Last reviewed: February 2026

How Client Reviews Impact Law Firm SEO Rankings

How many Google reviews does your firm have? And how many did your top-ranking competitor add last month? Those two numbers explain more about your map pack position than your website content, your backlink profile, or your domain age. Google evaluates signals, not lawyering quality, and review signals tell a specific, measurable story about trust and prominence that directly affects where your firm appears when someone searches for legal help.

The Ranking Weight of Reviews

Local Dominator’s 2026 local search ranking factors guide estimates review signals account for over 15% of how a business ranks in the local map pack — other models assign different weights, but reviews consistently rank among the top local factors. That makes reviews the second or third most influential local ranking factor, behind Google Business Profile signals (roughly 32%) and roughly on par with on-page and link signals.

But “review signals” is not a single metric. Google evaluates reviews across several dimensions, and understanding which dimensions carry the most weight determines where your review acquisition efforts should focus.

Quantity is the baseline. You need enough reviews to be in the competitive range for your market. In most legal markets, the firms consistently appearing in the map pack have between 50 and 150+ Google reviews, depending on the metro size and practice area competitiveness. BrightLocal’s annual consumer review surveys consistently show that businesses with higher review counts receive significantly more clicks from local search results — the effect is especially pronounced once a business crosses the 50-review threshold. That is not a ranking metric directly, but click-through rate from local results feeds back into prominence signals that do affect ranking.

Velocity matters as much as total count. A steady stream of new reviews, what practitioners call “review velocity,” tells Google your firm is active and continuously serving clients. A firm that received 40 reviews in 2022 and none since looks different to Google’s systems than a firm that receives three to five reviews per month consistently. Practitioners in the local SEO space, including those surveyed in Whitespark’s ranking factors studies and BrightLocal’s consumer review research, commonly benchmark four to six reviews per month as a strong signal for mid-size firms in competitive markets, though the specific threshold varies by market.

Recency is the time dimension of velocity. Google weights recent reviews more heavily than old ones. A firm with 100 reviews, the most recent of which is from eight months ago, sends a weaker signal than a firm with 60 reviews where the most recent arrived last week. The recency window that matters most appears to be the last 90 days, based on practitioner testing and local SEO analyses, though Google has not publicly confirmed a specific timeframe.

Do Keywords in Reviews Actually Matter?

Do this now: open your Google Business Profile and count your reviews. Then check your top-ranking local competitor’s profile and count theirs. If the gap is more than 20 reviews, that number alone explains a significant portion of your map pack position difference — and closing that gap is the single highest-leverage local SEO activity available to your firm this quarter.

This question splits the local SEO community, and the honest answer is: probably, but not in the way most people think.

Google’s local algorithm processes review text to understand what a business does and what clients value about it. When multiple reviews mention “car accident,” “personal injury,” and “settlement,” those terms reinforce Google’s understanding that the firm handles personal injury cases. Think of it as topical reinforcement, not keyword stuffing in reviews.

The evidence is correlational rather than causal. Practitioners have observed that firms with reviews mentioning specific practice areas tend to rank better for those practice area queries in the map pack. But isolating the review keyword effect from other variables (content, GBP categories, backlinks) is nearly impossible. The practical takeaway: you should never coach clients on what words to use in their reviews, which would violate Google’s review policies and potentially bar ethics rules. But you can ask satisfied clients to describe their experience in their own words, which naturally produces reviews that mention the type of case, the outcome, and the aspects of service that mattered to them.

Star rating affects click-through rate more directly than ranking position. BrightLocal’s 2025 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 71% of consumers would not consider using a business with an average rating below three stars. For law firms, where the trust threshold is even higher, the practical minimum is a 4.0 rating, and competitive firms typically maintain 4.5 or above. A drop from 4.7 to 4.2 may not change your map pack position, but it can measurably reduce the percentage of searchers who click your listing versus a competitor’s.

Google Reviews Versus Third-Party Legal Platforms

Google reviews carry the most direct ranking weight for local search visibility. Third-party legal platforms serve a different but complementary function.

Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, and Lawyers.com reviews do not directly influence Google map pack rankings the way Google reviews do. But Google does aggregate information from some third-party platforms into attorney Knowledge Panels and organic search results. A strong Avvo rating appearing next to your name in search results affects the click decision even if it did not affect the ranking algorithm.

