The policy decision happens before the request is written.
Google permits businesses to invite reviews that reflect genuine experiences. It prohibits incentives, pressure, requests for specific content, discouraging negative reviews, and selectively soliciting positive reviews. A satisfaction survey that sends happy respondents to Google while diverting unhappy respondents elsewhere is therefore not repaired by softer wording. The routing itself is the problem.
Choose an approved eligibility event tied to a genuine experience, then apply the same neutral request rule across that eligible group. The firm sets the eligible relationships and events after applying its confidentiality and professional duties. Sentiment should not decide who receives the public-review link.
Give the request a state record, not a staff quota.
When eligibility, delivery, response, and escalation remain in different people's memories, the firm cannot reliably tell whether a person was asked twice, sent to the wrong profile, or left without an approved response owner. Record the approved trigger, profile destination, responsible sender, permitted channel, request state, and date. That is enough to control those states without storing the client's matter in the review system.
Do not convert that record into a required number of reviews per employee. Google's policy specifically identifies staff quotas and requests for specified content as rating manipulation. Measure whether the approved process operates consistently; do not pressure the sender or reviewer to produce a rating outcome.
Route the experience to the profile that represents it.
Law-firm local SEO establishes organization and practitioner profile eligibility, ownership, destination, and the route from profile interaction to enquiry. The review workflow uses that controlled profile record rather than whichever review URL an employee finds first.
Store the verified review link with the profile ID, location or practitioner, owner, and last-checked date. Test it while signed out on a phone. Recheck it after an office move, merger, practitioner departure, ownership transfer, suspension, reinstatement, or duplicate resolution. Otherwise a sound request can continue sending experiences to a listing the firm no longer controls.
Ask consistently, without buying or filtering the answer.
The message can be short: identify the firm, make the request optional, invite an honest review, and provide the controlled link. Do not suggest praise, request named staff content, offer a discount or service in return, or require the person to complete the review while on the premises.
Public responses need a narrower factual boundary than internal case notes.
A reviewer may name a matter, lawyer, result, or relationship. Do not treat that disclosure as permission for the firm to repeat or confirm it. The firm and counsel decide what can be said under the confidentiality rules and opinions of the applicable jurisdiction. As model guidance rather than law in every jurisdiction, ABA Model Rule 1.6 and its current comment state that public criticism alone is not the kind of controversy that activates the model rule's response exception. Google separately advises businesses to protect privacy and move complex situations to phone or email.
A response template can set tone and routing, but it cannot decide the facts. Keep public wording general enough to avoid confirming the relationship, then move the service-recovery conversation to the firm's approved channel.
Separate service recovery from platform enforcement.
A negative opinion is not automatically a policy violation. Preserve the URL, date, profile, visible text, and evidence location. Ordinary criticism belongs in service recovery. Possible fake engagement, impersonation, harassment, personal-information exposure, or other policy violations belong in Google's reporting process. Legal, safety, or professional-conduct issues use the firm's internal escalation route.
Keep the states separate: reply, contact privately, report to Google, escalate internally, or take no public action. This prevents a service complaint from being framed as platform abuse and prevents genuine abuse from being handled as ordinary customer feedback.
Measure the operation, not a promised ranking effect.
Track eligible events, delivery, reviews received, profile destination, response state, and internal review time alongside calls, reached enquiries, consultations, and signed matters where the source and outcome can be matched without exposing client details. Do not promise that a review count will produce a particular ranking position. Google describes review count and score as factors that can affect local ranking, but the firm does not control the result or the other local signals.
Use the record to fix the operation: inconsistent eligibility, requests sent to the wrong profile, links that fail, responses waiting without an owner, or enquiries that reach the wrong location. The request script is the smallest part of that system.