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Most attorneys know they should care about Google reviews. Far fewer have a deliberate strategy for Avvo — and for many practice areas, that's a meaningful gap.
Avvo is the largest legal-specific directory in the United States. It ranks attorneys, surfaces their profiles in Google search results for legal queries, and feeds prospects into intake calls every single day. For personal injury, family law, immigration, and criminal defense in particular, an underdeveloped Avvo profile is leaving cases on the table.
This guide walks through what Avvo actually is, how its rating system works, why it matters for attorney marketing, and the specific tactics that grow your Avvo review count ethically and consistently.
Avvo launched in 2007 as an online lawyer directory and rating service. It was acquired by Internet Brands (the parent company of Martindale-Hubbell and Lawyers.com) in 2018, consolidating much of the legal directory ecosystem under one corporate roof. Despite the consolidation — and predictions years ago that Avvo would fade — it remains one of the most visited legal websites in the country and a meaningful traffic source for many firms.
Three reasons Avvo still matters:
Search visibility. Avvo profiles rank well in Google for searches like "[city] personal injury lawyer" and "[name] attorney reviews." When prospects search for you by name, your Avvo profile is often one of the top results — which means whatever appears there is shaping their first impression before they ever visit your website.
Trust shortcut. Many prospects don't know how to evaluate an attorney. Avvo's rating system gives them a number, and they use it. Whether or not the rating perfectly reflects attorney quality is beside the point — consumers treat it as a signal.
Direct intake. Avvo profiles include click-to-call buttons, contact forms, and Q&A features that generate inbound inquiries. Firms with optimized profiles regularly get clients directly from Avvo without those clients ever visiting the firm's own website.
For solo attorneys and small firms, ignoring Avvo is harder to justify than ignoring most third-party platforms. The traffic is real, the cost is zero (for the basic profile), and the work to optimize it is one-time.
Avvo's rating is a 1-to-10 score that appears prominently on every profile. Understanding what drives it helps you grow it intentionally.
The rating algorithm considers:
Notably, client reviews and peer endorsements influence the rating but are not the dominant input. Avvo's stated position is that the rating is based on professional credentials more than reviews. This is different from Google, where review count and rating are the primary signals.
The practical implication: a brand-new attorney with a complete profile and a few credentials can outrank a 20-year veteran with no profile activity. Many attorneys see their Avvo rating jump several points after spending an afternoon filling out their profile properly.
That said, reviews do matter — both for the rating itself and for the prospect's decision once they land on your profile. A 9.0 attorney with no reviews looks suspicious. A 9.0 attorney with 47 reviews looks established.
Avvo has two separate review systems, and most attorneys conflate them.
Client reviews come from people you've represented. They appear in the main reviews section of your profile, contribute to your overall star rating (separate from the 1-10 Avvo Rating), and are visible to prospects evaluating you.
Peer endorsements come from other attorneys. They appear in a dedicated section of your profile and signal credibility within the legal community. Peer endorsements feed into the Avvo Rating algorithm and matter especially for attorneys whose practice depends on referrals from other lawyers.
Both matter, but they're collected differently and serve different purposes. The strategy in this guide focuses primarily on client reviews, with notes on peer endorsements toward the end.
Before you focus on collecting reviews, make sure the profile actually deserves them. A polished profile converts visitors into reviewers and clients; an incomplete one wastes the traffic you do get.
A complete Avvo profile includes:
Basic information. Full name, firm name, all jurisdictions you're admitted in, contact information including phone and email. Verify everything matches your bar registration.
Practice areas. Avvo lets you select practice areas with percentages indicating focus. Be specific. "Personal injury - 80%, Workers' compensation - 20%" is better than "general practice."
Professional photo. A clear, professional headshot. Not a corporate-stiff one, not a casual selfie. The same photo you'd use on your firm website is fine.
Office locations. All offices where you actually practice, with addresses and contact information.
Education. Law school, undergraduate, year of graduation. Include any LLM or specialized degrees.
Awards and recognition. Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, board certifications, Avvo's own awards if applicable. This category is one of the heaviest contributors to your Avvo Rating.
Publications and presentations. Articles you've written, CLE presentations you've given, books you've authored. Don't undersell — most attorneys have more of this than they remember.
Bar association memberships and leadership roles. State bar sections, local bar leadership, ABA committees, specialty organizations.
Languages. If you or your staff speak languages other than English, list them. This drives meaningful traffic from non-English-speaking prospects.
A thorough biography. Write the bio in first person, focus on the kinds of cases you handle and the kinds of clients you serve, and include keywords prospects might search for. Don't just paste your firm website bio — Avvo's search behaves differently and rewards specificity.
The "completeness" score on your profile is something Avvo calculates and displays to you when you log in. Get it to 100% before you start any review-generation work.
The mechanics of asking for an Avvo review are similar to asking for a Google review, with a few platform-specific considerations.
Avvo requires reviewers to create an account. This is the biggest friction point. A client who's willing to leave a Google review in 30 seconds may abandon an Avvo review when asked to register. The implication: don't ask for Avvo reviews from clients who haven't already shown willingness to leave reviews on easier platforms. Avvo is best collected from your most engaged clients.
The review form asks specific questions. Avvo prompts reviewers to rate categories — trustworthiness, responsiveness, knowledge, value, kept me informed — rather than just leaving a single star rating. This produces more substantive reviews but also takes the client longer.
