How To Remove An Avvo Review In 2026: The Dispute Process, The Ethics Rules, And What Actually Comes Down
Max Dewod
Freelance Writer
11.09.2026
Avvo removes a review only when it breaks Avvo’s Community Guidelines, and the most common winning ground is that the reviewer was never your client. A negative review from a real client will not be removed, however unfair it feels.
That single sentence decides most Avvo cases before they start. Avvo does not verify reviews and does not referee factual disputes, so “the review is wrong” is not a removal ground. “The reviewer was opposing counsel’s client”, “the reviewer never consulted me”, “the review accuses me of a crime”, and “the review was written by a tool” all are. The work is in matching the review to the right rule, filing the dispute cleanly, and, above all, not making things worse by responding in a way that gets you a bar complaint, which has happened to lawyers who said far less than they wanted to.
This guide covers what Avvo is and whether it is worth your attention at all, what Avvo will and will not take down, the dispute process step by step and what happens to the review while it runs, the ethics rules that govern any public response, how to build the review count that makes one bad review irrelevant, the legal and search-side options when the review stays, and the removal services that are not worth the money.
Avvo is a legal directory and review site that publishes a profile for essentially every licensed attorney in the United States, whether or not that attorney has ever heard of it. It is legitimate in the sense that matters here: it is a real company with a real moderation team, it is not a scam site or a shakedown operation, and the reviews on it are not for sale. It is also, from a lawyer’s point of view, a platform that publishes a page about you that you did not ask for and cannot delete, and that will often outrank your own firm site for your own name.
Avvo launched in Seattle in 2007 and has been part of Internet Brands since 2018, sitting in the Martindale-Avvo network alongside Martindale-Hubbell, Lawyers.com and Nolo. Its own figures put profiles on more than 97 percent of licensed US attorneys, well over a million lawyers, and more than 25 million monthly consumers across the network. Three things about it decide how a removal request goes.
First, your profile exists whether or not you claimed it. Avvo builds profiles from public bar records, so a lawyer who has never logged in can still be reviewed, and the review will rank for their name. Claiming the profile is free, Avvo says so plainly, and it is the first thing to do, because the dispute tool, the public response tool and the review request tool all live behind the login. Advertising and subscription products exist and are sold separately, and buying them changes nothing about reviews or ratings.
Second, Avvo does not verify reviews. It does not check that a reviewer hired you, it does not ask for a matter number, and it does not investigate whether what the review says is true. That cuts both ways. It is why a false review can appear in the first place, and it is why the only argument that works is a guideline argument rather than a factual one.
Third, Avvo is a host of user content under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It is not liable for what a reviewer writes and it cannot be sued into taking a review down. Every route to removal runs through Avvo’s own guidelines or through the reviewer, and there is no fourth door.
How Avvo Reviews Work
An Avvo client review is a one to five star rating with written text, posted by someone who states that they were a client or a prospective client. Avvo asks reviewers to confirm that, but takes their word for it at the point of posting. Reviews appear on the profile, feed the star average shown next to your name, and are indexed by search engines along with the rest of the page.
Reviews are anonymous to you. Avvo’s policy, stated in its own support material, is that it does not share the identity or contact details of a reviewer with the attorney reviewed, and outside a subpoena in formal proceedings it will not disclose them at all. A display name is often a first name and an initial, or a description of a matter type, and that is all you get. This is the single most frustrating feature of the platform for lawyers, and it is also the feature that makes the non-client dispute below work, because Avvo will go and ask the reviewer the question you cannot.
There is no delete button on the attorney side. Only the reviewer can remove their own review, and only Avvo can remove anyone else’s. Peer endorsements from other lawyers are a separate system with its own removal path, and they are not what this guide is about.
The Avvo Rating, And What Reviews Actually Do To It
Lawyers routinely conflate two separate numbers on the profile, and the confusion costs money, because it sends people chasing a removal that would not have moved the number anyway.
