Review Management for Law Firms

People often check reviews before they pick up the phone. In BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, 97% of consumers said they read online reviews when choosing a local business, and 41% said they always do. Nearly half (47%) said they would not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74% look for reviews written in the last three months.

Those figures describe legal consumers in general. They do not show that reviews produce a set number of calls, cases, clients, or revenue for any one firm, and no honest service can promise that. What reviews do is answer practical questions a prospective client has about communication, responsiveness, and what working with the firm feels like.

Referrals still matter. A referral often sends someone to a firm's website and Google profile before the first call, and a clear, credible public profile gives that person something to confirm. Review management supports a referral; it does not replace one.

Google's Maps user-generated content policy asks that reviews reflect genuine experiences and be "genuine and unbiased." A firm may invite clients to share their experience, as long as the invitation carries no incentive or pressure and does not ask for a positive rating or specific content. Google prohibits:

• Paid reviews, or reviews exchanged for benefits.
• Reviews from employees, former employees, contractors, consultants, competitors, family members, or other conflicted reviewers.
• Review gating, which means asking only satisfied clients to review or discouraging negative reviews.
• Incentives for posting, changing, or removing a review.
• Asking for a particular rating or specific wording.
• Reviews created from multiple accounts or at one person's direction.
• Fake, misleading, copied, defamatory, or irrelevant reviews.

Review gating deserves a closer look because it can happen by accident. A setup that sends happy clients to Google and sends unhappy clients to a private survey selectively solicits positive reviews, which Google's policy prohibits. A compliant request goes to every eligible client, controls neither the rating nor the destination, and leaves the client free to say what they think.

The FTC adds a federal layer. Its Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule was published August 14, 2024, and took effect October 21, 2024. It bans fake or false reviews and testimonials, including reviews from people who do not exist or who had no real experience. It also bans buying reviews that are conditioned on a positive or negative sentiment, and it covers undisclosed insider reviews, company-controlled sites falsely presented as independent, and certain deceptive review suppression. According to the FTC's questions and answers, review-management companies can also be liable for creating or selling prohibited reviews. An unconditional incentive is not automatically banned under the rule, but it may require disclosure and can still be deceptive if it distorts the overall rating. Google's policy is stricter, so for Google reviews the answer is simple: no incentives.

A negative review is where a firm is most likely to say too much. ABA Formal Opinion 496, issued January 13, 2021, concludes that online criticism from a current or former client does not give a lawyer implied authorization to disclose confidential information. A public reply is not necessary to carry out the representation, and a lawyer may not reveal information about the representation just to rebut the criticism.

The opinion leaves a lawyer four practical options:

• Do not respond.
• Ask the platform to remove the review if it violates platform policy.
• Invite the reviewer to communicate privately.
• Post a restrained statement that professional obligations prevent a detailed response.

A reply should not confirm that the reviewer was a client, identify the matter, discuss fees, reveal procedural facts, disclose documents, argue about the result, or imply facts that confirm a representation.

In Texas, Opinion 662 of the State Bar of Texas, issued in August 2016, reaches the same place under Rule 1.05. It says a lawyer may not reveal confidential information merely to respond to a former client's negative review on the internet, and it permits a response only if it is "proportional and restrained" and reveals nothing confidential. This is ethics guidance, not legal advice, so your firm's own lawyer should approve the reply policy and any individual reply that could touch a client or a matter.

A negative review also cannot be removed on request. Removal depends on whether the content violates the platform's policy, and a truthful negative review may stay. The workable response is a restrained public reply, a private route for the reviewer to reach the firm, and an internal look at any complaint that keeps recurring.

A Google review that a client writes on their own is one thing. A review your firm selects, edits, or republishes in its own marketing is another, and that can become advertising under Part VII of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct. Texas lawyers may use testimonials and reviews in advertising, but the communication must comply with the Part VII rules.

Rule 7.01 prohibits false or misleading communications about a lawyer or firm. A communication can be misleading if it contains a material misrepresentation, leaves out a fact needed to avoid misleading the reader, creates an unjustified expectation about results, or makes an unsubstantiated comparison. The State Bar's interpretive comment on client testimonials says a person who appears or speaks as a client in a public media advertisement must be an actual client of the lawyer or firm being advertised.

Rule 7.04 generally requires filing an advertisement with the Texas Advertising Review Committee no later than 10 days after it is disseminated, unless an exemption applies. Rule 7.05 exempts certain materials, including most information and links on a law-firm website other than the homepage, but exempt material must still comply with Rules 7.01, 7.02, and 7.03. The State Bar's Advertising Review page lists a $100 application fee; confirm current fees and procedures before filing.

