Martindale-Hubbell AV Rating Explained

The Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Rating is a peer-review designation given to lawyers judged by other attorneys and judges to have reached the highest level of professional excellence and ethical standards within their jurisdiction and practice area. It's based on confidential peer evaluations, not client feedback, and it sits alongside — but separate from — the client reviews that also appear on a lawyer's Martindale-Hubbell profile. That distinction gets lost constantly in legal marketing, and it's worth getting right before you put an AV rating on your website next to a star count. A peer rating and a client review measure two different things, collected two different ways, and monitoring Martindale and Lawyers.com reviews separately from tracking your AV status is the only way to know whether you're actually keeping both signals current. What the AV Preeminent Rating actually measures Martindale-Hubbell's Peer Review Ratings have existed for well over a century, originally as a print directory attorneys used to vet counsel in other jurisdictions before referring a case. The AV Preeminent designation — "A" for the highest level of legal ability and "V" for "very high" general ethical standards — is the top tier of that system. It's awarded after other lawyers and judges who've worked opposite or alongside you confidentially rate your legal knowledge, judgment, communication skills, and ethics, typically aggregated over a period of practice rather than a single case. Below AV Preeminent, Martindale-Hubbell has historically used additional tiers for attorneys earlier in their careers or with a smaller peer-review sample size . None of these tiers are open to self-nomination in the way some legal awards are — a lawyer doesn't submit an application the way they might for a "best lawyers" listing. The rating is generated from the peer-review process itself, which means it tends to build slowly over a career rather than arriving in a given year the way an annual award does. How the peer review process works Martindale-Hubbell solicits confidential evaluations from other lawyers and judges in a rated attorney's jurisdiction and practice area . Evaluators score the attorney on criteria clustered around legal ability (analysis, judgment, knowledge of the law) and general ethical standards, without the attorney controlling who evaluates them or seeing individual scores. A sufficient volume of positive evaluations, maintained over time, produces and sustains the AV Preeminent designation; a thin evaluation history or evaluations that don't clear the bar keep an attorney at a lower tier or unrated. There's no fee to be rated, and no fee is required to maintain an existing AV Preeminent status . That's worth stating plainly because the confusion runs the other direction more often than you'd expect: attorneys sometimes assume a peer rating, like some awards programs, is something you buy your way into. It isn't. What you can buy, separately, are enhanced profile placements and marketing packages — a different product from the underlying peer evaluation. AV rating vs. client reviews: why conflating them is a marketing mistake A Martindale-Hubbell profile can carry two entirely separate signals at once: the AV Preeminent (or other tier) peer rating, and a client review section where people who say they hired the firm leave star ratings and written feedback, the same way they would on Google or Avvo. These numbers move independently. A firm can have a strong AV rating built over twenty years of peer regard and still have only three client reviews on the same profile, or the reverse — a newer attorney with a thin peer-review history but a growing base of enthusiastic client reviews from recent matters. Treating an AV rating as if it's a stand-in for client satisfaction, or displaying it blended into a star-rating widget as though peers and clients are the same audience, is exactly the kind of practice ABA Model Rule 7.1's ban on misleading communications is built to catch . Our guide on attorney advertising rules for reviews and testimonials covers this exact labeling issue in more depth — the short version is that an AV rating should always be identified as a peer-review designation, never presented next to a star count in a way that implies the two measure the same thing. The same confusion applies to Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers, which are also peer-selection recognitions rather than client reviews — see our comparison of whether Super Lawyers is worth it for how that process differs from Martindale-Hubbell's. How to build toward an AV rating Because the rating is generated from peer evaluations you don't directly solicit the way you'd ask a client for a review, there's no shortcut checklist the way there would be for improving a Google rating. What actually moves the needle over time: consistent, visible professional conduct in front of opposing counsel and judges; active participation in bar association work and continuing legal education, where other attorneys get to observe your work firsthand; and simply practicing long enough, in one jurisdiction and practice area, for a meaningful sample of peers to have an informed opinion. A lawyer who's practiced across four states in six years will generally have a thinner, more scattered peer-evaluation base than one who's built a reputation within a single legal community over the same period. Speaking at CLE programs, serving on bar committees, and taking on co-counsel or referral relationships with other attorneys — the kind of activities covered in our broader guide to law firm marketing ideas — tend to build peer visibility as a side effect, even though none of them are done specifically to chase a rating. Advertising an AV rating the compliant way Most state bars permit referencing an AV Preeminent rating in advertising and on a firm's website, but a handful require disclosing the rating organization's name or the general basis for the rating if it isn't widely recognized as a neutral, independent evaluator . Martindale-Hubbell's rating has enough history and name recognition that most jurisdictions treat it straightforwardly, but a multi-state firm should still confirm the specific requirement in every state where it advertises rather than assuming the rule that applies at the home office applies everywhere. Label it clearly — "AV Preeminent Rated by Martindale-Hubbell, 20XX" reads very differently from an unlabeled "5.0" sitting next to a Google star count, and the labeled version is both more accurate and lower-risk under Rule 7.1's unjustified-expectation standard. Lawyers.com and Martindale client reviews: a shared network worth watching together Martindale-Hubbell and Lawyers.com run on the same corporate network as Avvo , which means client reviews and endorsements posted on one can sometimes surface on another rather than staying isolated. A firm that only checks its Martindale profile and ignores Lawyers.com can miss a complaint that's fully visible on the sister site. Our roundup of the best lawyer review sites covers how all of these platforms fit together, including which carry client reviews, which carry peer ratings, and which are plain directory listings with no review mechanism at all. Watching both the peer-rating side and the client-review side of a Martindale profile at once, rather than treating a strong AV rating as reputation management finished, is the practical takeaway here — a firm with an excellent peer rating and three stale, unanswered client reviews from two years ago is still presenting a weaker overall picture to a prospect than its AV status alone suggests. Frequently asked questions Do I have to pay for an AV Preeminent rating? No — the underlying peer-review process and the rating itself aren't fee-based . Martindale-Hubbell and its affiliated network do sell separate paid marketing and profile-enhancement products, which is a different purchase from the rating. Can I lose my AV Preeminent rating? Ratings are generally tied to an ongoing peer-evaluation process rather than awarded once and locked in permanently , so sustained peer regard over time matters more than a single strong evaluation period years in the past. Is an AV rating the same thing as a Google review score? No. An AV rating reflects other lawyers' and judges' confidential assessment of your legal ability and ethics; a Google review reflects a client's assessment of their own experience. Both are legitimate, useful signals, but they answer different questions for different audiences and should never be displayed as if they're interchangeable. Should I mention my AV rating in client-facing marketing, or is it only useful for referrals? Both audiences find it useful, but for different reasons — other attorneys sending referral work care about peer regard directly, while a prospective client is more likely to read it as a general credibility signal alongside your actual client reviews rather than a substitute for them. Keep both visible and clearly labeled rather than leaning on one to the exclusion of the other. Every review from Google, Avvo and Facebook in one inbox → Try Tailwind free. Tailwind runs $5 a month per tool, or $50 a month for the Full plan covering every tool, with the first month free and no card required to start.