The Avvo Rating is the score from 1.0 to 10.0 at the top of the profile. Avvo calculates it with a mathematical model applied to every attorney on the same terms, and keeps the exact formula confidential to stop it being gamed. What goes in is experience and background, recognition and contributions, and public disciplinary history: years licensed, practice areas, education, peer endorsements, awards, publications, speaking, and anything on the record with the bar. What does not go in is client reviews. Avvo says this directly: client reviews are influential with people deciding whether to hire you, but they are not a direct input into the numerical rating.
Avvo Rating
Label
10.0 to 9.0
Superb
8.9 to 8.0
Excellent
7.9 to 7.0
Very Good
6.9 to 6.0
Good
5.9 to 5.0
Average
4.9 to 4.0
Concern
3.9 to 3.0
Caution
2.9 to 2.0
Strong Caution
1.9 to 1.0
Extreme Caution
So a one-star review hurts what a prospective client reads, but it does not move the number at the top of the profile. Removing a review does not raise the rating, and improving the rating does not hide a review. If the profile shows no rating at all, that usually means it has never been claimed or Avvo holds too little information to score it, and the fix is to claim it and fill in the background rather than to dispute anything. An attorney with no disciplinary history can also ask Avvo to hide the rating entirely, which is worth knowing if the number is low for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the practice.
The practical way to improve an Avvo Rating is to give the model more to work with: claim the profile, add every jurisdiction and admission date, list education and practice areas, add publications, speaking engagements and awards, and collect peer endorsements from other lawyers. None of that touches the review section, and none of it happens quickly.
What Avvo Will Remove, And What It Will Not
Avvo’s Community Guidelines, last updated on 7 November 2025, are the whole rulebook. Everything Avvo takes down, it takes down because a review breaks one of these. Everything it leaves up, it leaves up because the review does not.
Avvo will remove
Avvo will not remove
A review from someone who did not hire you and did not consult you outside Avvo for their own representation
A negative, harsh or one-star review from an actual client or consultation
A review of you as opposing counsel, or from someone whose relative or associate you represented
A review that describes a real matter inaccurately, as you see it, but not in a way Avvo can check
A review from a payor whose interests were not aligned with the client’s
A review that is an opinion about your competence, communication, fees or manner
A review of you in a neutral role: mediator, arbitrator, guardian ad litem, probate or court-appointed roles
A review from a client who lost, paid, and is angry about it
A review that accuses you of a crime
A review from a client who says less than you would like about why the matter went the way it did
Name-calling, threats, harassment or bigotry
A review whose author you believe you can identify but cannot prove was not a client
A review that publishes an address, phone number, financial or ID data
A review posted years ago that is now out of date
A review produced by an automated tool, including AI
A review you have already disputed once on the same ground
The right-hand column is the one to be honest with yourself about. Avvo says plainly that it does not verify or investigate reviews and does not take sides in factual disputes. A dispute that amounts to “this did not happen the way they say” will be sent to the reviewer, who will confirm they were a client, and the review will go straight back up.
Step 1: Match The Review To A Guideline
Before you touch the dispute form, do the work that decides whether the dispute succeeds.
Screenshot the review with the reviewer’s display name, the star rating, the date, and the profile URL. Then go through your records. Avvo’s most useful rule is the one about who may review: only someone who hired you, or who consulted you outside Avvo for their own representation. If the display name, the practice area, the dates and the described matter do not match anyone in your intake system, your conflicts database or your calendar, you have a non-client dispute, and that is the ground with the highest success rate. A review that is clearly from the other side of a case, from a relative of a client, or from a matter where you were a court-appointed neutral, falls into the same bucket.
If the review does match a real client, read it for the narrower grounds. An accusation that you stole money, forged a document or committed fraud is a criminal accusation, which Avvo will not post. A slur or a threat breaks the conduct rule. A published home address or phone number breaks the personal information rule. A review with the flat, generic, oddly structured tone of machine-written text may fall under the November 2025 automated content rule, and Avvo is now more willing to act on that than it was.
