Are All the Good Reviews True About a Criminal Defense Attorney?

If you plan to get a criminal defense attorney, you should read some reviews online to make sure you are choosing the right one. However, lawyers pay for some reviews, so they may not all be truthful. You should learn some ways to get around the fact that not every review is completely true.

You first need to make sure you choose a review site that makes it difficult for the same people to leave numerous reviews. For example, the site should require you to sign up if you want to rate a criminal defense attorney, and this usually involves a working email address. Some sites only allow one rating for each lawyer per email address, which could help prevent people from leaving several good or bad reviews for the same lawyer in an effort to change the overall rating. You never know if the reviewer is paid by the legal expert to leave good ratings, or if he or she is a competitor trying to bring the ratings down. This is why it is not a good idea to consider sites that do not limit postings for each user.

Of course, some reviewers can find ways to get around the rules of sites. For example, they might sign in with different email addresses. If they are getting paid to do this, it just might be worth their time. So, do not be surprised to see that an inexperienced attorney somehow has hundreds of good ratings. He or she could have paid someone to do this. This is why you should check a few different websites. If all the ratings are mostly on one site, and there are some bad ones on other sites, you might see that what other people have to say is not necessarily true.

Additionally, you should look at the details of each post. If all the posts seem to be on the same day, or within just a few days of each other, they might not be from actual clients. If they were, they would likely be randomly posted for years or at least months, not just all within the last week. You might be looking at a criminal defense attorney who not only would normally have bad reviews from clients, but might also pay people to write positive things online, which is not considered ethical.

If you see any of these signs, you should be cautious. You can always schedule an initial consultation to find out for sure whether the criminal defense attorney you are considering is the right one for you. Also, asking people you actually know for recommendations may be a good move.