Beyond your website: the Law Society directory, rankings, reviews and articles bylined by lawyers

6.1 Before you send any letter: sign-off sheet, fixed service fee, banned-word list

What you'll do in this section: when you sign the service contract, fix it in writing that we take only a fixed service fee; after that, every batch of outreach material passes three checks before it goes out — family-law material first passes our own de-identification check before it is sent for sign-off, written authority and this batch's sign-off sheet are on file (signed by a partner or director), and the material clears the banned-word list with zero hits; miss any one of these and nothing goes out. Outreach goes only to editors, directory operators and the media; we never send messages to potential clients on the firm's behalf.

Law firms have nothing like the statutory letter of appointment that dental clinics use to authorise publishing on their behalf. PCR r 42(1) reads: "A legal practitioner must ensure that any publicity relating to the legal practitioner’s practice complies with these Rules, whether that publicity is by the legal practitioner or by any other person on the legal practitioner’s behalf." [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]: every word we write and send on a firm's behalf counts as the lawyer's own publicity, and the responsibility rests with the lawyer alone; it does not pass to us. What lets us publish on a firm's behalf is that this rule itself provides for someone else publishing on the lawyer's behalf [Original text not obtained]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: the PCR in full; check date: 2026-09-29), 85% confidence. So the written authority and sign-off sheet in the figure are not a legal formality; they are our own control gate [Conservative line (not statute text)].

The signatory is fixed as a partner or director (in a sole proprietorship, the sole proprietor signs): under r 42(2), the duty to correct publicity that is wrong falls only on the lawyer personally and on the firm's directors and partners, not on employed lawyers [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; the person who bears the duty to correct is the one who signs, and if something goes wrong, the correction letter goes out under their name too (6.4). Whoever on the firm's side liaises with us is fine; that staff member remains under the lawyer's supervision — r 32 reads: "A legal practitioner must, regardless of the legal practitioner’s designation in a law practice, exercise proper supervision over the staff working under the legal practitioner in the law practice." [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]. One sign-off sheet per batch, with its fields fixed in Appendix B.4; three of them are directly relevant to this section: the family self-check sheet number (family-law material with no number is not sent for sign-off), how we charge (a fixed service fee, with the contract number written in), and the fixed statement above the signature line: "It does not transfer the lawyer's responsibility for the publicity, and it does not take on the publishing party's own legal liability."

A written sign-off resolves only the stop-and-escalate situations in 1.1; it never turns something banned as Statute text into something publishable; nor can it shield us from the four offences that fall on us (1.1). Two of these come up most often in family cases (FJA s 10 governs only proceedings in the Family Justice Courts; CYPA s 112 covers children and young persons in any court proceedings, see 1.1): publishing information that could identify a child involved in the proceedings makes "the person who publishes or distributes it" the offender (CYPA s 112(5)(b)), and s 112(9) counts both websites and messaging systems as publishing; breaching a Family Justice Court order restricting publication is an offence for "Any person" (FJA s 10(5)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.4]. So before family-law material is sent for sign-off, someone we designate first runs it through the de-identification check (Appendix B.4); any single hit means it is not sent for sign-off; even once a lawyer has signed, our own responsibility as the publisher still stands.

The other two offences sit on fees and wording. If we take money per lead, per signed client or as a share of legal fees, we may be committing the offence under LPA s 33(3) (placing a lawyer's services at someone's disposal for a fee): a company's first offence draws a fine of up to S$25,000, a repeat offence up to S$50,000, with directors and staff separately liable (s 33(6), (7)); if we operate as a partnership or a limited liability partnership (LLP), the partners are personally liable too (s 33(7A), (8)); the firm's side breaches the rules as well: paying us as a percentage of legal fees or a share per case breaches r 19 (not sharing legal fees with a non-lawyer), and paying per lead or per signed client falls into the "commission or other form of consideration" that r 39(2)(b) bans [Statute text; see Appendix A.1, A.2]. A fixed service fee itself [Original text not obtained]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: all of LPA s 33; check date: 2026-09-29), 70% confidence — have legal review the quote and the contract. If a firm wants to pay per case that comes in, there is no scaled-back version we can offer: we do not take the work (the third start gate in 0.2). The last row on the right of the figure: we never write, in sales material, proposals or on our own website, anything that could make people think we are qualified to practise — the offence under LPA s 33(1)(b) [Statute text; see Appendix A.2], and which wording falls into that is our own judgement [Conservative line (not statute text)], 75% confidence.

