Google Reviews, Trustpilot or ReviewSolicitors: which should your legal business use?
Reviews are the fastest trust-builder in legal marketing. But you cannot chase every platform. Here is our honest view on which one to prioritise, and when the others start to make sense.
Why reviews matter more than ever for legal businesses
Legal decisions are high-trust. A prospective client is choosing who to hand a family estate, a business dispute or a personal injury claim to. They will read reviews before they call. They will read them again after the call.
Reviews also feed local SEO (Google especially), directly influence click-through rates from search results (via star snippets), and increasingly show up as reputation signals in AI search summaries. This is not a nice-to-have.
Google Reviews
What they are: reviews attached to your Google Business Profile, shown in Google Search and Google Maps.
Why they matter: they directly influence local SEO rankings. They show up next to your firm in search results. They are free. And they are the reviews prospects check first.
Limitations: you cannot moderate or delete reviews you dislike. You can flag ones that break the guidelines, but Google is slow to act. This is the same for everyone though, and the answer is to get so many good reviews that any negative one washes out.
Trustpilot
What it is: an independent review platform used by consumer-facing businesses.
Why it matters for legal: strong consumer brand recognition, and some prospects trust independent review sites more than Google.
Cost consideration: Trustpilot is free at the basic tier but the paid tiers where reviews start being visible in Google results are meaningful monthly costs. Worth checking whether the ROI stacks up for your business size.
ReviewSolicitors
What it is: a review platform specifically designed for the legal sector, with SRA-aware review moderation and additional context like practice areas and firm size.
Why it matters: strong recognition among certain kinds of legal buyers, and specifically designed for regulated firms. If you are a mid-sized or larger SRA-regulated firm, ReviewSolicitors is where a certain type of prospective client will look.
Limitations: much lower general consumer recognition than Google or Trustpilot. Adds another platform to manage.
How the three compare
SEO value: Google wins outright. Trustpilot has some SEO value at paid tiers. ReviewSolicitors is more useful for sector credibility than for SEO.
Cost: Google is free. Trustpilot is free at basic but you pay for the tier that actually shows up in Google. ReviewSolicitors has paid tiers with additional functionality.
Consumer recognition: Google > Trustpilot > ReviewSolicitors.
Sector relevance: ReviewSolicitors > Trustpilot > Google (though Google's sheer volume makes this less important than it sounds).
Our recommendation
Start with Google Reviews. Always. Get to 20+ reviews, then 50+, then 100+, before you spend money on any other platform.
Consider ReviewSolicitors if you are a mid to large SRA-regulated firm where sector-specific credibility matters and your prospects are actively looking there.
Consider Trustpilot only if you are consumer-facing with high enquiry volumes and the paid tier makes commercial sense.
Do not spread yourself across all three from day one. It fragments your review-generation efforts and leaves you with three half-populated profiles instead of one strong one.
How to generate more reviews regardless of platform
Ask systematically. Every satisfied client, every time. Send a short personal email within a few days of the case closing. Include the direct review link (no login gymnastics). Follow up once if there is no response. Do not incentivise reviews - that breaks both Google's and the SRA's rules for regulated firms. Reply to every review, even the short 'thanks' ones.
How Legal Growth helps
As part of our Digital Footprint and SEO & Visibility services we build a review-generation system that runs quietly in the background. Right platform choice, right ask, right follow-up. Most legal businesses double their review count within six months.
Ready to find out what your next marketing step should be?
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