Avvo Reviews: A Lawyer’s Guide to Ratings, Replies and Removal Requests

Avvo reviews are client reviews posted on your attorney profile on Avvo, a legal directory that lists lawyers whether or not they have signed up. To manage them, claim your free profile, complete it fully, ask satisfied clients for reviews, reply to reviews without revealing anything a client told you in confidence, and flag reviews that break Avvo’s guidelines. You generally can’t remove a genuine negative review, and you can’t delete your profile.

This guide is written for attorneys and law firm staff. It covers how the profile, the reviews and the separate Avvo rating fit together, what you control, and the professional conduct rules that shape every reply you write.

How Avvo profiles and reviews work

Avvo builds lawyer profiles from public sources such as state bar records. That means most licensed attorneys in the US already have a profile, often with thin or outdated information, before they ever visit the site. Prospective clients can find that profile through Avvo’s own search or through Google, where Avvo pages often rank for an attorney’s name.

A profile typically shows three different kinds of reputation signal, and it helps to keep them separate:

Signal	Who creates it	What you can influence
Client reviews (star ratings with written comments)	Clients and people who say they consulted you	Asking for reviews, replying, reporting policy violations
Peer endorsements	Other attorneys	Your professional relationships and reciprocal endorsements, within Avvo’s rules
The Avvo rating	Avvo, from profile information and records	Completing and updating your profile accurately

Clients read the written reviews most closely. The Avvo rating matters too, because it sits prominently on the profile and people often assume it reflects client satisfaction, which it does not.

What the Avvo rating is (and isn’t)

The Avvo rating is a score Avvo calculates from information about your career, such as years in practice, disciplinary history, professional achievements and industry recognition. Avvo describes it as its own assessment built from the profile data it holds, not a measure of client reviews or case outcomes.

That has two practical consequences. First, an unclaimed profile with missing information can show a lower rating than your background justifies, simply because Avvo doesn’t know about your publications, speaking engagements, awards or bar association work. Second, the fix is mostly administrative: add accurate information and the rating can reflect it. Disciplinary history is part of the calculation, and you can’t edit that away.

Avvo doesn’t publish an exact formula, so be wary of anyone who claims to know precisely which field adds how many points. Accurate, complete information is the only honest lever.

How to claim and complete your Avvo profile

1. Find your profile. Search your name and city on Avvo. If you’ve practiced in more than one state or under a different name, check for more than one listing.
2. Claim it. Use the claim option on the profile. Avvo verifies that you are the attorney, typically by matching your bar information and confirming your identity. Claiming is free.
3. Correct the basics. Update your firm name, office address, phone number, website and practice areas. Outdated contact details send prospective clients to the wrong place.
4. Add your background. Include education, work history, bar admissions, publications, speaking, awards and associations. These fill the gaps the rating relies on.
5. Add a clear photo and a short biography. Write the bio for a worried person, not for another lawyer: who you help, with what, and how the first consultation works.
6. Set up notifications. Make sure new review alerts go to an inbox someone actually reads.

Once claimed, check the profile every few months. Practice areas change, offices move, and new achievements are easy to forget to add.

How to get more Avvo reviews, within the rules

The best protection against one bad review is a steady flow of genuine ones. Avvo lets you invite clients to leave a review, and you can also share your profile link directly.

• Ask at the right moment. After a matter concludes well, or when a client thanks you, is usually the natural point.
• Ask everyone, not just the happiest clients. Selectively inviting only people you expect to be positive is review gating, which skews your profile and which the FTC has warned can mislead consumers. Our guide to review gating explains the risk.
• Never offer anything for a review. No fee reductions, gifts or favors. Beyond platform rules, your state’s advertising and solicitation rules may treat incentives for reviews as a problem.
• Don’t write reviews for yourself or have staff do it. Fake reviews are banned under the FTC rule and can also raise professional conduct issues around misleading communications about your services.
• Remind clients what not to share. A short note suggesting they avoid details of their case protects them.

Some bar associations have issued guidance on soliciting online reviews. If you’re unsure what your jurisdiction allows, check your state bar’s ethics opinions or call its ethics hotline.

How to reply to Avvo reviews without breaching confidentiality

Avvo lets attorneys post a public response to a review on their profile. This is where lawyers get into the most trouble, because the natural instinct is to correct the record, and correcting the record usually means discussing the representation.

Under ABA Model Rule 1.6 and its state equivalents, information relating to the representation of a client is confidential, and a negative online review generally doesn’t give you permission to disclose it. The ABA addressed this directly in Formal Opinion 496 (2021), which concluded that a lawyer’s wish to respond to online criticism doesn’t fall within the self-defense exception to confidentiality. The opinion suggests that often the best course is not to respond, or to respond without revealing confidential information. State rules vary, so read your own jurisdiction’s version.