What the review looks like
Guideline to cite
Realistic odds
No match anywhere in your intake, conflicts or billing records
Reviewer was not a client or consultation
Good, and better still if the reviewer never answers Avvo
Written by the party on the other side of a matter you handled
Opposing party or opposing counsel’s client
Good, if the matter is identifiable from the text
Written about your work as mediator, arbitrator, GAL or court appointee
Review of a neutral role
Good, and does not depend on the reviewer replying
Says you stole, forged, defrauded or committed any other crime
Criminal accusation
Good, Avvo can act on the face of it
Contains slurs, threats or harassment
Conduct rule
Good, Avvo can act on the face of it
Publishes a home address, phone number, or account details
Personal information
Good, and urgent
Fluent, generic, structured, and about nobody in particular
Automated or AI-generated content
Mixed, and stronger with several similar reviews to point at
Real client, accurate facts, brutal opinion
None applies
None, go to the response section
Write down the single guideline you are relying on and the evidence for it, in two or three sentences, without any client information in them. That text is your dispute.
Step 2: File The Dispute
There are two doors, and using both is fine.
The first is on the review itself. Log in to your claimed profile, open the review, and use the flag or dispute link on it. That routes the review to Avvo’s Customer Care team with the profile and review already identified. The second is the support request form at support.avvo.com, or the Customer Care contact form, which is the route to use when you want to attach evidence or when the dispute is about several reviews at once. Avvo can also be reached by phone, but a written dispute with a written reply is what you want to have if you ever need to escalate.
The dispute should be short and should do four things: identify the review by URL and reviewer name; name the guideline it breaks; state the factual basis in one or two sentences; and ask for removal. For a non-client dispute, that is as simple as saying that you have searched your records and have no client, prospective client or consultation matching this reviewer or the matter described, and asking Avvo to confirm client status with the reviewer. Do not argue the merits of the underlying case, do not describe the client’s matter, and do not name the person you think wrote it. Everything you send is being read by a moderator, not a judge, and anything that reads as retaliation weakens a dispute that should stand on the rule alone.
Step 3: What Happens While Avvo Reviews It
This is the part that most guides get wrong, so it is worth being precise. When a dispute is accepted for review, Avvo hides the review from your public profile while it is pending. It then contacts the reviewer and asks them to confirm that they were a real client or prospective client, and gives them the option to edit or delete the review. Three outcomes follow.
Outcome
What it means
What you see
Reviewer does not respond, or cannot confirm
Avvo treats the review as failing the client requirement
The review stays down
Reviewer confirms and leaves it as is
Avvo does not adjudicate the facts
The review is reinstated
Reviewer confirms and edits
The reviewer has removed or softened the disputed content
The edited review appears
A guideline violation on the face of the review, such as a criminal accusation or a slur, does not depend on the reviewer’s reply; Avvo can remove it on its own. Timelines are not published. Practitioners who do this regularly report a typical window of one to two weeks, and longer when the reviewer is slow to answer. If you have heard nothing after three weeks, reply on the same support ticket rather than opening a new one.
The temporary hiding is worth understanding, because it is what removal services sell. A review that vanishes the day after a dispute is filed has not been removed. It has been hidden pending the reviewer’s answer, and if the reviewer answers it comes back, usually within a fortnight, often with the reviewer now annoyed enough to add to it.
One thing the dispute cannot do is reveal who the reviewer is. Avvo will confirm client status with them, not with you, and will not pass on their identity even if the dispute succeeds.
Responding To The Review Without A Bar Complaint
Avvo lets you post a public response under any review, and in the right hands it is the most valuable tool on the profile. In the wrong hands it is a disciplinary matter. Both need saying.
The rule is Model Rule 1.6 and its state equivalents. ABA Formal Opinion 496, issued in January 2021, holds that a negative online review is not a “controversy between the lawyer and the client” that opens the self-defence exception, that a client’s own post does not waive confidentiality, and that a lawyer may not disclose confidential information in a public response, even to correct an inaccurate account. It goes further than most lawyers expect: even a general statement that the review “does not accurately portray events” risks confirming that the reviewer was a client and that a matter existed, which is itself confidential. The opinion’s own suggested wording is a request to take the conversation offline, or a line to the effect that professional obligations do not allow the lawyer to respond as they would wish. State opinions in Colorado, DC, North Carolina, Michigan and elsewhere land in the same place, and only a small minority of jurisdictions allow more.
