News focus: What happened when a solicitor challenged a defamatory review

Review sites are a staple of modern life, whether we are buying a toilet, renting a holiday home, or – as is increasingly the case – instructing a solicitor.

But what if the solicitor under review did not apply to be featured on the site? And what if the review is left not by a former client but by a vengeful litigation opponent, or someone else with a grudge? What checks are these sites – embraced and enabled by the Solicitors Regulation Authority – carrying out to make sure reviewers are legitimate? And what recourse does a solicitor have to remove reviews that they consider to be misleading, unfair or both ?

The issue was brought into sharp relief this week when the High Court ruled against a specialist debt recovery firm’s attempt to discover the identity of a reviewer who called the firm’s working environment ‘toxic’.

BW Legal Services, which is based in Leeds, applied for a Norwich Pharmacal order against the Glassdoor employer review website over two negative posts, one of which criticised its alleged ‘military-style environment’ and another that said: ‘The job is so dull you’ll fall asleep at your desk.’

The firm – which the court heard has a rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on 59 reviews – tried to bring the claim through a London-based company within the Glassdoor group, Glassdoor Global Ltd (GGL), and an order was granted on the papers in November. But, when the application bundle was delivered to GGL’s offices that month, US-based Glassdoor Inc gave notice that it intended to dispute the High Court’s jurisdiction on the basis that an application for Norwich Pharmacal relief cannot be served out of the jurisdiction.

Glassdoor Inc argued that valid service had not been effected and that, even if it had, its terms of use granted exclusive jurisdiction over any proceedings against it to the courts in California. And, in judgment, Mr Justice Jay ruled that the High Court has no jurisdiction to hear BW Legal Services’ claim as Glassdoor Inc’s business ‘is not carried on from GGL’s offices in the City of London’ and GGL’s business is ‘legally separate’.

Such disputes abound. The Gazette has learned of another case, where a family solicitor claims she struggled to have an obviously defamatory review removed from a site which is taking part in an SRA pilot.  

’Lucy’ (not her real name) contacted the Gazette to say she was the subject of one single review left in January 2021 on one of the biggest sites of its kind, ReviewSolicitors. This comment described her as ‘unprofessional, incompetent and biased’; and her profile was littered with one-star ratings.

Apart from the embarrassment of being subject to such a withering appraisal, the solicitor – of whose identity ReviewSolicitors is aware – had one core complaint: she did not believe the review was from a client. Instead, she insisted, it was simply an intemperate outburst from a party who had appeared as a litigant in person against her.

She had not agreed or signed up to be included on ReviewSolicitors. Instead, her publicly available information was shared by the SRA with the site as part of a pilot scheme looking into how consumers can access more information about their potential representatives. The solicitor’s email address was part of such information and ReviewSolicitors states that it contacted her immediately to flag up that a review had been left. Lucy says she did not see this notification.

Lucy told us: ‘I am coming to the end of my professional career and feel really upset that this is what people will find if they Google me.’

ReviewSolicitors disputes much of what the solicitor says. The site says its signup team contacted Lucy’s firm as part of a standard call to promote the platform, which prompted her to discover the negative review. In order for a firm or solicitor to respond to a review, or highlight it as inappropriate or against its terms and conditions, they can sign up to a free account in order to interact with the site and address potentially defamatory comments.

The issue here appears to be that the solicitor was either unable or unwilling to sign up, having never wanted to be part of the platform in the first place. ReviewSolicitors said it was in constant contact with the solicitor and offered assistance with completing its defamation notice, but even when this was submitted, required information was missing on multiple applications and the process was not completed.

This is the first time such a problem has arisen, says ReviewSolicitors, and the solicitor was offered free, bespoke assistance to help her deal with the issue.

Following more guidance from the site, Lucy succeeded in submitting a completed defamation notice and the post, under the site’s policies, was immediately removed. ReviewSolicitors says the solicitor had agreed she did not know the identity of the person who posted the review and that the suggestion it was a disgruntled opponent was ‘engaging in speculation rather than making a statement of fact’.

The offending review is, indeed, now gone. As it happens, another review has since appeared complimenting the solicitor and giving her a glowing reference. The issues of verification and sites being used for personal vendettas are not particular to ReviewSolicitors or even to the legal sector in general. But whereas a plumber is likely only to be judged on the quality of their plumbing, solicitors are judged not only by clients but by litigants on the opposing side. The chances that people with a grudge might target review sites are greater in the legal sector than most others.

So what does ReviewSolicitors do to weed out those vindictive comments? The site states clearly that it will allow reviews only from genuine clients of the firm and potential clients who had an experience of the firm and decided against using it.

Those specifically identified as ineligible to post a review include litigation opponents, a beneficiary named in a will, somebody higher up the chain in a property transaction or a spouse who wants to leave a review on behalf of their partner (unless express permission is given). However this relies on a self-declaration by the reviewer.

If a firm does not recognise the reviewer, it has the option to use the ‘request reviewer’s details’ process to ask for more details.

In an update to its site last month, ReviewSolicitors said it has a ‘fair and transparent’ process for dealing with defamatory reviews, and that comments can be immediately suspended at the request of firms by logging into their account.

The site added: ‘If the poster of the review does not fully engage with us, the review will remain removed, and the user will be blocked from leaving any further reviews. It is that simple.’

The SRA will have to look at non-client reviews when it assesses the success of its ongoing transparency pilot (see box, top). An SRA policy associate admitted in correspondence with Lucy  – seen by the Gazette – that the issue was a ‘problematic area’ and that it would focus on approaches by different sites to help firms challenge non-client reviews.

The problem faced by the solicitor and review site in this case may be nothing more than crossed wires, or might have been caused by a user unable to follow clear guidance about how to start the simple procedure of having reviews taken down. But while non-clients can log into these sites without some arbitrary and unrealistic checks like solicitor letters or retainers being shown, this will be a problem.

Especially for those solicitors who never wanted to be reviewed in the first place.

 

Additional reporting by Sam Tobin and Paul Rogerson