Responding to reviews as a firm

A published review is a fact of your firm's public profile. You cannot delete it, and you cannot edit what a client wrote. You can reply. A response you submit enters editorial review and, once approved, sits underneath the review on your live listing, so it reaches the same readers who saw the original. This article explains where the response tool lives, how to write a reply that helps you, and the two rules that constrain lawyers more than most other business owners: confidentiality and bar advertising. It also covers what to do when you think a review should never have been approved, and what our editors will and will not do once a review is live.

Where responses live in your account

Owner responses are written from your account workspace at /account, not from the public firm page. You need to be signed in to the owner account that controls the listing. If you have not claimed the listing yet, do that first. Claiming means choosing a plan and paying, and is separate from any plan upgrade, and it is separate from verification. You claim an existing listing from the firm page by choosing a plan and paying; the payment grants you owner access right away.

Once you are signed in, open the reviews area of your account. Each published review shows the reviewer's submission, the date it went live, and a field where you can write your reply. Only approved reviews appear here and count toward your rating. Saving a new or edited reply sends it to the editorial queue; it remains private until an editor approves it. A review that a client submitted but an editor has not yet approved is not public, so there is nothing to respond to while it sits pending.

Protect the account itself before you rely on it. Owner accounts use an email address and a password. You can turn on two-factor authentication with an authenticator app. You confirm the setup with a code, and you have to enter your password to switch two-factor on or off. A response posted from your account carries your firm's name in public, so treat access to that account the way you treat access to your letterhead.

What a good response does

A useful reply has a narrow job. It shows future readers that the firm pays attention and behaves like a professional when someone is unhappy. Most people who read reviews already expect a few critical ones. What they watch for is how you handle them.

Acknowledge the person

Open by recognising that the reviewer took the time to write. You can thank them for the feedback even when you disagree with it. A calm first line sets the tone for everything that follows and signals to a reader that you are not rattled by criticism. Short sentences work well here.

Add context without arguing

You can describe how your firm generally works. You can explain a policy, a typical timeline, or the way you handle billing questions in the abstract. This gives a reader a fuller picture without turning the reply into a fight. Keep the focus on your process rather than on proving the reviewer wrong. A response that reads like a rebuttal tends to make the firm look worse than the original complaint did.

Stay professional and brief

Write the reply you would be comfortable reading aloud in a courtroom. Avoid sarcasm. Avoid speculation about the reviewer's motives. Keep it a few sentences long. If the matter needs a real conversation, invite the person to contact your office through the normal channel and stop there. You do not need to resolve the whole dispute in public, and you should not try to.

Confidentiality traps for lawyers

This is where lawyers get into trouble that other businesses never face. A restaurant can say "you came in on a Tuesday and ordered the fish." A lawyer usually cannot say the equivalent. The duty of confidentiality and the attorney-client privilege limit what you may put in a public reply, and an angry reviewer does not waive those protections just by posting a complaint.

Do not confirm representation

The first trap is the simplest to fall into. By replying with details, you can confirm that a particular person was your client. Even that bare fact can be protected. A reviewer might describe a whole case, but your public confirmation that the person was a client, or that a specific matter existed, can itself be a disclosure you were not free to make. Write your response so that it would read the same whether or not the person was ever your client.

Do not reveal case facts

The second trap is detail. Do not correct the reviewer by supplying dates, dollar amounts, the outcome of a matter, what was said in a meeting, or anything you learned in the course of the work. It is tempting. The reviewer got the story wrong, and you have the file that proves it. Resist. Bar authorities in several states have disciplined lawyers who answered a bad review by airing the client's information, and "he started it" has not been an accepted defence. The correction is not worth the risk.

Speak in general terms

You can respond to a review about, say, slow communication by explaining how your firm handles client updates as a matter of policy. You can note that you cannot discuss any individual matter in a public forum. That single sentence often does more work than a detailed reply would, because readers understand that a lawyer is bound to keep quiet. Silence on the specifics reads as discipline, not as guilt.

How bar advertising rules shape your reply

A public response to a review is a communication about your services, so your state's advertising and solicitation rules can apply to it. Those rules vary by state, and this article is not legal advice about your own obligations. A few themes hold up across most jurisdictions, and they are worth keeping in mind before you post.

• Do not make claims you cannot support. A reply that promises results, or that describes your firm as the best at something, can run into rules about false or misleading statements.
• Do not compare yourself to other named firms in a way you cannot back up.
• Watch any language that could count as a testimonial or an endorsement, since some states require disclaimers around those.
• Remember that the reply is permanent and public. Treat it as marketing that a disciplinary board could read later.

When you are unsure, the safe move is a short, factual, confidentiality-respecting reply. You will rarely regret saying less.

Disputing a review you believe should not have published

Every review on VerifiedLawFirms is checked before it can appear. A client submits the review, attests that they were a client of your firm, and confirms their email address through a link we send. The review then sits pending until an editor approves it. Only approved reviews publish, and only approved reviews count toward your rating. These steps exist to keep out reviews from people who were never your clients.

Sometimes a review clears those steps and you still believe it should not have. Maybe you think the reviewer was never a client, or the account does not match anyone in your records, or the post breaks the site's rules in some other way. You can raise this with the editorial team rather than fighting it in the public reply.

When a dispute makes sense

A dispute is the right tool when your objection is about the review's validity, not about whether you liked it. Good grounds include a claim that the person was never a client, that the attestation is false, or that the content violates the posting rules. A dispute is not a way to remove a fair review that happens to be negative. Editors will not take down an approved review just because it is critical or because it lowered your rating.

How to raise it

Submit your objection through the editorial contact route from your account and explain, in plain terms, why you think the review should not have published. Point to what you can point to without breaching confidentiality yourself. You do not have to reveal privileged client information to make the case that a reviewer was never your client; often you can say that no matter matching the description exists in your records. An editor reviews the objection and decides. The documents and details you share with the editorial team stay private to that team.

What editors will and will not do

Editors run the review pipeline, and it helps to know the edges of what they do.

Editors will:

• Confirm the reviewer's email and read each review before it is published.
• Keep each review in the pending state until it is approved or rejected.
• Check every new or edited firm response for advertising compliance and publish it only after approval.
• Review a dispute you file against a published review and act if the review breaks the rules or came from someone who was never a client.
• Keep the documents behind verification and disputes private to the editorial team. The public Verification tab shows only the check name, a plain-English description, the status, and the last-checked date.
• Recheck passed bar-standing checks every quarter against state bar rolls. A disbarment suspends a published profile automatically.

Editors will not:

• Delete or edit an approved review because the firm dislikes it or because it is negative.
• Write your response for you or take responsibility for its legal content. Editors may correct the submitted text in the approval form and will block prohibited advertising claims, but the reply remains the firm's communication.
• Change your placement in listings in exchange for handling a review a certain way. Placement follows plan tier first, then validated-review rating within the tier, and the site discloses this ordering.
• Verify a firm or grant a badge because a payment was made. Payment never auto-verifies anything.
• Route clients to you or act on a review as a referral. The directory does not match, recommend, or refer clients, and nothing on it is legal advice.

One last point about ratings and money. Buying a Pro or Premium plan changes your profile and your placement tier. It does not buy a better rating and it does not remove reviews. Verification is independent of tier, and the review system is independent of both. Respond to what people write, keep client information out of it, and raise the reviews you think do not belong with the editorial team.