The cautionary case is on Avvo itself. In 2014 an Illinois employment lawyer, Betty Tsamis, replied to a one-star Avvo review by explaining that the former client’s own conduct toward a co-worker was what had lost him his unemployment claim. The Illinois ARDC treated the response as a disclosure of confidential information beyond anything necessary to answer the review, and she accepted a public reprimand. The review, meanwhile, stayed up.
How To Respond To A Negative Review In Two Lines
The workable response is short, calm, and content-free about the matter. Thank the reviewer for the feedback, say that you take client concerns seriously, invite them to contact the office directly, and stop. If the reviewer was not a client and Avvo has not yet acted, you may say that you have no record of this person as a client and have asked Avvo to review it, which discloses nothing. Do not say what the case was, do not say how it ended, do not say why, and do not threaten to sue. The response is for the next prospective client reading the profile, not for the reviewer, and a measured two lines under an angry review does more for that reader than a paragraph of justification ever will.
Safe to say
Do not say
“Thank you for the feedback. We take concerns like this seriously and would welcome the chance to discuss it. Please contact the office directly.”
Anything that names the matter, the court, the outcome, the fee, or the date
“My professional obligations prevent me from responding to this in detail.”
“This is not an accurate account of what happened”, which confirms a matter existed
“We have no record of this person as a client and have asked Avvo to review the posting.” (non-client cases only)
The reviewer’s real name, or a guess at it
A general statement of how the firm handles communication or fees, written for future readers
Any reference to the client’s conduct, character, honesty or ability to pay
Nothing at all, while the dispute runs
Any threat of a lawsuit, a demand letter, or a bar complaint against the reviewer
Two related rules trip lawyers up. ABA 496 confirms you may ask a platform to remove a review and tell it the content is inaccurate, provided you do not disclose confidential information while doing so, which is why the dispute text above stays out of the facts. And North Carolina’s 2021 opinion, among others, prohibits conditioning a refund or settlement on the client removing a review; a refund offered in good faith is fine, a refund traded for deletion is not, and under the FTC’s rule on reviews it can be a federal problem as well.
When Avvo Says No
A reinstated review from a confirmed client leaves you with four options, and the honest ranking is not the one removal services would prefer.
The first is to let the response do its work and add volume. A profile with forty reviews and one bad one is a profile with a 4.9 average; a profile with three reviews and one bad one reads as a warning. Asking satisfied clients for reviews, without incentives and without steering them, is permitted, effective, and the cheapest thing on this list by a wide margin. The section below covers how to do it without breaking a rule.
The second is defamation. Avvo cannot be sued for the review, but the author can, if the review contains a provably false statement of fact rather than an opinion, and if you can identify them. Identification usually means a lawsuit against a John Doe defendant and a subpoena to Avvo, which Internet Brands will handle under its own terms and which the court will scrutinise. More than thirty states have anti-SLAPP statutes that will shift your costs to the reviewer’s side if the claim looks like a suit brought to silence a critic. A defamation action is a real remedy for a review that says you stole from a client when you did not; it is a poor one for a review that says you were rude, slow and expensive.
The third is a court order. If you win, or the reviewer agrees to a consent judgment, an order finding specific statements defamatory will usually persuade Avvo to remove the review, and will separately support a request to Google to remove the URL from search results if Avvo declines. It is the route for a review that is both false and genuinely damaging, and it is a low-five-figure exercise at minimum.
The fourth is suppression, which does not touch the review at all and instead builds out the results that appear for your name: the firm site, bar and court profiles, Martindale, Justia, LinkedIn, published articles, and other review platforms. For a lawyer whose Avvo profile is the first result for their name, that is a three-to-six-month project, and it is often the only project that changes what a prospective client sees, because the review itself was never going to come down.
