Directory Standards
How FirmsVault intends to source, label, claim, rank, and govern law-firm profiles so visitors can understand what each directory status means.
Purpose of the directory
The FirmsVault Legal Directory is designed to help people discover and compare law firms and to help eligible firms manage accurate profiles. It is a technology directory, not a guarantee that a listed lawyer or firm is appropriate for a particular matter.
Profile status definitions
Every production profile should display one clear status. Status labels describe the relationship between the listing, the law firm, and FirmsVault; they do not by themselves rate legal ability.
- Public Listing — a profile assembled from public, licensed, or third-party business information that has not been claimed by an authorized representative of the firm.
- Claimed Profile — a profile for which FirmsVault has approved a request from a person reasonably verified as authorized to manage the firm's listing.
- Verified FirmsVault Member — a claimed profile that has also completed the then-current FirmsVault member-verification process. Unless expressly stated otherwise, this verifies profile control and the firm's FirmsVault membership relationship; it is not an endorsement of legal skill, a promise of bar status, or a prediction of case results.
Listing sources and corrections
Public listing information may come from business directories, mapping or place-data providers, law-firm websites, public professional information, and information submitted directly to FirmsVault. FirmsVault should distinguish its own stored profile information from third-party provider content and retain source/provenance references where permitted so corrections can be evaluated responsibly.
Third-party content remains subject to the source provider's license, attribution, storage, refresh, and display rules. A provider reference identifier may be retained when allowed even when provider content itself must be refreshed rather than permanently copied into FirmsVault.
A firm or other affected person may request correction of inaccurate information. FirmsVault may require reasonable evidence before changing information that affects identity, ownership, professional claims, or profile status.
Claiming a profile
A claim request should not automatically transfer control of a listing. FirmsVault may verify a firm-domain email, business relationship, organization identity, role, telephone or other information before approving control. Higher-risk or conflicting claims may require manual review.
Ratings and reviews
If FirmsVault displays ratings or reviews, the source, scale, and review context should be clear. Ratings should not be visually presented as higher than the underlying numeric score. FirmsVault should maintain policies for suspected manipulation, conflicts of interest, duplicate reviews, unlawful content, and disputes about authenticity.
Case outcomes are fact-specific. A review, prior result, or rating should not be presented as a guarantee of a similar result.
Search ranking and commercial placement
Production organic search should be based on user-selected criteria and neutral relevance factors that help a person evaluate results. Profile claim state, FirmsVault membership, verification membership status, and payments for placement should not secretly improve organic relevance. Users may still choose an explicit profile-status filter. If FirmsVault later offers paid placement, sponsored or featured results should be clearly identified, rendered separately from organic ordering, and not counted as an organic ranking factor.
The exact production ranking model should be documented internally, tested for unintended bias or manipulation, and reviewed when material ranking factors change.
Contacting a firm
Where FirmsVault enables a consultation or contact workflow, sending information through the directory does not by itself mean a law firm has accepted the matter, cleared conflicts, agreed to confidentiality beyond applicable law, or formed an attorney-client relationship. Users should avoid sending highly sensitive or time-critical information until the firm confirms how it wants to receive it.
Misuse and enforcement
FirmsVault may restrict, correct, suspend, or remove a listing or account when reasonably necessary to address impersonation, fraud, security risk, repeated inaccuracy, unlawful content, manipulation, or violation of directory standards. Significant status changes should be auditable internally.
Questions, corrections, and claims
Questions about directory standards, corrections, or profile claims may be sent to hello@firmsvault.com. These standards should be reviewed before expansion into new jurisdictions because lawyer advertising, referral, directory, and professional-responsibility rules can vary.