Can You Dispute Malicious Reviews on Avvo? Yes, Here's How!
Proper legal counsel is important no matter which side of justice you find yourself on. When searching for a lawyer, Avvo is a great place to start if you've never had to review your legal options before. However, the site can still suffer from the same problems as anywhere that allows people to leave reviews, particularly misleading or false ones. Learn to keep people in the know about the real state of the legal community in their area.
Can I Delete Fake Reviews on Avvo?
You cannot other than the ones you wrote yourself. No matter the content of a review, the subject, and any laypeople cannot remove it. It could be possible to have reviews removed if they are false or defamatory, but this would only be done after a process by the site's staff that they do not typically want to do.
How to Report a Fake Avvo Review
While the success rate of getting a review removed from Avvo after reporting it on your own is low, you can still try. If you don't mind all the effort for potentially no reward, here's what you can do:
- Head to the Avvo contact form.
- Fill out the information as requested and explain your issue with the review. If possible, attach any evidence you have to support your case at the bottom of the form.
- Submit your review and wait for the investigation to take place. In some instances, Avvo may write back to request your input or more information, but will otherwise only send a message when the process ends.
Why Will Avvo Will Delete a Review?
Avvo tries to avoid removing reviews as often as possible. This is seemingly to keep their site as potentially accurate as possible, since allowing lawyers to petition the removal of any review that makes them look bad could get tricky fairly quick. In most situations, the only times Avvo will remove a review is:
- If the user who left it cannot be verified as a real person, either a past client or a potential future client.
- If the review is off-topic.
- If the review is objectionable (hate speech, threats, etc.)
When Will Avvo Delete the Reported Review?
Disputed reviews on Avvo will temporarily be removed from an attorney's profile when they are first disputed. From there, what happens next depends on how the investigation goes. If the investigation finds that the review was not legitimate, it will stay removed and no longer appear on the profile. If the opposite is true, the review will return to where it was.
What to Do If Avvo Does Not Delete a Review
It can be difficult to have a review removed from Avvo, even if it is fake. Much of Avvo's investigation process involves asking the reviewer to self-report that their review is legitimate. Since most people wouldn't want to admit that they're lying, it can be hard to get a review removed.
In some cases, all you can really do is ignore bad reviews. If the good outnumber the bad, one or two negative reviews won't be the end of the world, but we highly recommend at least responding. Who knows maybe a little communication will solve the problem. Here are a few tips on how to do it.
| Respond professionally | If the review is unkind and could be damaging to your business and reputation, respond to the review. It could be difficult, but try to be as kind and understanding as possible. |
| Offer to rectify whatever caused the issue | If they are complaining about poor service at your restaurant, compliment them a meal with an apology. |
| Don't try to defend yourself | If you are able to communicate through a private channel, such as messenger or email, do so. |
However, if things are more serious than a single bad review, you may need to take action. If these reviews are part of a defamation case or conspiracy to harm your law business, escalating maybe your best option. Learn more about this option with DoNotPay's Sue Now product.
Let DoNotPay Dispute Reviews on Your Behalf
If disputing a review on Avvo on your own isn't working out, you can get DoNotPay to do it for you. With how unreliable the investigation process can be on Avvo itself, DoNotPay's ability to put extra pressure on the site to work with you can be a major help in getting actual results. Just follow a couple of quick steps to get us going:
- Select which platform the review was posted on.
- Enter the url to the review and upload a photo to help us identify it.
- Indicate why you want to report the review and also provide a detailed description.
- And that's it! We'll report the review so that it gets investigated by the platform and taken down once they determine it's inappropriate.
DoNotPay Will Help You Manage Reviews on Any Site
If disputing reviews on Avvo isn't what you need right now, DoNotPay can still help you out. DNP can dispute and review fraudulent reviews on a ton of different sites and services, including:
- Yelp
- Amazon
- We'll also help remove terrible or misleading photos found on Google business accounts
What Else Can DoNotPay Do?
Now that you know how to dispute reviews on Avvo, you can learn just how many other things DoNotPay can do for you. Here's a list of some of our services:
Join DoNotPay today to dispute malicious reviews on Avvo effortlessly!