How To Get More Avvo Reviews Without Breaking A Rule
Avvo is not Yelp. It does not treat asking clients for reviews as misconduct, and a claimed profile gives you a review request tool and a shareable review link for exactly that purpose. Volume is the only thing that reliably fixes a profile carrying one bad review, and it is the thing most lawyers never get around to.
Four rules keep the exercise clean. Ask everyone at the same point in the matter, not just the clients you expect to be happy, because selective solicitation is what state bars and the FTC both treat as review gating. Offer nothing: no discount, no gift card, no credit against a bill, and nothing for staff either, since a review incentivised by the firm is a problem whoever posts it. Do not write, edit, draft or suggest the text, and do not have anyone at the firm post from a client’s account. And check your own state’s advertising rules before you build the request into your closing letter, because a handful of jurisdictions restrict what a lawyer may say when soliciting testimonials and some require retention or disclaimer language.
Practically, the request that works is sent within a week of the matter closing, from the person the client actually dealt with, with the Avvo link in it and a single sentence saying that reviews help other people in the same situation find help. One follow-up, then leave it. Ten reviews a year from a small practice is enough to bury a one-star from 2023 well below the fold, and unlike everything else on this page it costs nothing.
Avvo Fake Reviews, AI Reviews, And The FTC Rule
Two developments have changed the fake-review picture since 2024. Avvo’s November 2025 guideline update bars reviews produced by automated tools, including AI, which gives you a ground that did not previously exist for the increasingly common review that is fluent, generic and about nobody in particular. And the FTC’s Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, in force since 21 October 2024, makes it unlawful to write or buy fake reviews, to sell them, to pay for reviews conditioned on their sentiment, and, in a section that catches lawyers rather than reviewers, to use groundless legal threats or intimidation to get a review taken down. Civil penalties run past $50,000 per violation.
The practical consequence for a law firm is a rule for both directions. You cannot buy five-star reviews, have staff or family post them, or offer a discount for a positive one, and a competitor who does is now breaking federal law rather than merely Avvo’s terms. And when disputing a review, a demand letter to a reviewer that threatens a suit you have no intention of filing is a violation on your side. Dispute with Avvo, sue if the claim is real, and leave the threats out.
Spotting a fake on your own profile is mostly pattern work. Several reviews arriving in a short window, all one star, all with no matter detail that could only come from a client, all in the same register, is a cluster worth disputing together in a single support ticket rather than one at a time, because the pattern is the evidence. A single fluent review with no specifics is harder, and the honest answer is that Avvo will usually take the reviewer’s confirmation over your suspicion.
Where Avvo Sits Among Attorney Review Sites
Avvo is rarely the only page a prospective client sees, and it is rarely the only one carrying the review. A serious response to one bad Avvo review usually means looking at the whole first page for your name, and every major platform has its own rulebook and its own removal path.
Platform
Who it matters to
Removal route
Avvo
Anyone searching a lawyer by name
Guideline dispute, reviewer confirmation decides it
Google
Everyone, because it sits in the map pack and the knowledge panel
Report against Google’s prohibited content policies
Yelp
Consumer-facing practices and small firms
Report against the Content Guidelines, no soliciting reviews
Facebook
Practices that market socially
Report a recommendation, or turn the tab off
BBB
Older and more risk-averse clients
Complaint response process, not review removal
Trustpilot
Firms with a subscription or service product
Flag with evidence, verification of the reviewer
Ripoff Report
Anyone unlucky enough to appear there
Effectively no removal, only rebuttal and suppression
Glassdoor and Indeed
Hiring, and associates researching the firm
Flag against community guidelines
Martindale-Hubbell, Lawyers.com, Justia, FindLaw
Referral traffic and peer credibility
Separate policies, all worth claiming before you need them
Martindale-Hubbell and Lawyers.com sit in the same corporate group as Avvo, which means a reviewer determined to hurt you can put the same text in three places, and it means claiming those profiles is worth an afternoon even if you never plan to use them.