In practice, a safe reply:

• Doesn’t confirm or deny that the reviewer was your client.
• Doesn’t mention the case, the outcome, fees, deadlines or anything the client said.
• Stays short, calm and professional, written for the prospective clients reading it.
• Offers a private channel, such as a phone call, for the reviewer to follow up.

Example wording for a critical review:

We take every concern seriously. Professional rules prevent us from discussing any client matter in a public forum, including whether someone was a client. If you’d like to talk this through, please call our office and ask for me directly.

Example wording for a positive review:

Thank you for taking the time to write this. We appreciate the kind words.

Keep positive replies generic too. Thanking a reviewer “for trusting us with your divorce” confirms both the relationship and the type of matter.

Which Avvo reviews can be reported

Avvo has community guidelines for reviews, and you can flag a review you believe breaks them. Keep your expectations realistic: like most platforms, Avvo is protected by Section 230 for user content and generally won’t remove a review just because it’s negative or because you disagree with it.

Reviews that are more likely to be worth reporting include:

• Reviews from someone who was never a client or prospective client, such as the opposing party in a case or their family.
• Reviews about a different lawyer, which happens when names are similar.
• Reviews with abusive, threatening or discriminatory language.
• Reviews that disclose private information about third parties.
• Apparent fake or duplicate reviews, such as several near-identical reviews posted close together.

When you report, stick to the guideline the review breaks. Explain it in a sentence or two, and don’t include confidential client information in the report either. Adverse parties can be tricky: saying “this person was the opposing party in litigation” may itself disclose information, so think carefully about what the report needs to say.

If a review contains false statements of fact that seriously harm your practice, talk to a lawyer who handles defamation before you do anything public. Our guide on defamation versus opinion explains why most harsh reviews are treated as protected opinion. Suing a reviewer can also draw far more attention to the review than it ever had.

A worked example

This is an illustrative scenario, not a real client.

Dana, a family law attorney, finds an unclaimed Avvo profile listing her old firm and a middling rating. It also has a one-star review saying she “never returned calls and lost my case.”

1. She claims the profile and updates her firm, practice areas, bar admissions, two published articles and a bar section leadership role.
2. She checks the review against her records. The reviewer’s name matches the opposing party in a custody matter, not a client. She flags the review, noting in general terms that it doesn’t reflect a client or consultation experience, without describing the case.
3. She drafts a reply but holds it while the report is pending. If the review stays up, she plans to post the short, confidential-safe reply above.
4. She starts asking every client at matter close for honest feedback, with a link to her profile and a reminder not to share case details.

Over the following months her profile reflects her actual background, and new genuine reviews give prospective clients a fuller picture. Whether Avvo removes the flagged review is up to Avvo, and she plans for either outcome.

Common mistakes attorneys make on Avvo

• Ignoring the profile because you didn’t create it. It exists anyway, and clients see it.
• Arguing with a reviewer about the facts of the case. This is the most common way lawyers breach confidentiality online.
• Threatening a reviewer with legal action in a reply. It rarely works, looks bad to prospective clients and can escalate the problem.
• Asking only the happiest clients for reviews. It skews your profile and can run into the FTC’s rules.
• Paying a company that promises to remove Avvo reviews. No one outside Avvo can promise that, and some “removal” services rely on fake legal complaints.
• Forgetting other platforms. Google reviews usually get more views. Our guide to responding to Google reviews applies the same principles there.

When to get help

Most solo attorneys and small firms can handle Avvo themselves with an hour of setup and a simple review request routine. Outside help makes sense when a firm has many attorneys and profiles to keep consistent, when negative reviews are part of a wider problem in search results, or when you need a review response policy that everyone at the firm follows. Our law firm reputation management work and review management service cover this, and we’ll tell you plainly which reviews are realistic to challenge and which aren’t.

Frequently asked questions

Can I delete my Avvo profile?

Generally no. Avvo treats attorney profiles as a directory of licensed professionals built from public records, so you can claim and update your profile but not remove it. Claiming it lets you correct information and reply to reviews.

How can I improve my Avvo rating?

Claim your profile and add accurate information about your experience, education, publications, speaking, awards and associations. The Avvo rating is calculated from profile data and records, not from client reviews, so completing your profile is the honest way to make it reflect your background.

Can I respond to a negative Avvo review?

Yes, claimed attorneys can post a public response. Keep it short, don’t confirm the person was a client and don’t discuss the matter. Confidentiality rules, including the ABA’s Formal Opinion 496, apply to online responses.

Will Avvo remove a negative review?

Only if it breaks Avvo’s review guidelines, for example because the author was never a client, it’s about a different lawyer, or it contains abusive content. A genuine review that is simply negative will usually stay up.