QCan a lawyer respond to a negative Google review?

A former client, or someone who never was one, has posted a one-star that gets the facts wrong, and every instinct says set the record straight. Can a lawyer respond to a negative review? Only in a narrow way. The ABA's ethics opinion on this says a bad review doesn't give you permission to reveal anything about the representation, so the public reply is short and the real work happens elsewhere.

This is my reading as a marketer who works with law firms, not legal advice. The rule that binds you is your own state's, so treat the steps below as a starting point to check against it.

What ABA Opinion 496 says about responding to reviews

ABA Formal Opinion 496 on responding to online criticism starts from Model Rule 1.6(a), which bars a lawyer from revealing information relating to a representation. That covers far more than secrets. It includes almost anything you learned while working on the matter.

The key finding is that a negative online review does not trigger the self-defense exception. That exception exists for real legal disputes about your conduct, not for a bad write-up on Google. So if the reviewer is a current or former client, the opinion's position is that you may not respond online other than to acknowledge that your professional obligations don't permit a response.

The client posting details of their own case doesn't change that. They can talk about their matter. You still can't.

How a lawyer should respond to a negative review, step by step

1. Work out who wrote it, privately. A current or former client, an opposing party, a stranger, or a competitor. I'd never post anything until I knew which, because it decides what else you can do.
2. Reply with one line, whoever it is. Something like: "Our professional obligations don't allow us to discuss any matter in a public forum. We take all feedback seriously." It reads the same whether they were a client or not, which is the point.
3. Don't identify their role, even if they're not a client. Writing "this person was on the other side of my client's case" reveals information about your client's matter. Keep the same one-line reply.
4. Report the review if it breaks Google's rules. Reviews from people with a conflict of interest, such as an opposing party promoting a rival firm, can be reported under Google's policy. I walk through how that works for an opposing party review separately.
5. If it's a former client, consider a private conversation. A call to resolve the complaint offline can do more than any public reply. Keep it to resolving their concern, and check with your state bar's ethics hotline first if you're unsure.
6. Check your state's rule before you post anything longer. States adopt the Model Rules with changes and issue their own ethics opinions. A five-minute call to the ethics hotline costs less than a grievance.

What the opposing-party case shows

A family-law firm in Utah is a clear example of how tight the box is. In a Help Community thread about a one-star from an opposing party, the reviewer said they'd been the opposing party in a family law case and ended by recommending a named rival attorney. The firm reported and appealed, and Google decided the review didn't violate its policies.

I don't think the firm had a good public answer. It couldn't correct the record without talking about its client's case. That's the reality of Opinion 496: when the report fails, the reply can't do the job either. What's left, in my experience, is volume. A handful of reviews means one unfair one sets the tone; a steady run of genuine client reviews puts it in context.

What else a law firm can do

• Ask for reviews when a matter closes well. A consistent ask at the end of every matter is the most reliable protection against one bad review. It's the core of the review work in our Google Business Profile management for firms.
• Keep advertising rules in mind in every reply. The ABA comment on Rule 7.1 about communications on a lawyer's services warns that even truthful past results can create an unjustified expectation. Replying to a critic with "we've won millions for our clients" is advertising, and it's the wrong kind.
• Don't reply to positive reviews with case details either. "Glad we won your custody hearing" discloses a matter just as much as a rebuttal would.
• Don't ask friends or staff to post reviews to drown it out. That breaks Google's policy and, depending on your state, possibly your advertising rules too.

My general advice on when to reply at all is in the piece on responding to bad reviews. For lawyers, the ethics rules simply narrow what that reply can say. If you'd like help building the review profile that makes this less painful, that's part of our SEO for lawyers.

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