Ratings & Reviews Frequently Asked Questions

Overall star ratings on FindLaw are an average of all the ratings submitted for the attorney or firm. Optional ratings do not influence the overall rating, and vice versa. Likewise, attorney ratings do not influence the law firm rating or vice versa.

The optional ratings mean:

• Value: How well the legal fees that were charged aligned with the services that were delivered.
• Quality of Service: The customer experience, often defined by timeliness, conscientiousness, diligence, efficiency or civility.
• Professional Competence: The attorney's knowledge in their field and ability to adequately represent your needs.

“Service Start Year” is equal to the year that you first engaged with the attorney or law firm. “Service End Year” is equal to the year that you concluded your engagement with the attorney or law firm.

The owner of the profile has verified that the author of the review is a past or present client.

The Recommendation flag means that the review was collected through FindLaw's Recommendation service, which is now retired. Overall rating and optional ratings were not provided by FindLaw’s Recommendation service so are not displayed.

Marking a review as "Helpful" simply gives the review a vote of confidence so that other consumers can easily scan an attorney or law firm’s reviews and see which ones were most useful to other people.

You can leave one review per attorney and one review per law firm. For example, if you worked with John Smith at Smith & Associates, you could leave one review for John Smith and one review for Smith & Associates.

Yes, if you have worked with multiple attorneys and law firms in the past, you are welcome to leave one review per attorney and law firm.

You can make your best estimate. This information is not publicly presented anywhere and is simply shared with the attorney or law firm so they can verify that you were a past client or engaged with them in some way.

Your email address will be used for personal identification only. An email will be sent to you to verify your review. Email addresses will be shared with the attorney or law firm for verification purposes only.

To ensure the reviews left on FindLaw are useful and valid, all reviews are subject to an attorney review period before publishing. During this time, attorneys have 14 days to verify that the review was left by someone they have worked with either in a consultation or as a client. Attorneys are not able to stop a review from being published unless the review includes inappropriate or vulgar content, contains spam, or represents another business.

To ensure the reviews left on FindLaw are useful and valid, all reviews are subject to an attorney review period before publishing. During this time, attorneys have 14 days to verify that the review was left by someone they have worked with either in a consultation or as a client. Attorneys are not able to stop a review from being published unless the review includes inappropriate or vulgar content, contains spam, or represents another business.

There is a "Report" button located directly under the review content.

When you report a review, a member of the FindLaw Support team will assess the content of the review and the reason you selected for reporting it. If it is deemed as inappropriate content, spam, or related to another business, FindLaw Support will remove the review from the profile. If the review does not meet the appropriate criteria for removal, it will remain live on the profile.

No, you are not able to edit your review after it is submitted. However, you can delete your original review and submit a new review. There is a link to delete your original review in the email that you will receive to verify your email address. If you are not able to locate that email, you can contact FindLaw Support and they will provide you with a link to delete your original review.

Yes, you can delete your original review. There is a link to delete your original review in the email that you will receive to verify your email address. If you are not able to locate that email, you can contact FindLaw Support and they will provide you with a link to delete your original review.

It is possible that your review was reported by another party. If your review was reported and deemed to be unacceptable, then it was removed by FindLaw Support. For additional questions related to this scenario, please contact FindLaw Support

There is no functionality that exists today for a consumer to sort reviews on a profile. By default, reviews are sorted in this order: featured review (selected by attorney), verified clients (most recent to oldest), neither verified nor unverified (most recent to oldest), unverified clients (most recent to oldest).

It is left up to the attorney or law firm as to whether the Ratings & Reviews feature is displayed on their profile(s) or not.

Not necessarily. An attorney or firm may have decided to opt out of the Ratings & Reviews services for their own personal reasons or may have not yet received engagement from previous clients for different reasons. Lack of Ratings & Reviews on a firm or attorney profile is not a definitive inference that they are unqualified or unfit to handle your legal need.

You are able to contact the FindLaw Support team by going to https://www.findlaw.com/company/contact-us/please-select-a-topic-to-contact-us-about.html and clicking on the "Ratings & Reviews" link.