Outreach goes to only two kinds of people: editors and directory operators of third-party pages, and the media. We never send cold messages to potential clients on a firm's behalf — no "we welcome enquiries" by mass email, DM or WhatsApp. r 39(1) reads: "A legal practitioner or law practice must not tout for business or do anything which is likely to lead to a reasonable inference that the thing was done for the purpose of touting." [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; the Council of the Law Society of Singapore (the Law Society) states in PD 6.2.2 that handing out flyers in a public place can be treated as touting, and distributing publicity letters and business cards to HDB households breaches r 44(1)(a), (c) [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]; applying this to cold emails and DMs is our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)], 75% confidence. When someone publicly asks online for a lawyer to take their case, the lawyer replies personally: give only general information in the public area, and send any quote or offer of engagement privately — this comes from 2012 guidance by the Law Society's Ethics Committee, from the old-rules era, and the current Practice Directions do not carry it [Conservative line (not statute text)].

There is one more step on the start checklist that the firm does itself: use a members' account to export the written ethics guidance in the Law Society's members' area and the 2019 and 2020 Ethics Digests. The Law Society's own note says: "From 2015 to date, the Advisory Committee has issued more than 100 written guidances to members." [Statute text; see Appendix A.5]; we cannot get hold of this material [Original text not obtained]; where it contains case-specific rulings on directories, paid placements or reviews that take a stricter position, that firm follows the stricter position; if a ruling like "lawyers may not ask clients for reviews" or "fee ranges or price lists on a website are unbefitting the dignity of the profession" turns up, the whole book moves law firms to the strictly regulated side in that quarter (0.2).

Two common mistakes: mass-mailing "we welcome enquiries" to potential clients on the firm's behalf; billing the firm "per signed client" or "per case that comes in". The general spec for the outreach gate is in → General Edition 6.2 The send gate, paid listings and the citation-slot table; law firms sit on the branch where switch A is on, except that here the "written publishing authorisation" is replaced by our own written authority and sign-off sheet.

6.2 Paid placements: the Law Society directory is worth considering; referral platforms get nothing

What you'll do in this section: for a paid placement, ask what the platform does before asking how it charges — platforms that refer, assign or match cases for law firms get nothing, whether they charge per lead, per completed engagement, a commission or a fixed entry fee; only a display-only slot, where the reader chooses and the platform does not refer or assign cases, is worth considering against a fixed rate card, and in this class the book recommends only the Law Society's own "Find A Featured Lawyer/Law Firm" directory (the Featured directory); if one is bought, the work order, monthly report and website all record it, truthfully, as a paid listing.

The first question comes before the billing method because the dividing line is drawn by what the platform does. GN 6.1.1 para 35 reads: "There are prohibitions against a law practice rewarding any person for referring work to them. The participation in any Internet referral schemes which requires the law practice to pay a fee or share fees paid for legal services referred would be a breach of the LPA." Para 36 goes on: "Even if no fees are paid or shared, any participation in an online introduction service or referral service carried out in such a way as to ‘unfairly attract work’ to the law practice would be improper given the terms of section 83(2)(b) and/or section 83(2)(h) of the LPA." [Statute text; see Appendix A.3] — on the wording alone, "pay a fee" is enough to catch a referral platform, and even an introduction platform that charges nothing may be improper; what counts as "unfairly" is our own judgement [Conservative line (not statute text)], 60% confidence.

For paying per lead, per completed engagement or by commission, the ban in r 39(2)(b) reads: "must not reward the referror by the payment of any commission or other form of consideration;" [Statute text; see Appendix A.1], with r 19 and LPA s 83(2)(d)(e) alongside it [Statute text; see Appendix A.1, A.2]; paying a fixed entry fee to a referral or matching platform also counts as "other form of consideration", in our reading [Conservative line (not statute text)], 80% confidence. LPA s 83(7) lets the Minister make rules exempting s 83(2)(d)(e); on 2026-09-29 we checked the full table of the LPA's current subsidiary legislation on SSO, and none of it is an exemption rule made under it [Statute text; see Appendix A.2] — there is no exemption available for consideration paid for a referral. Conveyancing, and motor-accident and personal-injury work, have their own referral rules (r 40(1)(c), PD 7.4.3 D.2) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1, A.3], and between lawyers, no referral fee may be taken for a referral alone either (PD 5.5.1) [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]; negotiating any referral arrangement on a firm's behalf is not part of our service.

