Removing your account from Avvo has become an issue for many lawyers. Alas, it's impossible to do. In this article, we discuss how to make your Avvo account work for your benefit.
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Avvo’s influence in the legal sector has seen a decline since its zenith in 2018, affecting its Avvo rating among both other legal professionals and potential clients.
The platform has faced scrutiny, including lawsuits, over the dissemination of inaccurate information about licensed attorneys. As a result, users have increasingly turned to other legal directories for their needs.
Contrary to popular belief, erasing your Avvo profile is not feasible due to the platform’s policies and public records. But don’t lose hope just yet.
If you’re a lawyer, you understand the importance of adapting your strategy to improve your case. The focus should shift from “How to remove yourself from Avvo” to “How to optimize your Avvo profile for professional conduct and positive client reviews.”
This article aims to shift your viewpoint and provide actionable steps to manage your online reputation, specifically focusing on your Avvo account and Avvo rating system, without resorting to the impossible task of account deletion.
Avvo is a directory for law firms that creates lawyer profiles based on public records and information such as your bar status and practice areas. So, how do Avvo ratings work?
Avvo ratings are public record statements protected by the First Amendment.
Since information about you is publicly available, there is no reason Avvo needs your permission to post it.
It doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about your online presence on Avvo or elsewhere.
Avvo’s goal is to provide accurate information with its rating system. As such, the company is happy to update your data if you prove it incorrect.
You can also seek other avenues to upgrade your lawyer’s profile and gain people’s trust.
Still, how much does your Avvo presence really matter?
Avvo represents one fraction of your online presence if we zoom out to see the big picture of your marketing strategy.
Law firms have websites, social media, email newsletters, and blogs to help put themselves on the map and gain complete control over their marketing and attorney profiles.
The sum of these efforts matters more for your online reputation than any individual platform.
Compared to other marketing platforms like SEO or social media, Avvo also has an unimpressive conversion rate from visitors to potential clients, even if you’re doing it right.
Based on one case study from 2017 of a lawyer with a perfect 10 Avvo ranking and an upgraded plan, the conversion rate from visitors to clients was only 0.0083% during Avvo’s peak period.
Today, with just 169,236 visits per month, Avvo is past that peak.
Avvo’s total number of organic keywords has also dwindled away.
Avvo’s total number of organic keywords has also dwindled away.
This graph shows that the company’s SEO presence is off because it lost nearly 50% of the keywords it once ranked for.
In other words, competitors are outranking Avvo, and when people see search results for various legal questions and issues, they click on content from other sites because it shows up first.
Fewer people than ever are finding law firms through Avvo.
There are better ways you can spend your marketing budget.
So, why not ignore Avvo altogether? Three reasons:
| Reason | Quick explanation |
| 1. It affects SEO | Any information linked to you sends signals to search engines, affecting your credibility and your ability to rank on Google |
| 2. Avvo is still a source of customer traffic | Despite the decline in traffic, your Avvo profile page is still the first impression a potential client makes of you |
| 3. Objective and trusted by clients | The limited control that law firms have over Avvo increases some clients’ trust and confidence in the information they read on this platform to make informed decisions |
The Avvo rationale is simple: An independent platform means a higher likelihood of accurate and unbiased information, which translates to more educated decisions for clients.
However, this premise only works if your profile shows relevant, up-to-date details about you and other attorneys.
You need to proceed with extreme caution when editing your free profile.
You risk potential clients seeing you in the wrong light or not feeling confident enough to get in touch if your Avvo attorney profile…
Now that we know why law firms can’t delete Avvo profiles, it’s time to move on.
Focus on the things under your control: how can you maintain a good reputation and avoid missing out on new clients?
Get the most out of your situation in five steps:
| Step | What it means in a sentence |
| 1. Do not try workarounds to remove public data on Avvo | Don’t feed Avvo false information because it could cause SEO issues and doom your other marketing efforts |
| 2. Claim your Avvo profile | Take control by claiming your profile so you can edit it whenever you want and fill in the relevant details |
| 3. Request profile modifications | Ensure all information about you is accurate and ask for changes if it’s not |
| 4. Showcase your expertise | Include practice areas, work and academic experience, and professional achievements in your profile |
| 5. Monitor your online reputation | Respond to all Avvo reviews and engage with your audience on multiple platforms, not only on the Avvo platform. |
Now, let’s elaborate on each point.
