Business Profile where they can leave feedback.
- Ask for feedback and give them a chance to tell you about their experience at your law firm.
- Conclude by telling them to refer your law firm to others in case they know anyone who needs legal representation.
2. Create a review collection system. Google lawyer reviews are a great way to get more clients in the door and attract potential customers to your law firm. They can be powerful marketing tools that showcase your expertise and allow your satisfied clients to share their experiences with others. However, managing client reviews can be challenging if you don't have a system for collecting them. If you are looking to gather more Google lawyer reviews for your law firm, then we recommend starting with a review collection system.
3. Automate CRM or law practice software to send review requests. You can do this by integrating your CRM or law practice software which allows you to automatically send out requests for Google reviews when someone visits your website.
Requesting reviews helps you get more online reviews from people who could help new clients locate you and increase your visibility on Google Search.
9. Justia
Justia has been in the legal community for 19 years and has a comprehensive database of lawyers, their credentials, and details about the services they offer. It is one of the most popular lawyer review sites, with an extensive list of attorneys in communities across the U.S. Justia also provides an online directory that lists all the attorneys in each state, their areas of practice, and their email addresses so that clients can contact them directly if they want to schedule an appointment or ask questions about their services.
Justia is a service that enables clients to quickly and easily compare lawyers. They'll be able to see lawyers' profiles, badges, credentials, and more to decide which lawyer is best for their needs.
How to Increase Your Attorney Justia Rating
As with any review site, there are a lot of factors that go into how your profile will rank on Justia. Here are some tips for improving your Justia client review ratings:
1. Make sure all information in your profile is current and accurate. Fill out as much information as possible on your attorney profile. These include an attorney's bio, practice areas, costs, jurisdiction, location, work history, associations, and publications.
In addition to assisting potential clients in making their decision, your profile may also make peers and associates more inclined to give you a positive rating. This takes us to the next point.
2. Have your peers review your profile. Refer them to the “Review This Lawyer” section of your profile. On Justia, outstanding lawyers occasionally have a low rating for a specific area. This is why a word or two from your peer can go a long way.
10. Super Lawyers
Super Lawyers is one of the top lawyer review sites in the United States. It was founded in 1991 and continues to be one of the most heavily relied on by lawyers and firms. In order to rate a lawyer on the site, you must either have been a client of the lawyer, a peer of the lawyer, or a former employer of the lawyer. As a result, it features a ‘Super Lawyers Magazine.' This is a magazine that is published once a year and is delivered to law firms. The magazine highlights various aspects of lawyer ratings and reviews.
How to Increase Your Lawyer Rating via Super Lawyers
Super Lawyers is a comprehensive rating system that rates attorneys across the country in more than 70 areas of law and every state and territory in the United States. Lawyers are rated by Super Lawyers annually and are calculated using 12 indicators of peer recognition and professional achievement.
Peer recognition is broken down into three categories:
- The lawyer's professional experience
- The lawyer's education and training
- The lawyer's record of professionalism
Each category is then assigned a weighting factor multiplied by the number of points the lawyer has in each category. The results are added together to create an overall rating score.
The process for becoming a Super Lawyers is divided into the:
- Candidate nomination. Attorneys can join the candidate pool by being officially nominated by a colleague or the research department while conducting the research.
- Super Lawyers' research is done independently. The research department assesses candidates using the 12 indicators mentioned above.
- Practice area-specific peer evaluation. An invitation to serve on a blue ribbon panel is extended to the candidates in each practice area with the highest combined point totals from numbers 1 and 2. The candidates are then listed for the panelists to review and rate on a scale of 1-5 according to their areas of expertise.
- The final selection. Four categories of firm sizes are used to group candidates. The participants with the highest point totals across all categories are chosen. Super Lawyers choose 5% of the state's total attorneys for involvement.
How Can Popular Lawyer Review Sites Impact Your Law Firm's Reputation and Business Success
A lawyer review site can significantly impact your law firm's reputation and business success. Positive reviews can:
- Improve online visibility for your law firm website: The more positive reviews you have, the higher will be your SERP ranking will be.
- Influence on decision-making: Just like any other business, law firms greatly rely on online reviews to build credibility. Consumers rely on these reviews to evaluate the quality and reliability of legal services.
- Generate more leads: As positive reviews impact your search engine rankings in a good way, your website is more likely to be seen by potential clients.