The reciprocal-link row: PD 6.1.2 addresses a property agent's website linking to a law firm, and it is allowed only if there is "no form of financial arrangement" between the two; the link text also must not imply that the other party can give legal advice — the sentence that follows, "Otherwise, this may constitute an offence under section 33(1)(b) of the Legal Profession Act (Cap 161, 2009 Rev Ed).", governs that implication [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]. Applying this to other business partners' websites is our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)]. A reciprocal link that carries a referral fee, is paid per click or shares revenue is a paid placement, not a reciprocal link; under the figure above, judge it as "pay nothing".

A display-only slot that the reader chooses, with no referral or case assignment, can be bought against a fixed rate card [Original text not obtained]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: PCR r 39, GN 6.1.1 paras 33–37, PD 6.1.2, the Law Society's Featured directory page; check date: 2026-09-29), 70% confidence. In this class the book recommends considering only the Law Society's own "Find A Featured Lawyer/Law Firm" [Conservative line (not statute text)], 70% confidence, for three reasons:

• The regulator sells it itself, and states plainly that it is advertising. The Law Society's page reads: "You can find a lawyer or law practice by area. Please note this is not a complete list as the listings are paid by advertising." [Statute text; see Appendix A.5]: on the page it looks like a plain listing by practice area with the reader choosing, with no sign of referral or case assignment; we never got the rate-card terms, so ask in writing before buying (see below).
• AI reads it in recommendation-type questions. In L3 (2026-09-29), across the 7 recommendation questions (near me ×2, is this firm good ×2, who's best ×3), individual firms' listing pages in the directory were cited by ChatGPT — combining both runs — in 3 of the questions, and by AI Mode in 2 questions; the directory's index page was separately cited by ChatGPT in 2 questions and by AI Mode in 1. How the wording on a listing gets read is covered in 6.3.
• AI sometimes notes on its own that it is a paid listing. In 5 answers across 3 questions (L3, 60 answers in total), ChatGPT told the user this directory is not a complete list, and in 2 of those it said outright that the firms in it chose to advertise there. But the reverse also happened: for "is this firm good", ChatGPT twice treated the firm's listing in the directory for conveyancing work as one reason to trust it (L3, single case). We cannot control how AI reads it; what we control is never writing it up ourselves as a recommendation.

We never got the rate-card terms: the old advertising page now returns 404, and the current Advertise page lists the law-firm directory as a bookable advertising slot with enquiries routed to the Publications department, but no rate card or terms are posted [Original text not obtained] (see Appendix B.1). Before buying, ask in writing about three things — the billing period, how much it costs, and whether there is any referral or case assignment; if even one cannot be answered, do not buy. The URLs of cited entries carry a year (for example "2026-2027"), which looks like the listing runs by year, but this is only how the URL looks, and it was not checked (family R2, single case). In the AI Mode round's record, the directory index page's Google summary showed only a small number of firms per practice area, from single figures up to the teens (for example, 11 in family law, 4 in criminal, 4 in personal injury) — this is the number in the summary, not checked by opening the page (L3, 2026-09-29, single case).

Once we buy one, three disciplines apply: paid entries are marked "paid listing" line by line in the work order and monthly report, with the cost listed separately, spec in → General Edition 6.2 The send gate, paid listings and the citation-slot table; we never write "Law Society recommended", in English or in Chinese, on the website, in proposals or in monthly reports — the Law Society's own wording says it is paid advertising, so calling it a recommendation is a claim that cannot be checked [Conservative line (not statute text)]; we also never put the Law Society's armorial bearings (its crest) on the website (r 42(4)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]. If a client insists on buying another provider's display-only slot, the signatory gives written reasons and it is judged item by item against the figure above (the conservative line can be relaxed on written reasons, see 1.1). Paid placements already sit last in off-site effort, for the reasons in → General Edition 6.1 Where the effort goes, and two numbers that must not sit side by side: finish the four free steps in 6.3 first.

