Google reviews for lawyers: what a client can actually judge you on.

A client cannot tell a good settlement from one that left money on the table, and they will never see the alternative. So they judge what they can observe, which is whether they were kept informed, whether the bill matched what they were told, and whether they were treated like a person.

That is what the reviews of every firm are actually about, and reading a few makes it obvious. Almost none of them mention the law. They mention being rung back, having something explained twice without irritation, and knowing what it would cost.

It means a technically excellent firm with bad communication reviews badly, and there is no arguing with it, because the client is reporting the only thing they were in a position to observe.

It also means the reviews a firm already has are a fairly accurate report on its client service, which is uncomfortable and useful in equal measure.

A person who has just been through a divorce, a criminal matter or a dispute with a former employer is not going to attach their name to a public account of it. That is not reluctance, it is sense, and no amount of asking will change it.

This shapes a law firm's review profile in a way most advice ignores. Family, criminal and employment work produces excellent outcomes and almost no reviews, while conveyancing and wills produce reviews easily, because there is nothing private about buying a house.

The practical effect is that a mixed practice ends up with a review page describing a third of what it does. That is worth knowing before anybody concludes the firm is bad at asking.

It also means the asking has to be selective in a way that is about discretion rather than about filtering for happy clients, and the difference between those two things matters.

Where the reviews realistically come from

• Conveyancing and property.

  A settled purchase is a good day with nothing private in it, and clients will happily say so.

• Wills and estate planning.

  Straightforward, unembarrassing, and often prompted by a life event people talk about anyway.

• Commercial and business clients.

  A business owner reviewing their commercial lawyer is making a professional recommendation, not a confession.

• Referrers, occasionally.

  Accountants and agents who send work sometimes will, and those read differently to a client review.

Solicitors advertise under professional conduct rules as well as Google's policy. A review cannot be paid for or incentivised, a firm cannot write or edit one, and nothing in a firm's response can disclose anything about a client's matter, even to correct something false.

The response is where firms get into trouble, and it happens for an understandable reason. A former client writes something inaccurate about a matter, and the instinct of somebody who knows the file is to correct the record.

Doing that discloses information about a client's matter in public. The obligation survives the retainer and it survives the client being wrong. The reply says the firm cannot discuss a client's matter publicly and offers to speak directly, and it says nothing else.

The other one is the incentive, usually dressed up as a thank you rather than a discount. It breaches Google's policy either way and it can take the whole review page down with it months later.

What a firm cannot do

• Cannot pay for or incentivise a review.

  Including a gift, a discount on the next matter, or a charity donation in the client's name.

• Cannot reply with any detail about the matter.

  Not even to correct something factually wrong, and not even in general terms.

• Cannot ask only the clients who seemed pleased.

  That is gating under Google's policy, and a page with no ordinary reviews on it does not read as genuine anyway.

The ask goes out when a matter closes cleanly, from the firm, in writing, with a link that opens the review box directly. Which matter types are eligible is decided once by the firm rather than case by case.

Deciding it once is what makes it workable. A rule that says every settled conveyance and every completed estate plan gets the ask, and nothing in family or criminal does, removes the judgement call from a busy week where it would simply be skipped.

Timing matters more than firms expect. The week a purchase settles is the high point of a client's regard for their solicitor; two months later they have moved house and the whole thing has become admin they have forgotten.

The wording has to sound like the firm. A message that reads like marketing sits badly under a solicitor's name and clients notice it immediately, so this is one of the few places where a slightly formal tone converts better.

What makes it work in a practice

• One rule, set once.

  Which matter types get the ask, decided by the partners, applied without anybody deciding again.

• Sent at the close of the matter.

  While the client still has the firm in mind and the outcome is fresh.

• One tap to the review box.

  Anything that requires a client to search for the firm loses most of them.