Law Firm Reputation Management After The Review Stays
Most Avvo disputes end with the review still there, so the useful question is not how to remove it but what a prospective client sees when they search your name in three months.
The work is unglamorous and it is mostly owned assets. A firm site with a real biography page for each lawyer, marked up so search engines and AI assistants can read who does what. Claimed and completed profiles on the directories in the table above, plus the state bar listing and any court admissions pages. A LinkedIn profile that is current. Published writing, whether that is the firm blog, a bar journal, a trade publication or a guest article somewhere with an audience. Speaking engagements and awards, which serve double duty because they also feed the Avvo Rating. Between them these are the results that push a review-bearing page down, and they are the results a searcher trusts more anyway.
Two things are worth tracking rather than assuming. The first is what actually ranks for “your name” and “your name plus lawyer” from a logged-out browser, checked monthly, because that list is the only measure of whether any of this is working. The second is what AI assistants say when asked about you, which increasingly draws on the same directory pages and increasingly decides who gets called, and which no amount of removal work touches.
Removal Scams And Red Flags
Search for Avvo review removal and the first page is services promising guaranteed deletion for a fee. What they can actually do is the dispute described above, which you can file yourself in fifteen minutes, and in some cases a suppression campaign dressed up as removal.
Nothing legitimate runs to that clock”Pay only on success” at a low flat feeSuccess will be defined as the review being hidden during a pending dispute, which reverses when the reviewer confirms”We will identify the reviewer”Avvo does not disclose identities outside a subpoena.
Anyone claiming otherwise is guessing or scraping”We will send a legal letter to the reviewer”An empty threat is prohibited under the FTC rule, and it is your name on it”We will bury it with new reviews”If they are writing or buying the reviews, that is a federal violation and a bar problem for you
The pitch
What it really means
“Guaranteed Avvo review removal”
Nobody outside Avvo can guarantee this. They will file the same dispute you can, and the guarantee is a refund policy
“We have a relationship with Avvo”
Avvo’s Customer Care applies the same guidelines to everyone. There is no back channel
“Removal in 24 to 72 hours”
The dispute process waits on the reviewer.
A legitimate firm will tell you which guideline it intends to rely on, whether it thinks the dispute will succeed, what it will do if the dispute fails, and what that costs. If the answer to every question is “removal”, keep your money.
When You Need Someone To Run It
A single non-client review is a fifteen-minute dispute. A pattern of fake reviews, a defamation claim with a subpoena, a court-ordered removal, or a search results page that needs rebuilding around a review that will not come down is a different job, and one that firms in this space handle every week. The firms doing this work properly are in ReVerb’s lists of the leading reputation management firms in 2026, the top reputation management companies for content removal and suppression in 2026, and the leading de-indexing and suppression experts. Ask each one the four questions above, and ask specifically how they handle the confidentiality rules, because a firm that drafts your response without knowing Rule 1.6 is a liability.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can You Remove An Avvo Review?
Only if it breaks Avvo’s Community Guidelines. The strongest grounds are that the reviewer was never your client or consultation, that the review is about you as opposing counsel or as a neutral, that it accuses you of a crime, that it contains threats or slurs or personal data, or that it was generated by an automated tool. A negative review from a real client will not be removed.
How Do I Dispute An Avvo Review?
Claim your profile, use the flag or dispute link on the review, or file a support request with Avvo Customer Care. Name the guideline the review breaks and the basis in one or two sentences, without any client information. Avvo hides the review while it checks with the reviewer.
Can I Delete An Avvo Review Myself?
No. There is no delete button on the attorney side of the profile, and only the reviewer or Avvo can take a review down. Your options are to dispute it under a guideline, to ask the reviewer directly and without conditions to reconsider, or to post a short public response and let it stand.
How Long Does Avvo Take To Remove A Review?
Avvo does not publish a timeline. Disputes commonly resolve within one to two weeks, longer if the reviewer is slow to respond to Avvo’s request to confirm client status.
Does Avvo Hide The Review During A Dispute?