6.3 Directories and ranking guides: fill in your own entry completely

What you'll do in this section: work through the four free steps in the figure below, in order, before touching the paid placements in 6.2; for every directory listing that already includes the firm, fill in the fields completely from the website — approved full name, every office and which practice areas each one handles, every practice area, and one sentence on the fee basis; take part in ranking guides through their normal review process, never self-nominate where the guide does not allow it, and judge anything that charges under 6.2.

First, how big this cell is: for law firms, directories and rankings matter only for "which firm to pick". Across L3's 30 questions, the Law Society directory page and peer-reviewed ranking guides together were cited by ChatGPT run 1: 6/146 (run 2: 7/161), AI Mode: 4/122, all of it falling inside the 7 recommendation questions (2026-09-29); in the public dataset's 22 family-law questions, rankings, review platforms and the Law Society directory together account for 10/171, and again they are the main source only in the two "which firm to pick" questions (2026-09-23). For the rest of the question types, ChatGPT cites the courts and government, and AI Mode cites law firms' own pages. So this section is not a lot of work, but it carries real weight within the recommendation questions: across the 31 citations in ChatGPT run 1 for those 7 questions, the Law Society directory, ranking guides and legal directories together account for 9 citations — as many as government pages (9) and more than law-firm websites (7) (L3, 2026-09-29).

Step 1 comes first because, in recommendation-type questions, AI Mode cites Google's own card pages directly: of the 24 AI Mode citations across these 7 questions in L3, 3 had a card title that was simply the firm's name (some with the branch name), which look like location cards, not checked page by page (2026-09-29). How to fill in the five business profiles is covered in → General Edition 3.4 Third-party credential tiers, Wikidata and the five business profiles; law firms add only one rule: the name on the profile uses the approved full name [Conservative line (not statute text)], with the "LLC" or "Law Corporation" suffix for a law corporation (LLC) (LPA s 154(3)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.2].

Step 2's registers are checked only, never submitted to: the LSRA's lawyer and law-practice lookup, the SAL Directory of Specialists (121 entries as of 2026-09-29, 0 in family law), and the list of touts published by the Family Justice Courts (check whether any business partner you work with is on it, Appendix B.4 item 7). In answers, these serve as the exit where users go and check for themselves, not content that gets copied: across the 14 ChatGPT answers to L3's 7 recommendation questions, 9 sent the user to check the LSRA (2026-09-29). So the work is making sure the firm name and lawyer names on directories, the website and lawyer pages match the register lookup word for word; write "LSRA register lookup link + check date" on lawyer pages and directory listings, and do not write any number until the register's own field name is confirmed. The Law Society's own Legal Costs / Disputes page is likewise not reachable — in L3, ChatGPT cited it in the same 5 questions in both runs (price 3, rules 1, checklist 1) — link the fees page to it as the official channel for fee disputes (1.3).

Appearing in a third-party directory has an explicit rule of its own: r 46 permits a law firm "to be publicised in, or in conjunction with, the publicity of any third party", provided this is "Subject to the Act and these Rules" [Statute text; see Appendix A.1] — once on a third-party page, r 43 and r 44 still apply. We write the entry on the firm's behalf, and under r 42(1) it is the lawyer's own publicity: pick a designation only from the approved list (r 33, PD 3.5.2), back the expertise sentence with r 43(2) evidence, and never let the entry make any peer price comparison (r 43(1)(c)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1, A.3]; write the name character for character from the approved full name [Conservative line (not statute text)], 75% confidence.

The blurb the firm writes for itself in the directory is the proper route for getting the firm's own sentences onto an authoritative domain (r 46, see the paragraph above), and AI reads it accordingly: in family R2, ChatGPT cited a sentence the firm wrote for its own Law Society directory listing, "We offer fixed fees for uncontested divorces, agreed upfront" (public dataset, 2026-09-23, single case); in one L3 "who's best" question, ChatGPT directly paraphrased the practice areas and years of experience written in an entry's blurb (single case); in another question about conveyancing lawyers near a particular MRT station, ChatGPT both times read the office address near that station and the "conveyancing and real estate" practice area out of a firm's entry filed under a different practice area (2026-09-29, single case, consistent across both answers). So fill in four things for every entry, from the website:

1. Approved full name: the approved English name; use the Chinese name only if the Director of Legal Services has approved it in writing (LPE Rules r 7) [Statute text; see Appendix A.2] — where there is no approved Chinese name, write the approved English name and do not translate it yourself; applied to directory listings [Conservative line (not statute text)], 85% confidence.
2. Every office: on the same line as each address, state which practice areas that office handles; no asterisk footnotes — AI reads the address out of an entry filed under any practice area.
3. Every practice area: list everything the firm handles, whichever practice area the entry sits under.
4. One sentence on the fee basis: billing method + fixed fee or range + what is included and what is not + a statement that the final fee is set out in the letter of engagement, written the same way as 1.2.

