Why have a Good Lawyer Guide?

There are many thousands of excellent solicitors across England and Wales. We believe that solicitors are frequently criticised unfairly and that often such criticism is ill-informed.

The media traditionally focus on issues such as poor-quality work, and prefer to make news out of the failures of a few individuals. We would prefer to applaud the success of the many committed, high-quality, talented solicitors. The whole thrust of our approach is to praise the praiseworthy, not chastise those who have made mistakes.

Our mission is simple. We want to be the first port of call when seeking an answer to the following question:

“I have a legal problem. Do you know a solicitor I can use?”

 

We provide free, independent, and unbiased advice on choosing a solicitor

Do I have to pay to be included?

No. All individual solicitors are listed free of charge and we do not accept advertising or payment from individual solicitors. Firms can advertise.

How do I edit my details?


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Download ‘Easy Guide to Editing your Individual Profile’

  1. Go into your profile and select the words ‘edit your details; add photo, fee-rates, languages spoken’
  2. Insert your email address. That should be an address that is linked to your firm (eg …@smith.co.uk) and not a generic email address (such as a Hotmail, Google, or Yahoo)
  3. We will then email you. Click the verification link in that email and you can then create your own password

You will then be able to edit your details, and add these, free, extra features:

  • Photo: upload a photo (or change your existing photo)
  • Fee quotes: let potential clients know your range of fees. And say if you offer special deals (eg first half-hour free), or CFAs
  • Languages spoken: if you speak a language other than English then say so, and identify yourself to clients for whom English is not their first-choice language

Alternatively, your firm can register with us and then be authorised to edit your details (and the details of all solicitors in the firm). Click here for more information on this.

Download ‘Easy guide to editing your firm’s Profile’

NB Your firm can pay also pay to Subscribe. If your firm is a Subscriber then you will be able to post extensive additional profile information about yourself (and the firm can post additional details about all its solicitors and extended information on the firm as a whole). Click here for more information.

Can I edit my Firm’s details?

Only an authorised user can edit a firm’s details. Click here for more information on this.

Download ‘Easy guide to editing your firm’s profile’

What is my review based on?

Your review score is derived from the collation and analysis of publicly available data about your professional life, to which we apply variable ratings. We do this using our proprietary algorithm – a mathematical formula which applies various weightings to different criteria.

Please note that our reviews do not purport to be based on objective or factual views as to how good a solicitor is.

Any review is subjective. Our reviews are subjective because we select the criteria to apply, and the weight that we apply to them. We base that selection process on our years of experience analysing the legal market. However, another reviewer might take the same data (or different data), apply different weightings, and come up with entirely different reviews and ratings. Thus our reviews are designed to be subjective opinions and should not be misinterpreted as statements of objective fact.

Can I display extra information about myself?

Yes – see ‘How do I edit my details?’ above

There are further ways to improve your standing with potential clients:

  1. Ask your clients to post reviews of your work (click here).
  2. Ask other solicitors to post lawyer-to-lawyer reviews of you (click here).

Your firm can Subscribe (and then display additional information about you, the firm, and all its solicitors). Click here for more information.

Can my firm display extra information?

Yes. Click here for more information.

Can I post a photo of myself?

Yes, you can post your photo free of charge. Yes – see ‘How do I edit my details?’ above. At the same time, you will have the opportunity to post a note of your charging rates, and details of any languages you speak.

Can I pay to improve my ranking?

No! Our rankings of individual solicitors are derived from our proprietary algorithm. They are not affected by whether you or your firm pay any money to us. Indeed, to avoid any suggestion that solicitors can buy improved ratings, we do not allow individual practitioners to buy advertising on the site.

Should I ask clients to post reviews of me?

Yes. If you can get your clients to post positive reviews of your work, that will undoubtedly encourage other people to use your services. And it will increase your profile within this website.

Encourage your clients to post reviews. That is by far the best form of recommendation.

Can I get other solicitors to review me?

Yes. We encourage lawyer-to-lawyer reviews, since we take the considered judgements of professional colleagues extremely seriously. However, please bear in mind the following with regard to peer reviews:

  1. They cannot be written by solicitors within the same firm (even if in different offices).
  2. They cannot be written on a reciprocal basis by agreement. Our system detects such activity!

Note that lawyer-to-lawyer reviews cannot be posted anonymously - the name of the individual posting the review must appear (and will then link through to that solicitor's profile).

What if I don’t like what a client has said about me?

We do our best to guard against unfounded criticism. Thus, we will delete scurrilous, libellous, or offensive postings when they are brought to our attention. Likewise comments that involve disputed facts are not tolerated.

