How can a really bad lawyer get dozens of outstanding reviews on the internet?  I know an attorney, who for obvious reasons I won’t identify, who gives incorrect legal advice, and yet gets rave reviews and top rankings in Google.  He has told people that they can file bankruptcy when they can’t.  Even worst, he has told people that shouldn’t file bankruptcy that they can.  Such legal advice could have adverse effects, such as losing their homes.  I know this these things because some of the people that have gone to him have had the good sense to seek second opinions and have visited me. 

Being an ethical person, and never writing my own reviews, I feel strongly about this problem.  Morally I find faked reviews offensive and in a very real practical way it financially hurts me, my staff and family.  I have reported the faked reviews to Google on a number of occasions.  Their only response was a form letter saying that they were very busy and they suggested that I take up the matter with the offending lawyer.

The practice of posting faked reviews has become such a common problem that one can’t read reviews without the thought, are these real reviews?  The New York Times had a story on this issue today. 

 If something isn’t done about this problem reviews will have be of little assistance in determining whether a service or product is good or not.  Just last night, when I was shopping online for hiking pants, I faced this dilemma.  There were 103 reviews; most were rave reviews and a few really bad ones.  What was the truth?  Were the bad ones real and did the company buy dozens and dozens of faked reviews to drown out the real bad ones? 

A few companies like Yelp are trying to deal with faxed reviews.  In fact they sued an attorney for faxing reviews. On the other hand, Yelp “filtered” out 3 of 4 reviews that clients had left on their website for me because they suspected that they were faxed.  If they really can eliminate most faked reviews I guess it might be worth the elimination of 75% of my legitimate reviews, but there is no way of knowing how successful they are in filtering out faked reviews; and being wrong 75% of the time isn’t very impressive. 

In order to counter the faked review problem I propose that you, the consumer, write reviews, both good and bad, when appropriate.  Also, when you read reviews, keep in mind - are these real reviews or am I being lied to? 

For more on this subject you may view the NPR story on fake reviews and the Forbes story on Yelp.