You can’t remove your Avvo rating and negative reviews unless Avvo deems them false. You are eligible to hide your Avvo ratings more client reviews only if you meet two conditions:
In all other cases, the information collected on Avvo is there to stay.
Many attorneys try to work around the fact that deleting their Avvo ratings is impossible by feeding Avvo false information, but this is a terrible idea you should never consider.
Messing with your Avvo rating leads to SEO issues that can do more damage than bad reviews.
Even if you’re willing to sacrifice your Avvo traffic completely, Google collects all the available information and links about you from all around the web to determine your credibility.
If your Avvo profile contains fake or contradictory information compared with other sites, it could affect your ability to rank on search engines because they don’t recognize you.
Not ranking on search engines effectively undermines any other effort to position yourself as a trustworthy lawyer online.
So, what should you do instead to counter that pesky Avvo review that makes you look bad?
Since your Avvo rating is out there whether you like it or not, you might as well take the wheel.
Fill in the details to give your reviewers a complete picture, claim your profile and influence their overall impression.
To be clear, we’re not suggesting you manipulate or skew the truth. That’s foul play.
Instead, add more details about your experience, areas of practice, previous results, and what happy former clients might have to say about your attorneys to show yourself in a positive but truthful light.
Start by claiming your profile:
Now, you can edit parts of your profile, add information, and hope for good and positive reviews.
Ensure the data on your profile is 100% accurate and up-to-date.
You can edit the parts you have access to. If something is wrong and you cannot change it, make an official request to Avvo’s support team to do it for you.
It’s also a good idea to check with the state attorney licensing body that the public information is correct.
If there’s a mistake in the records kept by state bar associations, Avvo will amplify it.
Rectify mistakes at the source, and you have grounds to convince Avvo to follow suit.
To trust you to solve their problem, your potential clients and all other users who may need your legal advice representation need to know you’re an expert in it.
Take care of your profile and update details like practice areas, work and academic experience, court and public records used, and professional achievements to establish credibility.
The platform encourages attorneys to create profiles and answer questions to be more visible to potential clients.
However, this free labor doesn’t automatically translate to landing more paying clients, so you need to decide if it makes sense to engage this way.
Whatever the case, do NOT use Avvo’s paid services – they’re not worth it!
When it comes to reputation management in your Avvo account, you can:
More importantly, look at your reputation across all your channels and platforms.
People looking you up are likely to check multiple sources of information to verify your credibility and peer endorsements – and so is Google.
What you want, above all, is consistency across all platforms.
Besides, Avvo isn’t the most popular platform for online reviews. Most people start their search for licensed attorneys on Google.
One survey shows that 50.43% of respondents start with Google research to solve legal problems, compared to only 3.76% of people using Avvo and other legal directories.
Getting more online reviews is always a good idea to highlight your expertise and put in a good word with potential clients. If you don’t know where to start – Google is the best choice.
Besides embracing and taking control of your Avvo profile, expanding your online presence is a great idea to:
So where do you go?
Try these alternative legal directories:
Justia is very similar to Avvo. It’s a legal directory for informational and educational purposes.
Besides providing information about attorneys, it offers a massive library of legal guides, laws and regulations from regulatory agencies, region-specific resources, and worldwide legal cases in the news.
You can list your basic information with Justia’s free plan, including:
If you upgrade to premium for a fee, you get access to profile analytics to see how many people clicked on your attorney’s profile.
Premium profiles also appear at the top of search results above the free plan profiles, making you more visible to the audience.
Justia has far surpassed Avvo in traffic, with 3.8 million visits per month, compared to Avvo’s 169,236 monthly visits.
Its SEO presence is also much healthier, with around seven times more organic keywords ranking on search results and result pages than Avvo.
If you have to pick just one directory, Justia is probably the one.
FindLaw is one of the most popular platforms among attorneys, seeing 14 times more monthly traffic than Avvo.
You can include basic information about your practice on the free FindLaw plan. Premium gives you a 4,000-word window for additional information such as:
According to FindLaw, Premium is well-suited for law firms because it allows you to add information about many lawyers and create a narrative about your law firm.
