Learning from Down Under

The recent launch of Lawchoice, the review and client referral service, has shown that the Australian public are becoming more comfortable writing reviews about professional services and not just products.

It really comes down to awareness by the public and
law firms. Once people are aware of the service, they are quite happy to write a review. On the other side of the coin, firms that understand the power of positive reviews have been quick to start gathering them, but these firms are in
the minority.

When the service first conducted a soft launch, the number of negative reviews vastly outweighed the positive. However, the percentage of negative reviews to positive reviews has started to get more balanced, and we expect to see many more positive reviews than negative ones, as firms start to leverage the goodwill of their existing or past clients.

Given that firms deal primarily in an adversarial market, it would not be unreasonable to expect
a firm on the receiving end of
a negative review to resort to threatening the reviewer with defamation. This happened in our first week of operation.

A client had made a detailed review negative in nature and
the firm wrote a letter implying
it would commence defamation proceedings unless the review was taken down. At the same time, it offered an olive branch, waiving all remaining legal fees
if the review was removed, and this offer was accepted by their former client.

All in all, this was a win-win.
The client was not happy and expressed their views in depth and the firm got an opportunity to reflect on its own practices and procedures and improve them. Yes, the firm chose to forfeit some fees, but in our view this was wise, as was its decision
not to institute defamation proceedings against the reviewer.

While the latter course may seem like a good idea, there is
no surer way of making the public at large aware of that negative review and it almost certainly guarantees a backlash towards the firm concerned, irrespective of the merits, or otherwise, of the review.

People understand that no business can keep everyone happy. The key is to have enough positive reviews so as to make the negative ones of far less significance. If you have
20 positive reviews and one negative one, are people really going to take as much notice
of the negative one? I think not.

The reality of the story in the example above was that both the firm and the client had reasons to be less than happy.

Vetting process

As a publisher Lawchoice has
to be careful not to publish defamatory reviews. Often a reviewer will write a perfectly reasonable review and then throw in some adjectives that take it over the edge and into
the defamatory category. So our reviews are not automatically published. A copy of the review is automatically sent to the firm, and we capture the review in
our system, pending the vetting process. Once the review passes our team’s processes, it is published online, whether it
is positive or negative.

Generally speaking, Australian firms do not fear client reviews. However, when we first started, a couple of lawyers were horrified.
I remember playing golf with a lawyer who couldn’t believe that firms should be put under the microscope. It took about three rounds of golf to explain to them the benefit of embracing reviews as a positive referral source.

After all, if it is good enough for every other business to be the subject of online reviews, why not lawyers? Firms
charge high fees and honest independent reviews by the people who pay those fees are exactly what the legal system needs in Australia to ensure transparency.
 

Client satisfaction

At the end of the day, the key
is to have a satisfied client,
and there are many simple
and highly effective ways of doing this.

If a client is unhappy, there is often a good reason. Firms that embrace public reviews will be the ones that flourish. Client reviews are growing by the day and it is only a matter of time before a critical mass is reached. At that point, the question for firms will be – are the online reviews of my firm largely positive or negative?

The only reason a firm has
to fear a review is if their level
of client service is less than satisfactory. Even if the review
is negative, it gives the firm valuable feedback, from which
it can improve its standards. SJ

Christopher Roche is the CEO of Lawchoice