Reputation Management for Lawyers: Legal Safeguarding

The practice of using a company’s positive online feedback as advertising and promotional material is known as Reputation Marketing.

Marketing your online reputation with online reviews is essential for lawyers because it could significantly affect your business and your continuous stream of clients. 

Your competitors probably have Google reviews, so it stands to reason that using them to your advantage will help your business stand out from the crowd. You could post reviews on your website, in ads, on social media, and in other places.

And your business review metrics will thank you for it!

Here are a few tips to help you respond to bad reviews in a way that improves the reputation of your lawyer practice:

• Don’t argue with the person who wrote the review. If you argue or defend your law firm, it will look unprofessional to potential clients and show that you care more about protecting yourself than giving your clients the best service possible.
• If the client said they experienced terrible customer service, you should apologise.
• Ask the person to contact your company privately to make things right. It shows that you care about your clients’ happiness.
• Mention any changes that your company has made since that happened.
• If a client contacts you privately, do your best, within reason, to make them happy.
• Don’t forget your morals. When responding to bad reviews, you can’t say anything about the case that isn’t public. Even if privilege is waived, you don’t want to be known as a lawyer who puts a client’s dirty laundry on the Internet.

Also, by filling out online profiles on sites like Avvo, Justia, HG, and Lawline, you can sometimes drown out negative websites and improve your reputation as a lawyer. There are only so many spots on Google’s first page, and these sites are more likely to rank than a blog post from an unhappy client.

Positive reviews may make lawyers want to ignore them. After all, why fix something that isn’t broken, right? This may be partly true, but managing a lawyer’s reputation is more effective if the lawyer responds to each review quickly.

An attorney who responds quickly to a positive review shows that they care about clients, is engaged, and are easy to reach. This could make a good impression on the client and make the client more likely to hire the same lawyer again in the future.

But a quick response to client reviews makes an even bigger impression on people thinking about hiring an attorney but haven’t done so yet. When looking for lawyers, they might notice that one lawyer not only has a lot of good reviews but also answers each one in less than a day.

This kind of care and attention could be why that potential client chooses that lawyer over another.

Yes, this job can be given to an assistant, but it works best if at least some of it is done by hand. Here are some general guidelines for how to reply to good reviews:

• Thank the customer.
• Use your name, the name of your practice, and any crucial keywords in the review for search engine optimisation purposes (e.g., “Thank you for choosing Smith & Andrews LLP to prepare your real estate contract of sale!”).
• Keep it short! Think about saying something personal, but nothing embarrassing or sensitive!
• Add some advertising. Don’t forget that other people will read this and decide whether or not to use your service based on what they see. 
• Ask them to come back. Say something like, “Remember that you can always call us back if you need legal help again!”