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 professional conduct rules that govern how lawyers advertise and solicit business, whether the firm handles family law, personal injury or commercial matters. 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.
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.
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) 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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.