Never write laudatory openers like "one of the leading firms locally" or "the best" in the blurb: one cited entry opened its blurb with exactly this kind of sentence, and AI Mode's citation card displayed it verbatim as its summary (L3, single case); by default, we do not write self-descriptions as best, No. 1 or top [Conservative line (not statute text)], 80% confidence, on the basis of the service-quality comparison implicit in r 43(1)(c), plus the fact that such a claim cannot be verified (r 44(2)(c)). Do Chinese-language entries only where the firm has Chinese-speaking clients, and accept them on the AI Mode leg only: across L3's 4 Chinese questions, ChatGPT cited a Chinese-language page 0/47 across both runs, AI Mode 5/22 (Chinese pages labelled heuristically by title and URL, 2026-09-29).

Step 4, ranking guides. Asked "who's best", ChatGPT sometimes reads out a peer-reviewed ranking's tier and lawyer name directly (across L3's 3 such questions, the Ministry of Law (MinLaw) and the Law Society are still cited most, see chapter 0, 0.1): for the family-law question, 4 of 6 citations were Doyle's (×2), Legal 500 and Chambers, with Doyle's tier name placed first in the recommendation table as a reason (public dataset, 2026-09-23, n=1); for L3's criminal-law question, run 1 had 1 of 2 citations from Doyle's (run 2 had 3 of 4 from Doyle's, Legal 500 and Best Lawyers) (2026-09-29, n=1). A ranking is listed under the individual lawyer's own name, so this step is the same task as chapter 3: the spelling of the lawyer's name in a ranking guide must match the practising certificate, the LSRA register lookup and the firm's own lawyer page, character for character. Take part only through the guide's normal review process: Doyle's page states it is peer-reviewed and "cannot be purchased"; the submission pages for Chambers, Legal 500 and Best Lawyers all state that being listed is free, with separate paid products of their own (checked 2026-09-29, each one in Appendix B.1); Benchmark Litigation's process and charges were not checked. Do not buy the paid products; judge anything that charges under 6.2. Being listed in a peer-reviewed ranking can serve as evidence for the "assessment by peers" factor among the seven in r 43(2) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; on the firm's own pages, write only the firm's own entry [Conservative line (not statute text)], with the wording covered in 6.6.

Editorial listicles that self-award titles like best or top (legal-news sites, lifestyle blogs' "N top law firms" pieces; labelled heuristically by title in L3: ChatGPT run 1: 3/146, run 2: 3/161, AI Mode: 5/122): supply only checkable facts that match the website and contain no comparison whatsoever, and send a correction letter under a partner's or director's name if they get something wrong; do not pay, do not buy a placement [Conservative line (not statute text)]. Once we have supplied facts, this is no longer zero participation (1.5, cell 8): review whatever the other page says about the firm as the firm's own publicity, and clear it against the banned-word list; we do not get to change their title or their rankings, and we do not requote them on the firm's own pages.

Each site's type, contact details, billing method and compliance verdict are in Appendix B.1; that table is the source of truth site by site, and the judgment diagram above only teaches the method. Off-site assets decay, so run the monthly review per → General Edition 6.4 Three source groups, and the Group B actions and → General Edition 6.6 Annual rankings and off-site asset decay.

6.4 Articles bylined by lawyers, outreach letters and supplying fee material directly

What you'll do in this section: bylined articles carry the lawyer's own name; the byline states only their name, their status as a lawyer, the firm name and any credential directly relevant to the topic. Give only facts that are unique to the firm and checkable. Outreach letters open with a statement: for verified bans, say "the practice rules do not allow it"; for everything else, say only "we do not provide that". Supply the firm's fee table directly to third-party fee columns, matching the website line for line, and send an update letter the same day any price changes.