In practice, that means a firm should:

• Get permission before republishing a review on its website, in advertisements, or on social media.
• Preserve the reviewer's meaning when quoting.
• Avoid presenting a testimonial as a sign that another client can expect the same result.
• Have its lawyer decide whether a website page, video, testimonial, or other advertising material needs filing or preapproval.

The American Bar Association's Model Rules take a similar approach. Model Rule 7.1 bars false or misleading communications about a lawyer's services, and Comment [3] to Rule 7.2 separates paying for marketing from paying for a recommendation. A flat monthly fee for review management is a different arrangement from paying per lead, per case, or for a referral. State rules can differ from the Model Rules, and the firm's lawyer remains responsible for compliance.

Counselado does the day-to-day work of a review process and routes anything sensitive to a named person at your firm. The work includes:

• Auditing the firm's public profiles and review links.
• Configuring a Google review link.
• Drafting request emails or texts.
• Building approved workflows connected to Clio, Lawmatics, or another system your firm already uses.
• Creating matter-exclusion fields and suppression rules.
• Monitoring incoming reviews and sending alerts.
• Preparing restrained reply drafts and routing them to a named lawyer or staff approver.
• Reporting policy-violating reviews through the platform's own process.
• Formatting approved reviews for display on the firm's website.
• Keeping English and Spanish templates.
• Sending a monthly report showing review count, rating, response time, request volume, and unresolved issues.
• Training staff on the request and reply policy.

Some things stay with your firm. We do not decide that a client is satisfied, reveal matter information, alter a client's words, publish a testimonial without permission, or publish a reply that could implicate confidentiality or advertising rules without the firm's approval.

A smooth start depends on a few decisions that only your firm can make. Plan to provide:

• The correct firm name, address, phone number, website, service areas, office hours, and Google Business Profile access.
• A list of locations and practice areas.
• A matter-status rule that says when a review request may be sent.
• Exclusions for confidential, sensitive, disputed, represented, or otherwise unsuitable matters.
• A list of staff who may draft, approve, and publish.
• Approved language in English and Spanish where needed.
• A policy against incentives, review gating, requested star ratings, and requested wording.
• A reply policy for positive, neutral, negative, irrelevant, fake, defamatory, and threatening reviews.
• A private escalation route for complaints.
• Consent procedures for republishing reviews on the firm's website or in advertisements.
• Access to your practice-management or CRM system, if an integration is used.
• A record-retention and access policy for client contact information.
• Your lawyer's decision on whether website, video, testimonial, or advertising materials need Texas filing or preapproval.

Practice area changes the details. A personal injury firm needs careful handling of settlement, medical, and outcome information. A family-law firm needs stronger exclusions for children, custody, domestic abuse, and other sensitive family facts. A criminal-defense firm should be cautious about charges, dispositions, and identifying details. An immigration firm often needs bilingual workflows and protection of status, nationality, and family information. An estate-planning firm may time a request to a completed set of documents, and a business-law firm needs confidentiality protections for companies, disputes, and transactions.

A review process can be run by hand with a spreadsheet, an email template, a Google review link, and a named approver. A paid service adds automation, monitoring, reporting, integrations, and saved staff time. The sensible comparison is the monthly cost against the work your firm needs done.

Counselado prices are flat fees, never per lead, per case, or per referral:

• Reviews, starting at $99 a month: a review request routine, replies to every Google review, and a monthly report.
• Reviews Plus, starting at $199 a month: adds Yelp, Facebook, and Nextdoor replies, policy disputes, and a quarterly citation check.
• Citation and review cleanup, starting at $150 one time: included with either monthly plan.
• Google review replies are already part of the Google Business Profile plan, starting at $149 a month.

Whatever service you choose, ask about annual commitments, automatic renewal, setup fees, per-location charges, message charges, cancellation, and data export before you sign. Your firm should own or control its Google Business Profile, website, review links, templates, reporting data, and client-contact records, and no vendor should be the only administrator. The agreement should say who owns drafts, contact lists, review content, accounts, and website embeds.

The results of review management are operational, and the report should show them that way: how many requests went out, how many reviews came in, how fast replies were posted, and what is still unresolved. The report should separate those activity measures from business outcomes.

Google's tips on local ranking confirm that reviews and positive ratings are among the signals that can affect local prominence. The same page says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. For that reason we describe outcomes in terms you can see, such as fewer improvised public replies, faster awareness of new reviews, a clear answer to who approves a reply, and a visible record of requests and exclusions.

To ask about review management, use the contact form and choose "Something else" as the topic, or start from the For law firms page. You can also read how directory listings work on the pages for claiming your listing, adding your firm, and plans and pricing. See our attorney advertising notice and disclaimer for more.