How to get more Google reviews as a law firm

Reputation12 min readReviewed 11 September 2026

What you must not do: pay for reviews, offer any inducement, write them internally, or gate them by only sending the link to clients who respond well to a survey. All four breach Google’s policies, and the first three also engage the Australian Consumer Law, which the ACCC enforces against fake and incentivised reviews.

Most law firms know reviews matter. Far fewer have an actual system for getting them. What tends to happen instead is ad hoc: a partner remembers to ask a happy client every few months, gets a review, and then the firm goes quiet again for a season. According to BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey, 97% of consumers read reviews before choosing a local business, and 41% now say they "always" check reviews when researching one, up sharply from the year before (BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey). For a law firm, where the "purchase" is a single high-stakes decision made under stress, that scrutiny is even higher than for a café or a plumber. This guide covers how to get more Google reviews for a law firm properly, in a way that respects the professional conduct obligations that make legal marketing different from most other industries, a topic covered in more depth in our guide to legal advertising rules in Australia.

Why this is different for a regulated profession

Unlike most local businesses, a law firm can’t simply pay for reviews, incentivise them with a discount, or ask a staff member to leave a fake one, all of which can breach both Google’s policies and the professional conduct rules that govern how lawyers advertise and solicit business, whether the firm handles family law, personal injury or commercial matters.

There is a consumer-law dimension too. Fake, incentivised and manipulated reviews are treated as misleading or deceptive conduct under the Australian Consumer Law, and the ACCC has publicly pursued businesses and review-broking operations over them. For a profession where the whole product is trust, the reputational exposure of being caught is worse than the marketing upside of a handful of extra stars.

The approach that works is slower but far safer: ask genuinely, ask consistently, and never touch what gets written. If you’re building out a broader reputation management programme, review generation should sit inside that same compliance-aware process rather than as a separate, ad hoc habit run by whoever remembers on a given week.

When is the best moment in a matter to ask?

Timing matters more than most firms assume. Industry research from FindLaw’s lawyer marketing team has found that a meaningful share of legal clients want to be asked for a review within days of their matter concluding, while the outcome and the experience of working with the firm are still front of mind (FindLaw, How to Ask Clients for Reviews). Two practical rules follow from that:

• Ask at the natural end of the matter, not weeks later once the relationship has gone cold and the client has moved on emotionally.
• Confirm satisfaction first. A quick, informal check ("how did that go for you?") before sending the request avoids the worst outcome: prompting a client who was actually unhappy with the outcome, or with the final invoice, to leave a public review while that frustration is fresh.

Avoid asking in the same message as a final bill or invoice. Financial friction at the end of a matter is one of the more common, avoidable reasons a review request backfires, even when the legal work itself was handled well.

Some practice areas need a different trigger. In conveyancing, settlement day is an obvious high point. In wills and estates, the moment the documents are signed works better than waiting for anything downstream. In litigation, "the end of the matter" can be years away, so a firm may sensibly ask after a significant milestone the client is pleased with instead. And in genuinely sensitive matters, bereavement, serious injury, criminal proceedings, the honest answer is sometimes not to ask at all. A system needs an exception rule, and a lawyer who knows the client should be the one applying it.

Make it frictionless: direct links, not vague requests

"Please leave us a review sometime" rarely produces results, mostly because it asks the client to do the hard part: finding your listing, working out what to click, and typing something from scratch. The fix is removing every one of those steps:

• Send a direct review link. Google gives every Business Profile a shareable review URL, find it under "Ask for reviews" in the profile, rather than asking someone to search for your firm.
• Use SMS as well as email. Text messages typically get opened faster than emails, and a link that opens straight into the review box on a phone is about as low-friction as this gets.
• Keep the message short, personal, and specific to the actual matter, not a generic mail-merge that reads like it went to a thousand other people. Naming the solicitor who did the work matters, the client is being asked to describe a person, not a company.
• Give them something to write about. Not a script, which is a policy problem, but a light prompt: "if you have a minute, anything about how the process went would be genuinely helpful." Blank-page paralysis is a real reason people don’t finish.
• Follow up once, politely, about a week later if there’s been no response. Don’t chase further than that.

This is also where email marketing systems and simple SMS workflows earn their keep: once the request template and timing are built, the actual sending can be largely automated around each matter’s closing date, freeing staff from having to remember.

A word on review gating, since it is widely sold as best practice and is not permitted. Surveying clients and then only sending the Google link to the ones who scored you highly breaches Google’s policies and misrepresents your true standing. That is different from the informal satisfaction check described above: there, a lawyer is deciding whether this is an appropriate moment to ask at all. Gating is building a filter that systematically suppresses negative feedback, and it is the version that gets firms into trouble.

How many reviews does a law firm actually need?

There’s no absolute number, and chasing one is the wrong frame. What matters is credibility relative to the firms you appear next to. Search your main target term from your service area and look at the review counts of the three firms in the map pack, that is your real benchmark, and it varies enormously between a regional wills practice and family law in a capital city.

Three things matter alongside raw count:

• Recency. A firm with 60 reviews, none in the last eighteen months, reads as a practice that has stopped paying attention. A steady trickle is worth more than a large stale total.
• Rating. Perfection is not the goal and can look manufactured. A genuine spread with a strong average is more persuasive than a wall of identical five-stars, and a handful of critical reviews handled well can actually build confidence.
• Substance. "Great service, highly recommend" adds a number. A review describing what the matter involved and how the firm handled it does the actual persuading, which is why the ask should invite a description, not a rating.