Priority first: bylined articles are not the first thing to do off-site. In L3, news media are barely cited at all (ChatGPT run 1: 0/146, run 2: 1/161; AI Mode: 1/122), and articles on legal-information and find-a-lawyer platforms are not common either (entities labelled by hand, by domain, page type by heuristic, ranking guides excluded: ChatGPT run 1: 1/146, run 2: 3/161; AI Mode: 7/122) (2026-09-29); in the family-law round, newspapers appeared only in Google's top 10, lifestyle and finance media were cited by AI Mode 2/52, and ChatGPT was 0 across both runs (public dataset, 2026-09-23). So finish the four free steps in 6.3 before touching bylined articles; place articles on legal-information sites first, since they mainly feed the AI Mode leg; check the billing method first, and do not do it if payment is per lead or commission (6.2). Only place Chinese-language sub-site articles where the firm has Chinese-speaking clients, and accept them on the AI Mode leg only (6.3).

Byline format follows PD 6.2.4 A: name, status as a lawyer, firm name, and any specialised credential directly relevant to the topic [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]; add no contact details and no "we welcome enquiries" in the byline — the PD is a positive list and does not expressly ban other items, and this is our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)], 70% confidence. When answering a reader's letter in a non-legal publication, one line may be added, "Please seek independent legal advice on your own situation."; this is the Council's advice, not an obligation (PD 6.2.4 C) [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]. When a lawyer appears on someone else's programme, the firm's name stays off camera, though an acknowledgement in the end credits is fine (PD 6.2.1 C, whose text targets television) [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]; applying this to podcasts and online interviews is our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)]. A family lawyer's byline covers only legal points and procedure (applying FJA s 10(1)'s private-hearing rule to bylined articles) [Conservative line (not statute text)]; before writing about any individual case, run the de-identification check first (6.1), and never write a single word about a case under a Family Justice Court order restricting publication [Statute text; see Appendix A.4].

Send outreach letters using the main template in → General Edition B.3 Outreach emails and review replies; law firms add three things, with the full Chinese and English text and where to insert them in Appendix B.2:

1. A self-declared identity line: a Singapore law practice + approved full name (with the LLC or LLP suffix) + LSRA register lookup link and check date; do not write a number until the register's own field name is confirmed.
2. A statement paragraph at the front of the letter, written in two halves. The first half lists verified bans — success rates and win numbers (r 43(1)(b)(ii)), cases that would leak confidential information (r 43(1)(b)(i), r 6), and comparing fees or service quality with other firms (r 43(1)(c)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]: for these, we may write "the practice rules do not allow it"; family-law firms add one more line on information that could identify a child involved in the proceedings (CYPA s 112(1)(a)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.4]. The second half — self-awarded titles like best or top, client testimonials — says only "we do not provide that", never "the rules do not allow it": no rule expressly bans either of these. By default we do not write self-descriptions as best or top [Conservative line (not statute text)], 80% confidence; client testimonials [Original text not obtained]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: the current PCR in full, the revoked Publicity Rules (in full); check date: 2026-09-29) — not giving them in outreach material is our own working rule [Conservative line (not statute text)].
3. A letter sent in the name of a limited liability law partnership (LLP) or an LLC carries a limited-liability statement (correction letters, update letters, article pitches): s 139(2) reads: "The partners of a limited liability law partnership must ensure that every invoice or official correspondence of the limited liability law partnership bears the statement that it is incorporated with limited liability.", and s 154(4) says the same for an LLC [Statute text; see Appendix A.2]; whether an outreach letter counts as "official correspondence" is not defined in the rule text, so to be safe we include it [Conservative line (not statute text)].

Correction letters go out under the name of a partner or director (the sole proprietor personally, in a sole proprietorship): the duty to correct under r 42(2) rests with them [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; applying this to entries a third party wrote itself is our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)], 65% confidence.

