I need more reviews
The firm does good work and the clients say so, in person, in cards, in emails to the partner. Online there are eleven reviews, three of them from 2019, one of them a one-star from someone who was never a client. The firm down the road has two hundred. This page is how a law firm earns reviews at a steady rate, legally and without embarrassing anyone, and what to do with them once they exist.
A firm that concludes forty matters a month and asks nobody gets two reviews a year. A firm that asks everyone, at the right moment, in the right way, gets eight a month. The work is the same; the asking is the difference.
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Why a law firm’s reviews matter more than most
A solicitor is chosen under stress, for a matter the client has never faced, from a list of firms that all look the same. Reviews are the only evidence most clients have that the firm will treat them well. They carry three jobs at once.
For any local legal search, the three firms in the map box above the ordinary results are chosen partly on review count, rating and recency. A firm with eleven reviews is not going to appear there against one with two hundred, however good its website. In a new town or for a new practice area, the review count is the ranking.
The star rating and the count show next to the firm’s name in search results and on the map. A 4.9 with 180 reviews gets the call; a 4.2 with 11 gets skipped. Clients do not read all of them; they read the number, the most recent three, and the worst one, and how the firm replied to it.
Reviews that mention the matter, the solicitor’s name and what it was like to be a client are the proof the website cannot provide on its own. A review that says “Sarah handled my settlement agreement in three days” does more for the employment page than anything the firm could write about itself.
The moment to ask
Timing matters more than wording. The same request made at four points in a matter gets four very different response rates, and most firms ask at the worst one, or never.
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Weeks after closing
Where most firms ask
The matter has faded, the relief has passed, and the request arrives from an address the client does not recognise. Response rates in the low single figures, and the reviews that do come are short.
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The good news
The best moment
The settlement is agreed, the house has completed, the probate is granted, the charge is dropped. The client is grateful and thinks the solicitor did it. Asked then, in person or by phone, by the solicitor, most clients say yes and many do it the same day.
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The final bill
The worst moment
A request stapled to an invoice reads as a trade and lands when the client is least warm. Separate the two by at least a week, and ask before the bill, not after it.
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The follow-up call
The second chance
A call two weeks after the matter closes, to check everything is in order, is good client care in itself. Ending it with “would you be willing to leave us a review?” catches the people who meant to and forgot.
Who asks, and how
The solicitor asks, because the client’s relationship is with them, not the firm. A request from marketing or from a no-reply address gets a fraction of the response. The ask is verbal first, at the good-news moment, and a message with the link follows within the hour while the conversation is still warm.
The link goes straight to the review form for the right profile: the office the client dealt with, not head office. One link, one tap, no account to create beyond the Google one most people have. The message is short, from the solicitor’s own email or the firm’s SMS, and says what to write about if the client is stuck, without telling them what to say.
Then the firm tracks it. Who was asked, by whom, when, and whether a review appeared. Reviews per fee earner per month, in the same monthly report as enquiries and files. What gets measured gets asked for; what does not gets forgotten by the second week.
A message that works
SubjectA small favour, if you have two minutes
BodyDear Joanne, I’m glad we got the agreement signed in time. If you were happy with how we handled it, would you be willing to leave a short review? It helps other people in your position find us. This link takes you straight to the form: [link]. A sentence or two about what the matter was and how you found working with us is all that’s needed. Thank you again, and do get in touch if anything comes up. Sarah
What makes it workFrom the solicitor, the day the good news lands, one link, a reason that is about other clients rather than the firm, and no instruction about stars or words.
The firms with two hundred reviews did not get lucky. Somebody decided that asking was part of closing a file, wrote it into the process, and counted it every month.
The rules, which have teeth now
Since April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has made publishing or commissioning fake reviews, and publishing reviews without taking reasonable steps to detect fakes, a breach the CMA can fine directly. The SRA’s Code of Conduct requires publicity to be accurate and not misleading. Google’s own policies remove reviews that breach them and can suspend the profile. The things firms were quietly doing five years ago are now reportable.
- ✓Asking every client, verbally and by message, with a direct link
- ✓Suggesting what to write about: the matter, the solicitor, the experience
- ✓Replying to every review, positive and negative
- ✓Showing Google reviews on the website, unedited, with the source
- ✓Reporting reviews that breach Google’s policies, such as those from people who were never clients
- ✓Asking clients who have complained, once the complaint is resolved
- ✕Paying, discounting, entering into a prize draw, or any incentive for a review
- ✕Writing reviews in-house, or asking staff, family or suppliers to
- ✕Buying reviews, however the seller describes them
- ✕Asking only the clients likely to be positive; the CMA calls this cherry-picking
- ✕Screening clients through a “were you happy?” form before showing the link
- ✕Showing only the five-star reviews on the website as if they were all of them
- ✕Revealing anything about a client’s matter in a reply, even to defend the firm
Replying, especially to the bad ones
Prospective clients read the worst review and the firm’s reply to it before they read anything else. A good reply to a bad review is worth more than three more good reviews. A defensive one, or silence, is the thing that loses the instruction.