Responding to negative reviews without breaching confidentiality

This is the point where law firm review management genuinely differs from almost every other industry, and it’s worth being direct about the risk. A restaurant can respond to a bad review by explaining exactly what went wrong with an order. A law firm cannot do the equivalent: confirming that someone was even a client, let alone discussing the details of their matter, in a public review response can breach client confidentiality obligations, regardless of what the reviewer themselves has disclosed. This is general practical guidance, not formal legal advice, and any firm uncertain about a specific response should check it against their own professional conduct obligations before posting.

The safer pattern professional services businesses generally use:

• Never confirm or deny that the reviewer was a client.
• Never discuss the substance of any matter, even to correct a factual claim the reviewer has made.
• Keep the tone calm, brief and professional, an invitation to take the conversation offline usually does more good than a public rebuttal.
• Reply within a couple of days. A response weeks later reads as damage control rather than attentiveness.
• Escalate anything unusually serious, defamatory content, or a review that discloses matter details itself, to whoever handles the firm’s risk and compliance decisions before responding.

There’s also a strong commercial reason to respond well rather than not at all. Review research summarised by review-management platform data consistently finds that a large majority of consumers say they prefer businesses that respond to all their reviews, positive and negative, and that seeing a thoughtful response can shift how "responsive and caring" a business appears, even to people who never read the original complaint in detail (Shapo, Online Review Statistics). Silence on a negative review, by contrast, is often read by other prospective clients as confirmation rather than neutrality.

What about fake or malicious reviews?

Every established firm eventually gets one: a review from someone who was never a client, an ex-employee, the opposing party in a matter, or a person who has confused you with another firm. The options, in order of sensibility:

1. Flag it in the Business Profile against the specific Google policy it breaches, spam or fake engagement, conflict of interest, off-topic content, or harassment. Be precise; a vague "this is unfair" flag rarely succeeds.
2. Escalate through Google’s review removal request form if the initial flag is rejected, and be prepared to follow up. Outcomes are inconsistent and the process can take weeks.
3. Respond publicly in the meantime, neutrally and without confirming any client relationship. Other readers see the response even if the review stays.
4. Consider legal avenues only as a last resort. Defamation action is available in principle, but it is slow, expensive, and frequently draws far more attention to the review than the review would ever have attracted alone.

The most effective long-term defence is volume. One critical review against forty genuine ones is barely visible; the same review against four is the firm’s whole reputation.

Systems, not one-off requests

The firms that build a steady, current review profile treat it as a small operating system rather than a task someone remembers occasionally. At a conceptual level, that system usually has three parts: a trigger (a matter status changing to closed, tracked however your firm already tracks matters), a template (a short, warm, specific message with a direct review link), and a review point (someone checking weekly that requests are going out and following up on anything unanswered).

Various review-request and reputation-management software tools exist to automate parts of this, from triggering the request to monitoring new reviews across platforms, but the software is only useful once the underlying process, when to ask, how to ask, who checks in, is actually defined. Buying a tool before defining that process is a common and avoidable waste of budget.

Set a modest, realistic target and track it. For most small firms, two genuine new reviews a month is both achievable and transformative over a year; a target of twenty a month simply guarantees the system gets abandoned in week three.

What about platforms other than Google?

Google is where the overwhelming majority of the value sits for an Australian law firm, because it feeds the map pack and it is where people look. It should get the direct link and the deliberate ask.

That said, a few others are worth a modest amount of attention: your state Law Society or Law Institute directory, where a profile carries professional verification a general directory can’t; legal-specific directories relevant to your practice area; and your Facebook page if the firm maintains one, since it appears in branded searches. Don’t split a single review request across platforms, asking one client for reviews in three places generally produces zero. Ask for Google, and let the others accumulate on their own.

Where reviews fit with everything else

Reviews don’t operate in isolation. They’re a major input into how a firm performs in local SEO and the Google Business Profile map pack, they reassure clients arriving through Google Ads or organic SEO that the firm is legitimate, and they back up the recommendations made by referral partners like accountants and financial planners. A well-optimised Google Business Profile and a healthy review flow work together, one without the other leaves visibility on the table. For the mechanics of optimising the profile itself, see our companion guide on Google Business Profile for law firms. If your website doesn’t display reviews prominently once someone lands on it, that’s also worth checking against our website design best practices guide.

Your Google review checklist

Use the checklist below to audit your current review process and tick off what’s missing. It’s saved in your browser, so you can come back and pick up where you left off.

• Claim and fully verify your Google Business Profile if you haven’t already.
• Generate your firm’s direct Google review link and save it somewhere every staff member can find it.
• Define the exact moment in a matter’s lifecycle when a review request goes out.
• Confirm client satisfaction informally before sending any review request.
• Write a short, warm SMS and email template with the direct review link included.
• Set a single, polite follow-up if there’s no response within a week.
• Draft a standard negative-review response template that never confirms client identity or matter details.
• Assign someone to check for and respond to new reviews at least weekly.
• Check any draft response against your firm’s professional conduct obligations before it goes live.
• Review your total volume and rating monthly, not just when someone happens to mention it.

Getting started

If your firm’s review profile has gone quiet, hasn’t moved in months, or you’re simply not sure your current process is compliant, that’s a reasonable place to start a broader look at your marketing. Our reputation management service builds this exact system, review requests, response drafting and monitoring, around your firm’s conduct obligations, and it’s usually most effective bundled with local SEO so the two compound together as part of a wider marketing programme. See pricing for how engagements are typically structured, run a free SEO audit to see how your current review profile is affecting your local visibility, or get in touch for a full growth plan.