Yes. Once a dispute is accepted the review is hidden from your public profile until the reviewer confirms, edits or fails to respond. If they confirm, it returns.
Is Avvo Legit?
Yes, in the sense that it is a real directory owned by Internet Brands, its ratings cannot be bought, and its moderation team applies published guidelines. It is not a verification service: it does not check that a reviewer was a client before publishing, which is why disputes exist and why a non-client review can sit on your profile until you challenge it.
Is Avvo Free For Lawyers?
The basic profile and the Avvo Rating are free, and claiming your profile costs nothing. Avvo sells advertising and subscription products separately, and buying them does not change your rating, your reviews, or how a dispute is decided.
How Do I Claim My Avvo Profile?
Find your profile through Avvo’s attorney search, use the claim link on it, and verify your identity as the licensed attorney named. Claiming is free and it is what unlocks the dispute tool, the public response tool and the review request link.
Can I Delete My Avvo Profile?
Not in the ordinary case. Avvo builds profiles from public bar records and treats them as a directory listing, so a practising lawyer generally cannot have the page taken down. You can ask Avvo to hide the Avvo Rating if you have no disciplinary history, and a lawyer who has left practice can ask Customer Care about the listing.
Can I Find Out Who Wrote An Avvo Review?
Not from Avvo. It does not share reviewer identities with attorneys and will only disclose them in response to a valid subpoena in formal legal proceedings.
Can I Respond To A Negative Avvo Review?
Yes, and you should, briefly. Under ABA Formal Opinion 496 and the state rules that follow it, you may not disclose confidential information, and even saying the review is inaccurate can breach that. Thank them, invite them to contact the office, and stop.
Does A Bad Review Lower My Avvo Rating?
No. The Avvo Rating is built from experience, recognition and disciplinary history, not client reviews. Avvo says client reviews are not a direct input into the number. Reviews affect what a prospective client reads, not the score at the top of the profile.
What Does The Avvo Rating Mean?
It is a score from 1.0 to 10.0 with a label attached: 9.0 and above is Superb, 8.0 to 8.9 Excellent, 7.0 to 7.9 Very Good, 6.0 to 6.9 Good, 5.0 to 5.9 Average, and below that Concern, Caution, Strong Caution and Extreme Caution. It reflects experience, recognition and disciplinary history, and an unclaimed or sparse profile may show no rating at all.
How Do I Get More Avvo Reviews?
Use the review request link on your claimed profile and send it to every client at the same point in the matter, not only the ones you expect to be happy. Offer nothing in return, do not draft the text, and check your state bar’s advertising rules first. Volume is the only thing that reliably fixes a profile carrying one bad review.
Can I Sue Over An Avvo Review?
You can sue the author for defamation if the review makes a provably false statement of fact and you can identify them, usually through a John Doe suit and a subpoena to Avvo. You cannot sue Avvo, which is protected by Section 230. Anti-SLAPP laws in most states make a weak claim expensive.
Can I Offer A Refund To Get A Review Taken Down?
You can offer a refund. You cannot make it conditional on the client deleting the review; state ethics opinions prohibit it and the FTC’s review rule treats it as suppression.
Will A Removal Service Get My Avvo Review Removed?
A service can file the same dispute you can. If the review does not break a guideline, no service can remove it, and any guarantee is a refund policy. Legitimate firms are useful for defamation claims, court orders and suppression, not for a “relationship with Avvo” that does not exist.
The Short Version
Claim the profile. Check your records. If the reviewer was not a client, was on the other side, reviewed you as a neutral, accused you of a crime, or reads like a machine, dispute it under that guideline with two sentences of evidence and no client details, and Avvo will hide it while it checks with the reviewer. If the reviewer was a real client, the review is staying, and the work is a short, confidential-safe response, more reviews from clients who were happy, and, where the review is genuinely false and genuinely damaging, a defamation claim that can identify the author.
Whatever you do, do not explain the case in public. The lawyer who does that ends up with the review still on the profile and a reprimand next to it.