Reply within a few days, briefly, by name, from the firm. Thank them, mention the solicitor, and do not add anything about the matter the client did not say themselves. Every reply is the firm’s publicity and is read by strangers.
“Thank you, Joanne. Sarah and the team were glad to help, and we’re pleased it was resolved in time.”
Reply once, calmly, within a day. Acknowledge, do not argue, do not disclose. Confidentiality under paragraph 6.3 survives a public complaint: the firm cannot explain what happened, even if the review is unfair. Offer a route to resolve it privately, with a name.
“We’re sorry to read this. We can’t discuss any client’s matter publicly, but we’d like to put things right. Please contact [name], our client care partner, on [number] and she will look into it personally.”
Check the records. If there is no matter, reply saying so without hostility, and report the review to Google under its policies for removal. Do not accuse; a reply that reads as an attack loses even when the firm is right.
“We take every review seriously, but we have no record of acting for anyone of this name. If you believe this is an error, please contact [name] so we can look into it.”
Where the reviews should live
Google first, because it is what decides the map results and shows next to the firm’s name. Everything else is secondary and should only be pursued once Google is flowing. For consumer matters, ReviewSolicitors and Trustpilot are read by some clients and worth a presence; for commercial work, LinkedIn recommendations and written testimonials the firm can quote on the site carry more weight than any platform.
On the website, the reviews should appear where they do work: next to the solicitor on their profile, on the matter page they are about, and on the office page for the office concerned. A reviews page nobody visits does less than three relevant reviews on the page a client is reading. Show them unedited, with the platform and the date, and show the overall rating truthfully; the DMCC Act applies to how reviews are displayed as well as how they are obtained.
And use them in the writing. A review that says what the client was worried about and how it turned out is the raw material for a case study, a first paragraph, a line in an ad. Ask the client before quoting them anywhere other than where they wrote it.
- Owner
- One person, usually practice management, who counts and chases
- Trigger
- The good-news moment on every file, written into the closing checklist
- Asker
- The fee earner, verbally, then by message within the hour
- Link
- Direct to the right profile’s review form; one per office
- Follow-up
- Mentioned again on the two-week client care call
- Reply
- Every review answered within three working days
- Measure
- Reviews per fee earner per month in the monthly report
- Target
- One review for every five concluded matters, rising to one in three
Questions firms ask about reviews
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Our clients are private people. Will they really leave reviews?
More than you expect, if asked personally at the right moment, and if the message says they need not name the matter. Family and criminal clients review less often than conveyancing clients, and some never will; a steady one in five across the firm is achievable in most practices.
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Can we ask for reviews from clients whose matters we lost?
Yes, and you should ask everyone, because selecting only the winners is the cherry-picking the CMA objects to. Clients who lost but felt well looked after often write the most persuasive reviews of all, because they are about the service rather than the result.
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A competitor has three hundred reviews that all appeared in two months. Can we do that?
No. That pattern is usually bought, and Google’s detection is getting better at removing them, sometimes along with the profile. The firm can report it. Your own count should rise steadily; a sudden spike from a genuine process is rare and looks the same to Google as a bought one.
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Should we use a reviews platform or software?
Tools that send the link and track responses are useful once the process exists; they do not create the process. Avoid any tool that screens clients by satisfaction before showing the link, which the CMA has named as a practice it will act against.
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What about a one-star review that is clearly malicious?
Reply once as above, report it to Google with the evidence, and move on. One bad review among a hundred good ones is normal and prospective clients know it. One bad review among eleven is the problem, and the fix is the other ninety, not the one.
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What would you actually do for us here?
Set the process up: the trigger in the closing checklist, the message templates, the links per office, the tracking, the reply guidance, and the monthly count. Then check it is happening. It is a few weeks of work followed by a line in a report, and it is usually the cheapest improvement to a firm’s local visibility we can make.
Set up the asking process
Tell us how many matters the firm concludes a month and how many reviews it has. We will come back with what the count should be in six months, the process to get there, and the templates for the fee earners.
- A short conversation about the firm’s matters, offices and current reviews.
- A written process: trigger, asker, message, links, replies, measurement.
- A check at three months that it is running, and the count that proves it.