If you feel that something written about falls into any of these categories then please notify us immediately so we can take the appropriate steps. To contact us about such a complaint click here.

What we will not do, however, is simply remove a review for no good reason. For example we will not remove a review merely because, as a matter of principle, a solicitor does not want us to feature that review. We believe in open and reasonable debate, and solicitors - as officers of the court - operate in a public context that is open to reasonable debate and opinion.

How do I correct errors in my professional details (such as a change of address)?

Please see ‘How do I edit my details?’ above.

I have changed firms. How do I change my details?

If you have registered with us (see ‘How do I edit my details?’ above), you can log in, remove yourself from your old firm and associate yourself with your new firm.

I have received an email from Good Lawyer Guide with details of a potential client. Are you referring work to me?

All users of Good Lawyer Guide can ask for a quote. We will then email their details to up to recommended solicitors. This is a free service - we do not charge you or the client.

If you do not want to receive emails from prospective clients then you can opt-out. Please follow the procedure for posting information about yourself (see ‘How do I edit my details?’ above) and select the opt-out option.

Why am I not listed in the Good Lawyer Guide?

We cover over 55,000 solicitors but we do not claim to be 100% comprehensive. Many solicitors are excluded for the following reasons:

  • we do not have any publicly available data on all solicitors
  • we do not include recently-qualified solicitors
  • we do not include solicitors who work outside of private practice (for example those who work for a company or public authority)
  • we do not include solicitors from the largest commercial firms (which are only instructed by large companies and institutions)

We cannot undertake to add solicitors into our system by request.

In what order do ‘recommended solicitors’ get listed?

Solicitors are listed by star-ranking. Within each star-ranking, they are listed as follows:

  1. solicitors at Subscriber Firms (in random order)
  2. solicitors who have uploaded colour photos or other information (in random order)
  3. other solicitors (once again, in random order).

Please click here for more information on how your firm can improve its presence in our guide.

Using our ratings responsibly.

Our review system is subjective. Our ratings are an evaluative assessment, using our own judgement. We take core data and then weight that data based on our own subjective opinions regarding the relative importance of various attributes, such as professional experience and professional history. We do not disclose how an attribute is scored or how it is weighed in comparison with other attributes but we apply the same criteria and weighting equally to all the solicitors we rate (ie everyone is treated the same).

Anyone looking at this site, whether a potential client or a lawyer, should appreciate that any system designed to rate the professional abilities of solicitors will incorporate the expertise and reflect the subjective opinions of the reviewers (ie this website). That being so, our ratings/opinions should not be misconstrued as statements of actual fact.

Another reviewer looking at the same underlying data could come up with vastly different reviews to ours (depending on their subjective views of what is relevant and what is important). For example, we might look at how long a solicitor has been qualified and then assign to that a value which is then crunched with the values assigned to the solicitor’s professional history, qualifications etc. The product of this calculation is a number between one and ten. But any figure or score we allocate is figurative: it represents in an abstracted form a collection of attributes and the weight that we have subjectively assigned to them. Such a score or review is not a statement of fact. For instance, a particular solicitor might take issue with his or her review score because he or she is a partner and therefore thinks he or she should be rated higher than someone who is not a partner; but that agitated solicitor should realise that we are not stating a fact, merely a subjective opinion based on our application of what we regard as relevant criteria. Our rating means no more and no less than that.

Plus there may be other relevant data that our rating does not consider. For instance, another reviewer might place importance on the level of University degree (or the University attended), something to which we attach no significance.

In addition, when looking at our review, it is important to remember that there are many other and more important factors that a potential client should take into account when choosing a lawyer (eg personal empathy with the individual lawyer; cost; location; specialist expertise; language, and so on). In that mix, reviews and ratings of the sort that appear on this website are only a small ingredient.

These reviews are intended to applaud and acknowledge solicitors who have attained a level of professional expertise that by our criteria and ranking system deserves appropriate recognition. Conversely, if a solicitor has a review that is lower than they might think is appropriate, it is not the case that we are disparaging that solicitor or their professional expertise. It is just that, based on our standard criteria (with our standard weighting), that individual solicitor does not get as many stars as some others. It does not mean that the solicitor is bad, incompetent, to be avoided or is not as good as someone. To draw such an implication is to give our subjective ratings an objective significance that they do not merit (or purport to possess).

Putting it simply, there is no objective standard by which anyone can measure a solicitor's abilities with certitude. Reviews are, by their very nature, subjective and debatable. Although a rating or review (such as ours) may rely in part on objectively verifiable data, the interpretation of that data is ultimately a subjective assessment by us, not an objectively verifiable fact.