- Stand out in the competition: Positive reviews on a lawyer review site make your law firm look good amongst competitors. The more reviews a law firm has, the more trustworthy and established they appear to potential clients.
- Build trust and credibility: This speaks for itself- positive reviews can increase trust with prospects.
Consumers overwhelmingly prioritize law firms with review scores of 4 or 5 stars. This indicates the importance of maintaining a positive reputation on review sites. To benefit from positive reviews on attorney review sites, encourage clients to leave feedback. Let's explore tips for getting online reviews on lawyer review sites.
How to Get Online Reviews on a Lawyer Review Site
Google reviews impact local search, though less than distance. Still, proactively ask clients for reviews (provide a direct link to simplify the process!). Always respond professionally, as Google highlights review words that match user searches. While you can't control reviews, your responsiveness demonstrates professionalism.
It can seem daunting to solicit reviews at first. Following these steps can make the process seamless for you and your clients.
- Mention reviews at the beginning and end of providing legal services
- Follow the rules of each review platform
- Consider using a review management tool
- Provide customers with a list of review sites
While reviews are exceptionally helpful, customer testimonial videos are even more valuable. If you have extremely satisfied clients, ask if they would consider offering a brief testimonial on camera.
Check the ABA Rules on Attorney Ratings Reviews
The American Bar Association (ABA) issued rules to increase lawyer ratings' transparency.
The ABA ethics rules outline the obligations that lawyers must uphold in the face of negative reviews and criticism. According to the American Bar Association, lawyers cannot respond to users when there is a negative review.
This is because a response could draw attention to the post and enrage the reviewer even more. Instead, you can request that the comment be removed from the website if it was made by someone who wasn't a client. But if it is a previous client you worked with, try to resolve the issue. You can do so in person or over the phone.
And if you want to ask for reviews? The 2018 ABA update includes specific statements in Rule 7.2-Communications Concerning a Lawyer's Services: Specific Rules. These statements limit what you can do to exercise due diligence when requesting a review:
- Never provide a reward—like cash, gift cards, or discounts—in exchange for reviews. A conflict of interest might result from this.
- Don't request reviews while your case is still pending; wait until it has been resolved.
- Do not put pressure on them by setting a deadline.
- Fake reviews are unethical and potentially damaging to a law firm's reputation.
See Which Lawyer Review Sites Actually Important to You
To identify review sites and websites that are important for your practice, conduct two separate searches on Google. First, search for your practice name and create a list of the sites on page one that allow reviews. This will likely include platforms like Google+ Local, Avvo, Yelp, and social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.
Second, search for your keywords and make another list of the review sites that appear on page one. This will help you to prioritize which sites to claim your profile on.
Incorporate Lawyer Review Sites into Your Regular Routine
Incorporating lawyer review sites into your regular routine can help your law firm look good in a highly competitive market. Here's how to do it:
- Check lawyer review sites daily: Make it a daily habit to check your profiles on lawyer review sites.
- Request reviews from satisfied clients: Reach out to happy clients and ask them to leave a review on your lawyer review site profiles.
- Make the Review Process Easy: Provide instructions on how potential clients can leave a review on your website or social media account so they don't have to go through multiple steps.
- Respond to reviews: Responding to both positive and negative reviews demonstrates that you care about your clients' feedback and are committed to improving their experience.
- Keep your profile updated: Ensure that your profiles on lawyer review sites are updated with current information and recent cases. This can help you appear current and relevant to potential clients.
Attorney Review Sites: Key to Building Your Law Firm's Reputation
It is no secret that lawyers are always in high demand, so we highlighted the top lawyer review sites in 2024 to make it easy for you.
There are tons of lawyer review sites out there for evaluating attorneys. Not only will these online reviews help clients better understand the strengths and weaknesses of each lawyer, but they're a great advertising and trust-building method.
If getting your firm on so many sites feels overwhelming or you're just not seeing results from your efforts, you should opt for a professional legal digital marketing agency. An attorney SEO agency like Grow Law Firm will help you optimize your law firm, measure the necessary data, and design or redesign your website to get more revenue and increase your firm's profit.
Get a clear picture of your firm's performance- Boost your online presence
Get a clear picture of your firm's performance- Boost your online presence
.webp)
.webp)
.webp)
.webp)
.webp)