Reviews are subject to Avvo's moderation. Avvo reviews go through a moderation queue and can take days to appear. This is different from Google, where reviews post immediately. Don't panic if a review you know was submitted doesn't appear right away.
Direct linking is possible. Your Avvo profile has a unique URL. You can direct clients to a specific page that prompts them to leave a review. The link format is typically https://www.avvo.com/attorneys/[your-profile-slug]/write_review.
A practical request workflow:
Setting expectations about the registration step reduces the abandonment rate significantly.
The general timing principles for legal review requests apply — wait until the matter is fully resolved, ask soon after rather than months later, give the client a clear and easy path. We covered the general framework in our guide on ethically asking clients for Google reviews.
For Avvo specifically, two additional timing considerations:
Don't burn out clients with multiple platform requests. Asking for Google, Avvo, Facebook, and Yelp reviews in the same week feels like a homework assignment. Stagger the asks — Google immediately after closing, Avvo a week or two later, others only if a strong relationship suggests the client is willing.
Skip Avvo for clients who would be uncomfortable creating an account. Older clients, clients who don't use much technology, clients who explicitly mention being privacy-conscious. Don't push the platform that creates the most friction on the clients least likely to complete it.
Peer endorsements are different from client reviews and often easier to collect, but most attorneys never think to ask.
A peer endorsement is a brief professional recommendation from another attorney. It typically takes the form of a short paragraph noting your expertise, professionalism, or some specific quality. They appear in a dedicated section of your Avvo profile and contribute to your Avvo Rating.
The good news: most attorneys with good professional relationships will write peer endorsements when asked. There's no ethics issue (you're not paying), no bar rule complication, and no real downside for the endorsing attorney.
A simple ask, sent by email to attorneys you have a real working relationship with:
Hi [Name],
I'm in the process of building out my Avvo profile and was wondering if you'd be willing to leave a peer endorsement. They're brief — just a sentence or two about working with me. The link is here: [link]
Happy to return the favor on yours if you'd find it useful.
Thanks,[Your name]
The exchange-of-endorsements aspect is normal and accepted in the attorney community. It isn't compensation, it isn't a referral fee, and it doesn't run into the same rules as client review incentives.
Target 10-20 peer endorsements from attorneys in your community — opposing counsel you've worked with respectfully, co-counsel from past matters, attorneys in adjacent practice areas, and bar association colleagues. The presence of multiple peer endorsements signals legitimacy to prospects and contributes to your overall Avvo presence.
Some patterns that consistently cost attorneys reviews and visibility:
Treating Avvo as a one-time setup. A profile that's 80% complete and untouched for two years atrophies. Update the profile annually — new awards, new publications, new positions, new practice area emphases.
Ignoring the Q&A feature. Avvo's Q&A section lets attorneys answer legal questions from the public. Active participation drives meaningful traffic to your profile and feeds into your Avvo Rating's "professional contribution" component. You don't need to spend hours on it — answering 2-3 questions per month in your practice area is enough.
Letting old reviews speak for an outdated practice. If you used to do criminal defense and now focus on estate planning, but your Avvo reviews are all from criminal cases, the profile sends mixed signals. Update the practice area percentages and start collecting reviews relevant to your current focus.
Failing to claim the profile at all. Avvo creates profiles for attorneys based on bar admission records, even if you've never logged in. Unclaimed profiles are usually incomplete, and any review activity on an unclaimed profile is essentially wasted. Claim and verify your profile if you haven't.
Not responding to Avvo reviews. Like Google, Avvo allows attorneys to respond to client reviews. The same confidentiality rules apply — keep responses general, don't address specific facts, don't confirm representation in a way that violates Rule 1.6. We covered the framework in our post on responding to negative reviews as a lawyer.
If you only have time to focus on one platform, focus on Google. The traffic volume is higher, the friction for clients is lower, and the SEO benefit is broader. We'll cover the full comparison in a future post on Avvo vs Martindale-Hubbell vs Google.
That said, Avvo is one of the few secondary platforms where the effort-to-reward ratio is favorable for legal practices. A complete Avvo profile with 20+ client reviews and 10+ peer endorsements is a credible, well-defended online presence in addition to Google.
The right hierarchy for most law firms:
A reasonable goal for most firms: get Avvo to 100% complete in one afternoon, run a peer endorsement push for one week, and then incorporate Avvo into your standard client review request workflow alongside Google.
The firms that grow their Avvo presence consistently don't manage it manually. They build it into the same automated workflow that handles Google review requests.
A simple integration looks like:
TrueReview handles multi-platform review requests with this kind of staged logic — Google, Avvo, Facebook, and any other platform configured for your firm — using the same case management system triggers (MyCase, Clio, PracticePanther, and others). The platform tracks which clients have left reviews on which platforms and prevents the over-asking that leads to client fatigue.
Avvo is a meaningful but underutilized platform for most law firms. The work to optimize it is one-time, the cost is zero for a basic profile, and the traffic is real — particularly in the practice areas where prospects use Avvo as a research tool.
If you take three things from this post:
For more on building the broader review system this fits into, see our pillar guide on online reviews for law firms and our post on ethically asking clients for Google reviews.
Want to manage Avvo, Google, and every other review platform from a single dashboard? Start a free 14-day trial of TrueReview — automated multi-platform review requests, integration with your practice management software, and built-in compliance with bar association and FTC rules.
