Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog

Cindy Greenway, Editor in Chief of LawMarketing.com reached out to Carlton Dyce, Vice President of Peer Review Ratings and Client Review Services at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell to get his thoughts on the importance of attorney rankings.

The topic of attorney rankings has been a hot one for several weeks.  We've heard some say that attorney rankings, ratings and reviews don't help attorneys connect with consumers  - we've also heard others say they matter a great deal.

I reached out to Carlton Dyce, Vice President of Peer Review Ratings and Client Review Services at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell to get his thoughts on this topic. Carlton has over 25 years of broad publishing and production experience covering data collection and database management.

Bottom line is this - whether they're buying a washing machine or buying a car, consumers appreciate the importance of ratings and rankings when it comes to making a formal decision.

The same is true in the legal space.

Today consumers are leveraging ratings and rankings to make an informed decision, and lawyers need to look at that as a way of differentiating themselves, a way to stand out. Ratings increase the likelihood of being hired by buyers of legal services, and what they do is they also provide consumers, corporate counsels and small business owners with that sort of extra reassurance.

Ratings also provide a sort of third-party validation.  Consumers like to hear reviews and feedback in verbatim from people like themselves, and what they're looking for is to see whether or not that person like them, what kind of experience they had. Was the experience someone had with that divorce lawyer the kind of experience where he or she was responsive to the specific matter or did he or she not ever call back in this difficult time.

Consider this information the next time you hear someone say that rankings, ratings and reviews don't matter.