This directory also offers various marketing services, including website design, pay-per-click advertising, content marketing, and link building.
If you’re considering FindLaw, you should do your due diligence and see what other lawyers have to say about it.
The company has received negative client reviews because of its lackluster marketing services, conflicts of interest, and history of engaging in link spam.
However, its SEO presence is solid. The fact that it ranks for almost three million keywords is good news for your profile exposure.
Super Lawyers is a part of the FindLaw network.
Apart from its regular directory services, it also provides Super Lawyers ranking, which you can link to from your FindLaw account.
Compared to larger directories, Super Lawyers has only a fraction of the traffic, although it surpasses Avvo’s.
Still, if you’re using FindLaw, extending your reach to Super Lawyers and adding their ranking to your profile makes sense.
This way, you look better on both directories and get a chance to impress site visitors who find Super Lawyers organically. As we can see below, their ranking is good.
Similarly to FindLaw, Super Lawyers offers other marketing services that extend to print opportunities and recognition merchandise for legal associations.
NOLO has over one million visits per month and over 30,000 listed attorneys.
It’s been part of the Martindale Legal Marketing Network with Avvo since 2011, but it’s been around longer.
Unlike other directories, NOLO doesn’t have a free plan. It markets itself as an upgrade from competitors.
Aside from posting basic information about you, NOLO allows you to list your fees upfront for potential clients.
With over 1.5 million relevant keywords ranking around the web, the company can give you high-quality leads.
Lawyer.com connects clients with local lawyers.
It’s the least visited directory on this list, including Avvo, and has no free plan.
Its SEO presence doesn’t make any guarantees about the number or the quality of your leads.
So, why use it?
Lawyer.com has a range of complementary services you can use with your Premium membership:
If you’re looking for a hand with client management and communication and not just a directory listing, you can consider Lawyer.com.
It’s not a mistake. Lawyers.com, with an “s,” is part of the Martindale-Avvo network, which connects prospective clients with an attorney.
It makes sense to tap into the network and expand to Lawyers.com because you already have an Avvo profile. If you do, you can get paid ads and up to 97,000 additional visits per month.
Granted, most of them won’t see your profile specifically, but at least there’s a chance.
This directory has its own resource library to help clients manage their expectations by reading similar stories.
They can get an estimate of the length of the process or the type of budget they need before they pick a lawyer to represent them.
What about its SEO? Lawyers.com ranks for half as many keywords as Avvo.
When it comes to your reputation and SEO, you have options. However, deleting your Avvo profile isn’t one of them.
Building your presence on legal directories helps you cast a wider net.
When you maintain up-to-date online profiles, it helps you win over new clients, sends positive signals to Google, and boosts your SEO strategy.
Want to learn more about how SEO works for lawyers? Start with local SEO, and read more about how it applies to your specific location and practice area on the dNOVO blog.
If you need a hand optimizing your site, get in touch! We’re here to help.
If you’re still wondering about how to deal with your Avvo profile or have received a bad review, here are some common questions to help you out.
In a nutshell, you can’t delete it because Avvo collects publicly available information.
Avvo is just a directory, and it doesn’t need permission to post this information because none of it is private.
Short of abandoning your license, you can’t remove your Avvo profile.
Here’s precisely what to do:
As long as your information is correct and you’re responsive to Avvo reviews and messages, your profile on the Avvo platform only needs to match your other social media profiles.
At the very least, this guarantees you won’t hurt your SEO despite any specific negative review you may worry about.
Go to Avvo’s website and follow these steps to claim your profile:
We’ve mentioned the first six of these law firms names directories earlier, but here they are again, with a couple of others for your consideration:
Also, check out our article about Canadian law directories for even more information.
Respond to Avvo reviews, thank your reviewers, check that all the public information is correct and up-to-date, and request changes if you notice something is wrong.
Want people to pick your law firm? Show them you’re a trustworthy licensed attorney by putting information about your law firm office out there and not hiding negative Avvo reviews or past mistakes.
Want to be authoritative? Help clients with your expert knowledge and always maintain professional conduct.
There are no shortcuts – your reputation starts with you.
Keep analyzing feedback and use it as your reputational compass.
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