How To Score Five-Star Reviews For Your Law Firm

Online reviews have been growing in importance across industries. In an on-demand and online world, reviews are the easiest way for a consumer to get to know a business before they decide to spend their money. In a way, online reviews share the same lead-generation role as referrals from friends and family. People who don’t know anyone who knows a lawyer aren’t in the dark anymore when it comes to figuring out who to hire.

Case in point: online reviews were the most important criteria for selecting a lawyer in 2022, according to Clio’s Legal Trends Report in that year. The next most important criterion was the attorney’s location, which is also important, as online reviews can make or break local businesses like smaller law firms.

If you’re savvy, you can leverage the importance of online reviews to benefit your firm. The majority of your new leads are checking out your reviews before they call. You have to put your best foot forward. In this blog, we’ll be giving you a few tips on how to do just that.

Ask And Remind Your Clients To Leave Reviews

We’ll skip the obvious advice, which is: always do your best work. If you’re reading this blog, it’s because you want to improve your firm, so it’s safe to assume you’re already delivering great legal work. With that assumption in mind, the best way to secure five star reviews is to ask your clients to make them.

Clients are the ultimate authority on your firm’s performance, and can talk personally about the wins you helped them achieve. Your new leads are going to feel more confident that you can help them with their legal issue when they can read about your clients’ experiences firsthand.

The problem is, most people don’t go out of their way to leave a review, even after a stellar experience. According to general market research, less than half of consumers leave reviews after doing business. And since it’s much more cathartic to let out your frustrations after a bad experience, it’s safe to say many of those reviews aren’t the kind you want.

How To Ask Your Clients For Reviews

Because good reviews are so rare, it’s important to ask your clients, who can speak for your firm first-hand, to leave reviews. That’s not to say it’s easy; asking for help is tough, especially asking for help from someone who is already paying you to help them.

In the interest of making it easier, you should include in your educational material calls to review your firm. Anything you send your clients to help them understand your firm or the legal process they’re about to undergo should include a quick link or call to action asking them to leave a review. It doesn’t have to be anything more obtrusive than something like “Did you find this helpful? Leave a review!” alongside a link or printed URL guiding them to your preferred review site.

And, at the end of cases that went well, make sure you explain to your clients just how valuable their reviews are for your firm. On Answering Legal’s “Everything Except the Law” podcast, host Nick Werker asked attorney Darl Champion how his firm goes about getting clients to review the firm after their case has concluded. Check out Darl’s thoughts in the clip below.

We understand how this might be unpleasant; to some people, it might feel like begging. But in reality, if you’ve built a strong relationship with your client, they might be so grateful they will feel like it is the least they could do.

In addition, it’s rude to say no to something like this; the worst most clients will do is say yes and then forget, and really, that’s not a bad outcome at all. If you’re worried about it, simply picture it from your client’s perspective, and you might find that what you think is embarrassing is something your client will never give a second thought.

Make Sure You Treat Every Caller Well

People are much more likely to remember ways in which they’ve been wronged or otherwise had a bad experience than they are to remember when things went well. Research has shown that it takes 40 positive customer experiences to outweigh a single bad one. In the same way, if you only have a single bad review and that’s the one a new lead seeks out, it might turn them away from your firm.

You should always be aiming to decrease the number of negative reviews you receive alongside earning more positive ones. A great way to do just that is to make sure that every caller has a great experience, whether they’re going to hire you or not. If you look at any Google Business page—though hopefully not your firm’s—you’ll be able to pick out which negative reviews represent a bad business experience or a bad customer service experience.

There’s some overlap, but they’re not always the same; someone complaining about a product arriving broken has a different complaint than the person talking about a company’s online ordering system not working. For law firms, the biggest cause of negative reviews from nonclients is responsiveness. If a caller feels ignored or has a bad experience, they might leave a scathing review on your firm’s page.

The best advice we can give on this issue is to make sure your receptionists are giving every call their full attention. New leads, of course, will get the majority of your firm’s attention to get the best chance that they’ll hire you. But even window shoppers and people who are confused about their legal situation can leave bad reviews if they have a bad experience.

Short of giving actual legal advice, try to make sure to help as many people who call your firm as possible. And if you do receive a negative review, try to reach out to the reviewer and see if you can address their issue. Sometimes, people just want to feel heard, and if you address their issue and apologize, they may rescind or edit the review, which will go a long way toward keeping your average score high.

Make Client Experience Your Goal

You can tackle both of these strategies at once by focusing on improving your client experience. Follow your client journey from new lead to satisfied client; are there any points along the way where you feel you could improve their experience?

As we mentioned above, focusing on that initial phone call can go a long way toward avoiding bad reviews. But other points along your client journey could be places to focus on. Your primary goal should be to improve the experience your clients are having with your firm. Five star reviews will flow naturally from there, as long as you’re reminding your clients how important they are to you.

Answering Legal Will Improve Your Client Experience At Every Point

One great way to level up your client experience is to hire a legal answering service like Answering Legal. Just by making sure every caller speaks to a live receptionist 24/7, you’re going to be much more likely to receive five-star reviews and avoid negative ones.

With a customizable legal intake process, you won’t have to worry about lead capturing. Each of our receptionists can perform legal intakes in English and Spanish, and will do so according to a custom legal intake process you set up. Your leads will always feel like they’ve already connected with your firm. If you’d like to read more about our legal intake process, click here.

Moving forward from the beginning of your client journey, our detailed message taking service will help you improve your responsiveness to all kinds of callers without sacrificing the time it would take for you to monitor the phones yourself. Existing clients will be assured that their message will reach you, and that you’ll get back to them as soon as possible. Since we can deliver messages via text, email, and/or CRM, you’ll always be up to date on everything going on with your firm. To learn more about how our message taking works, click here.

You can trust your phones to Answering Legal because our receptionists answer exclusively for lawyers. We train them for months before they ever pick up the phone so that we can deliver the best possible experience for both you and your clients.

Take your client experience to the next level, and start scoring five star reviews. Click here or call (631) 450-1000 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up for our service their first 400 minutes free.