Your data: what we store and who can see it

This article explains what VerifiedLawFirms stores about firm owners and site visitors, and who can see each piece of data. We keep it plain so you know exactly what is private, what is public, and where to send a request if you want your data changed or removed. Read this whether you run a firm listing or you are a member of the public checking a firm before you call.

The short version: verification documents you upload stay with our editorial team and never appear on your public profile. The public only sees a summary of each check. Contact with a firm happens directly, so we do not store or route the messages you send. Reviews go through email confirmation and an editor before they publish. Below we break each of these down.

What the editorial team stores privately

Verification on this site is manual. After you register and claim or create a firm listing, you upload proof for each verification check inside the /account workspace. An editor reviews each check on its own and approves it individually. The proof you submit is the private part.

Those uploaded documents stay with the editorial team. They are not shown on your profile. They are not shown to other firm owners. They are not shown to the public. A visitor reading your page cannot see the file you sent to prove your bar standing or your business address. They see only the outcome of the review.

This matters because verification often involves sensitive paperwork. You might upload a bar certificate, a utility record for an address, or a document that proves you control the firm. Those files are handled by editors for the purpose of reviewing your verification checks. They are not published.

What the public Verification tab actually shows

Every firm page has a Verification tab. Its document rows are the public-facing result of the private review described above; the contact rows are computed automatically from the listing's own details. For each row, the tab shows four things and nothing more:

• The check name, so you know what was verified.
• A plain-English description of what the check means.
• The status, so you can see whether it passed.
• The last-checked date, so you know how fresh the result is.

That is the whole public record for a check. For document checks, the underlying evidence stays behind the scenes. A reader gets a clear answer about what was confirmed and when, without seeing the private files that produced the answer.

Some checks are refreshed on a schedule. Passed bar-standing checks are rechecked every quarter by editors against state bar rolls, and a disbarment suspends the published profile automatically. The last-checked date on the Verification tab tells you when that review last ran, so an old date is a signal to look closer.

The docket-verified check

One check is Premium only. Docket-verified practice is sourced from CourtListener court records and confirmed by an editor. It draws on public court data, and an editor confirms the match before it publishes. As with every other check, the public sees the name, the description, the status, and the date. Premium profiles are suspendable on disbarment or on loss of docket verification, and that suspension happens without a refund.

Payment never changes what is verified

People sometimes assume that paying for a plan turns on a badge. It does not. Payment never auto-verifies a firm and never grants badges. Verification is a separate editorial process based on evidence.

Plan tier affects where a listing appears in a results page, and the site says so openly. Listings pages carry the line: "Ordered by membership tier; verification is independent of tier." Placement runs Premium first, then Pro, then Basic, and within each tier by validated-review rating. That is an ordering rule. It is not a statement about whether a firm passed its checks. A Basic listing can carry the same verified checks as a higher-tier one.

The plans themselves are simple. Verified Basic is $99 per year. Verified Pro is $199 one-time and includes a richer profile, eligibility to buy News items, and a dofollow website link once the listing is published and claimed. Verified Premium is $339 one-time for lifetime access and adds the docket-verified check and deep links on top of the Pro features. News items cost $75 each and are open to Pro and Premium plans only.

How you contact a firm

You reach a firm directly. Each firm page has a Contact tab with the firm's own website, phone, and address, plus a map when we have the location. You use those details to call, email, or visit.

Because contact is direct, the directory does not store a message for you or pass one along on your behalf. There is no contact form that files an inquiry with us, and there is nothing for us to route. You pick the firm and reach out yourself. The directory does not match you to a firm, does not recommend one, and does not refer you anywhere. It is not a referral service, and nothing on the site is legal advice.

What a review stores

Reviews carry weight, so the process is stricter than a plain comment box. When you submit a review, you give a rating and text, pick the matter type and roughly when the firm was engaged, attest that you were a client, and enter an email address. We send a confirmation link to that address, and the review does not appear until you click it.

After you confirm, the review sits pending until an editor approves it. Only approved reviews publish, and only approved reviews count toward a firm's rating. A review that is never confirmed, or that fails the editorial check, does not go live and does not affect the number shown on the profile. Your email address is kept private to the editorial team, and it is never shown on the public profile or handed to the firm. This is also why review rating can influence placement within a tier: the ratings that feed placement come from reviews an editor already validated.

Owners are not silent in this. If you own a firm, you can respond to published reviews from your account. Your response is tied to your owner account and appears with the review it answers.

Accounts, sign-in, and two-factor

Owner accounts use an email address and a password. You can add TOTP two-factor authentication with an authenticator app. When you turn it on, you confirm with a code from the app, and you must confirm your password to enable or disable the feature. The same password confirmation applies when you switch it off, so someone who finds an open session cannot quietly remove your second factor.

Two-factor is optional. We recommend it because your account controls your public profile, your responses to reviews, and your verification uploads.

Claiming a listing

If your firm already appears in the directory, you can claim the existing listing from the firm page by choosing a plan and paying — that payment is the claim, and it grants you owner access right away. Claiming is separate from verification: paying does not by itself pass any verification check, and changes to key details are held for editorial review before they take effect.

How profile edits are stored

Some fields are treated with extra care. Critical fields, which are the firm name, address, website, and practice areas, are held as pending changes. They are applied on the next editorial publish. Until then, the live profile keeps the last approved values. So when you move offices and edit the address, the public keeps seeing the old confirmed address until an editor publishes the change. Smaller fields, like your phone number or hours, publish right away. This keeps the details people most rely on stable and stops a bad edit from going straight to the live page.

Cookies and session basics

The site uses a session so that signed-in owners stay signed in while they move around the /account workspace and their firm pages. A session is what remembers that you logged in. Without it you would have to sign in on every page.

Two-factor, when you enable it, adds a code step at sign-in on top of your password. Visitors who only browse the directory, read the blog at /blog, or look through the practice-area hubs and state hubs do not need an account and are not signing in. Contacting a firm needs no account either, since you use the firm's own details on its Contact tab.

Where the data lives across the site

The directory is more than firm pages. It has practice-area hubs, with 24 root areas and 102 subcategories, and state hubs covering all 51. There is a court directory, a resources area, studies, a blog, and this help centre. Most of these are public reference pages and do not store personal data about you. The parts that hold data about a specific person are the owner account, the verification workspace, and the review records. Everything in this article is about those parts.

Where to send privacy requests

If you want to ask about the data tied to your account or your firm, use the account and workspace tools first. Owners manage profile edits, review responses, and verification uploads from /account. Pending edits and check statuses are visible there.

For requests that go beyond what the workspace handles, direct them to the editorial team through the contact route in this help centre. Because verification documents are held privately by editors, questions about those files are an editorial matter, and the editorial team is the right place to raise them. When you write in, name your firm and the account email you use so an editor can match your request to the right records.

Two facts are worth repeating before you go. Payment does not verify a firm and does not grant a badge; verification is an evidence-based editorial decision that runs on its own track. And the directory does not route leads or refer clients; a visitor always chooses the firm and contacts it directly. If you keep those two points in mind, the rest of the data picture on this site is easy to read.