The Avvo rating specifically carries visibility weight because Avvo pages frequently rank in the top organic results for attorney name searches. When a prospective client searches for your name and sees your Avvo profile alongside your website, the Avvo rating becomes part of their trust evaluation. A 10.0 Avvo rating next to a 4.8 Google rating creates a reinforcing trust signal that neither platform provides alone.

Where to focus: Google reviews should be the primary focus because they directly affect local ranking, click-through rate, and conversion. Your Google Business Profile, the subject of its own post in this series, is where most of this review activity lives. Third-party platforms should receive attention proportional to their visibility in your specific market. If Avvo pages consistently appear in your branded search results, maintaining a strong Avvo profile is worth the effort. If Avvo is not visible for your market or practice area, the time is better spent acquiring more Google reviews.

Review Response Strategy and Bar Ethics

This is where it gets tricky for attorneys specifically.

On the SEO side, BrightLocal’s 2025 data indicates that 88% of consumers would use a business that responds to both positive and negative reviews, compared to only 47% who would consider a business that does not respond at all. Whether review responses directly affect ranking is debated among practitioners, but the conversion impact is clear: responding makes prospective clients more likely to contact your firm.

On the ethics side, attorneys face constraints that other businesses do not. Bar rules in most jurisdictions prohibit attorneys from disclosing confidential client information, and a review response that acknowledges the details of a representation, even to defend against a negative review, can constitute a confidentiality violation. The safe approach for negative reviews: thank the reviewer for the feedback, express that the firm takes client satisfaction seriously, and invite them to contact the firm directly to discuss their concerns. Do not confirm or deny that the reviewer was a client. Do not reference case details. Do not argue facts publicly.

For positive reviews, the response can be warmer but should still avoid case specifics. “Thank you for sharing your experience. We’re glad we could help” is safe. “Thank you for trusting us with your DUI case, we’re glad the charges were reduced” is a confidentiality problem.

The difference between a safe response and a disciplinary risk is often one sentence. Here is what a violation looks like: a client leaves a one-star review saying “this firm did nothing for my case.” The attorney responds: “We worked extensively on your personal injury claim for over six months, and the settlement offer we secured was in line with the damages documented by your medical providers.” This response confirms the client relationship, identifies the case type, references the timeline, and characterizes the outcome — all confidential information, all disclosed publicly, all potentially actionable by the state bar. The compliant response to the same review: “We take client satisfaction seriously. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss your experience directly. Please contact our office at [phone number].” No confirmation. No case details. No defense that requires disclosing privileged information. The impulse to correct the record is natural. The restraint to avoid it is required.

Building a Review Acquisition System

Reviews do not happen by accident. Firms that maintain strong review velocity have a systematic process, not an occasional reminder.

The touchpoints in the client journey that produce the highest completion rates are the moments of positive resolution: case settlement, favorable verdict, successful closing, or positive case update. The emotional high of a good outcome creates the most natural motivation to leave a review. Asking during intake or mid-case, when the outcome is uncertain and stress is high, produces lower completion rates and sometimes negative reviews that do not reflect the final result.

The system: when a case reaches a positive outcome, the responsible attorney or case manager sends a brief, personalized message (email or text, depending on client preference) thanking the client and including a direct link to the Google review page. Not a link to the firm’s GBP. A direct link to the review submission form. Every extra click between the request and the review box reduces completion rate.

The request should be personal, not templated. “Hi [Name], I’m glad we could get this resolved for you. If you have a minute, a Google review about your experience with our firm would mean a lot to us” performs better than a generic “Please review us on Google” email blast.

Compliance Guardrails for Review Acquisition

Compliance considerations: Google’s terms of service prohibit review gating (asking only satisfied clients to leave reviews while filtering out dissatisfied ones) and incentivized reviews (offering discounts or gifts in exchange for reviews). Bar ethics rules in many states also restrict solicitation practices. The system should ask all clients at the appropriate touchpoint, not selectively target only happy clients, and should never offer anything of value in exchange for the review.

A firm that implements this system and achieves a consistent velocity of four to six new Google reviews per month will, over 12 months, build the kind of review profile that contributes measurably to local ranking. There is no shortcut that does not carry risk.

Reviews are one of the three levers that determine map pack visibility — alongside GBP optimization and website authority. Our map pack post breaks down how these three signals interact and why a firm strong on reviews but weak on the other two still underperforms.

Review acquisition is an ongoing process, not a project with a finish line. The uncomfortable question: how many of your competitors already have this system running? If the answer is “at least one,” every month you delay is a month they compound and you do not.