Setting up your Avvo profile unlocks new opportunities to build your online reputation.
When your potential clients are seeking important legal advice or a lawyer who can help them win their case, they only want the best in the business—and they want to find the best person fast.
After all, a standard lawyer fee can cost as much as $400 per hour, which means realizing you have the wrong lawyer just 30 minutes too late leaves a huge dent in your wallet. To help them find the best legal professional the first time around, clients are using Avvo reviews and ratings to make the most informed decisions.
Avvo is an online lawyer directory that receives over 8 million visits every month, with half of visitors seeking urgent legal services. This means Avvo may be your only chance to impress a potential client, so your profile needs to pass the bar. You need to fill up your listing with five-star reviews, strong Avvo ratings, and accurate information, so you can quickly turn your leads into clients.
How does Avvo work?
Avvo uses public information provided by state bar associations and licensing organizations to create its massive listing of millions of lawyers in the United States. Thanks to this extensive resource, there’s a good chance you’re already listed on the reviews platform—along with details about your location, practice areas, and professional standing—whether you’ve thought to check it or not.
Before we get into the details of how you can use Avvo as a legal professional, it’s helpful to first understand how your potential clients are using the directory. Clients are able to search for local lawyers based on their practice area, then view their profiles to evaluate how well-suited the lawyer is to their individual case.
Predominantly, they’re looking for two important indicators about your quality of work: Avvo ratings and Avvo reviews.
Avvo ratings
Your Avvo rating is calculated with a system that Avvo specially created to provide the most objective lawyer evaluations possible. Based on information provided by state bar associations, court records, regulatory agencies, and credible online sources, Avvo will give you a numerical rating on a scale of 1-10. Your work experience, awards, and legal associations may all be taken into account when determining your final score.
If you receive a score of 7.0-7.9 (“Very Good” ratings) or higher, you’re sure to impress Avvo visitors as they’re scrolling through their local search results. On the other hand, lawyers only need to drop below an average 5.0—or have a disciplinary action on their records—to have a bright “Attention” label on their profile. If you’re confident that your work and sense of ethics are on par with industry standards, you’ll be standing out against plenty of competitors in your area.
However, Avvo ratings are only visible if a lawyer has claimed their profile. If you’re not on the Avvo platform, your users currently only have Avvo reviews to go by. That said, claiming your Avvo profile is a must if you want to build trust, steadily increase your Avvo rating, and draw in more views. We’ll show you how to do so later in this guide.
Avvo reviews
Whereas Avvo ratings are calculated through the company’s technologies, Avvo reviews are supplied by real clients who have worked with particular lawyers in the past. These client reviews include star ratings, which are averaged out at the top of your profile, along with lengthier text explaining the reason for the star rating.
Avvo reviews are inevitably more subjective than Avvo ratings, but online reviews matter—perhaps even more than your rating. Consider that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. While automated ratings don’t provide further insight into real-world experiences with you and your law firm, reviews do.
Plus, Avvo is known to be a highly reputable website, which means more client reviews will positively impact local SEO by showing Google you’re an established brand that trusted sources are talking about online.
As more and more people begin their purchasing journeys on the internet, the worth of online reviews is only growing.
Claiming your Avvo profile
The next step that you need to take is claiming your Avvo listing. This will unlock your Avvo rating, allow you to act on existing Avvo reviews, and let you customize your profile to attract more potential clients.
As long as you’re already listed on the platform—which you should be, if there are legal records of your law practice—you can follow these steps to claim your profile:
- Go to the Lawyer Marketing page on Avvo.com.
- Fill out your full name, as well as your city and state or zip code. Tap “Find your profile.”
- Once you find your listing, tap the “Claim profile” button next to your name.
- Accept Avvo’s terms of use and privacy policy. Then select “Continue.”
- Use your LinkedIn or Facebook account to verify your identity. If you have an email address or phone number listed with your state bar or licensing organization, you may be able to use that contact information to verify your identity as well.
- Once you receive a confirmation email, follow the directions in the email.
- Select a password to complete the process.
Maximizing your Avvo profile
As soon as you’ve completed the process to claim your Avvo profile, you can immediately start using your Avvo to showcase your expertise. Avvo offers great opportunities to market yourself and your law firm, such as letting you browse and answer simple legal questions from potential clients and allowing you to offer free consultations on your profile.
If you want to boost your online reputation as a whole, keep reading to learn how you can take the lead in your industry with your Avvo rating and Avvo reviews.
Increase your Avvo rating
When you unlock your Avvo rating, it’s highly unlikely that your score will be a perfect 10. This is because Avvo uses public legal documents and online records to create your final score, which means they don’t have the full picture of who you are. Luckily, showing Avvo that you’re a trusted legal professional isn’t as hard as you may think. All you need to do is complete relevant parts of your profile including:
- Your work experience: The more years of experience and leadership titles you have, the higher your Avvo rating will get. It’s recommended to add all the work experience you’ve had since graduating law school, including positions you’ve held in credible legal associations.
- Peer endorsements: Your peers in the professional legal community can help you boost your rating by adding endorsements to your Avvo profile.
- Your Awards: If you’ve ever received a coveted award from organizations like Super Lawyers or Martindale-Hubble, you’ll see a boost to your Avvo rating when you add it to your profile, especially if you received the reward in the past few years.
- Your Publications: When you add a law-related article to your profile, Avvo will take this as proof of your thought leadership and increase your rating. You can even get publication credit by publishing a legal guide directly on Avvo, which is a great move for building your online presence.
Interact with reviewers
Another way you can maximize your Avvo profile is by interacting with the clients who review your profile. After posting an online review, 53% of clients will actually expect you to reply, demonstrating the importance of your response—even if you’re simply saying thank you to positive reviews.
Of course, creating your Avvo profile also gives you the power to take action on negative reviews. Rather than just letting them sit there to sway other users or leaving your reviewer to feel unheard, you can demonstrate your goodwill by responding professionally and taking the conversation offline.
Gain trust across the web
Getting the best Avvo reviews and ratings possible is essential to boosting your online reputation as a legal professional. While driving leads on Google, Yelp, and Facebook, you can use industry-specific websites like Avvo.com and Lawyers.com to land clients who are already seeking and comparing legal service providers. These are the highly interested potential customers at the bottom of the marketing funnel. As long as your star ratings are the best they can be across all platforms, you’ll be in a good position to get found.
With Podium Reviews, you can interact with your clients even more effectively by sending direct invitations to review you or your law firm on the platforms that matter. Whether you’re a defense attorney or a family lawyer, this tool can help you become the obvious choice for anyone in search of your services.