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Carefully and consistently — encourage reviews through compliant means, respond professionally to all reviews without disclosing confidential details, and never attempt to remove or suppress negative reviews through means that violate platform policies, which can backfire significantly.
Professional services — particularly legal and medical — operate under confidentiality and ethical obligations that make review management more nuanced than for most businesses. A practice can't simply respond to a negative review by explaining "that's not what happened" if doing so would reveal information about a client or patient relationship, even to correct the record.
What works within these constraints: a general, professional acknowledgment ("We take all feedback seriously and would welcome the opportunity to discuss this directly — please contact our office") that demonstrates responsiveness without disclosing anything. For encouraging positive reviews, the same timing principles apply as any business — right after a positive interaction, with an easy direct link — but many professional services under-utilize this simply because review requests haven't been built into client offboarding processes.
The reputational stakes are often higher for professional services precisely because trust is the primary product. A consistent, professional approach to reviews — encouraging them appropriately and responding to all of them thoughtfully — is part of the broader foundation that establishes credibility before a prospective client ever makes contact.
Want to know where your own foundation stands?
See a sample evaluation report →Directly asking for removal of accurate reviews generally violates platform policies and can create additional reputational risk if discovered. Addressing the underlying issue and responding professionally is the more durable approach.
Industry-specific platforms (legal directories, healthcare review sites) matter alongside Google — a foundation evaluation considers the platforms most relevant to your specific field.
Review handling is one signal among the broader foundation evaluation — how it's handled often correlates with how other trust signals (website credibility, profile completeness) are managed too.