Supplying fee material directly: the day the firm's fee page goes live, push the same table's public version straight to the fee column of every directory listing that already includes the firm, to the blurb of the Law Society Featured listing (if we bought one), and to any fee entry on a legal-information site that names its source and lists the firm separately. The table we supply matches the website line for line, written the same way as 1.2: service tier + defining conditions + billing method + fixed fee or range + what's included and charged separately + "The final fee is set out in our letter of engagement."; send an update letter to every place carrying that table the same day a price changes. Old numbers still get cited: in the family-law round, a third-party fee guide last updated 2022-04-13 had the range in the first sentence under its first H2 cited by both legs; on both questions about legal fees, ChatGPT built its own market-rate table in the answer, drawing on several firms' self-reported prices plus this guide (public dataset, 2026-09-23). We cannot control whether AI assembles a table; what we can control is whether the firm's own price appears in its raw material with its conditions attached.

Where a third-party page ranks firms' prices from low to high, writes "cheapest", or concludes on the firm's behalf that it is "lower than the others", we do not supply it and do not pay for it; if it gets something wrong, we only send a correction letter. Once on a third-party page, r 43(1)(c) still applies, and it reads: "(c) the publicity does not make any comparison or criticism in relation to the fees charged, or the quality of the services provided, by any other legal practitioner or law practice." [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; handing our fee table to a page that does side-by-side price comparisons also counts as the firm taking part in that comparison, in our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)]. The six dispositions and the steps for bylined articles are in → General Edition 6.3 Six dispositions, bylined contributions and outreach letters.

6.5 Reviews: you can ask, but offer nothing and do not pick who you ask; family reviews are de-identified first and signed off one by one

What you'll do in this section: you may ask clients to leave reviews, keeping to four conditions — offer no incentive, do not write the review for them, do not ask only satisfied clients, do not dictate the content — send the request to every client with the same type of case, and count only the number of requests sent as the metric. Reply to every review within 72 hours using the template, never confirming that the reviewer is a client of the firm, never discussing the case, never commenting on the opposing party. For family-law clients, republishing a review and replying to it are both run through the de-identification check first, then signed off item by item, in writing, by a partner or director.

Law firms fall on the lightly regulated branch. Asking clients to leave reviews [Original text not obtained]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: the current PCR in full, the revoked Publicity Rules (in full), the full category 6 list on the Law Society's ethics page; check date: 2026-09-29), 70% confidence. To the client, say only "we found no rule that prohibits it", never "the rules allow it". The four conditions come from the misleading-publicity ban in r 44(1)(b), and this is our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)]. How each variant of a review is judged is covered in 1.5's nine cells; this section covers the actions only. The written ethics guidance in the members' area may contain case-specific rulings on reviews (6.1): where an exported ruling sets a stricter basis, that firm follows the stricter one; if a ruling that "lawyers may not ask clients for reviews" turns up, the whole book moves law firms to the strictly regulated side in that quarter, and this whole section changes to not asking (0.2).

Step 1 is sending requests in batches by case type, which is itself the "same case type, sent to everyone" condition; only this way can the reviews that accumulate plausibly match the firm's actual work. For L3's two "is this firm good" questions, all 4 of ChatGPT's answers read out third-party ratings, and every one of them also pointed out that these reviews did not match the practice area asked about — mostly written by clients in other practice areas, or even staff reviews (2026-09-29, n=2 questions). Never prompt a client in the request letter to write about a particular practice area for this reason: that would be dictating the content. Requests are sent by the firm from its own inbox to its own clients; we never handle the client list (a client's identity is itself confidential information, r 6) [Conservative line (not statute text)]. The request template is in Appendix B.2; the template goes into the compliance memo word for word, and is used only once a partner or director has signed it.

Step 2's fixed monthly-report sentence, unchanged word for word (Appendix B.3): "The review metric counts only requests sent; star ratings and review counts are observation records, not an acceptance measure." Table headers are in → General Edition B.4 Headers for work orders, ledgers and monthly reports.

Step 3: reply to every review within 72 hours, negative ones included, using the Appendix B.2 template, with three things fixed:

1. Neither confirm nor deny that the reviewer is a client of the firm, and do not discuss the case — confirming that someone is a client is itself confidential information (r 6(2)) [Conservative line (not statute text)], 80% confidence.
2. Never comment on the opposing party — PD 6.1.1 item (g) reads: "to avoid adverse remarks on the conduct or character of the opposing party.", the Council's own advisory wording [Statute text; see Appendix A.3], applied to review replies [Conservative line (not statute text)], 85% confidence.
3. Use the same template for every negative review, with no defence and no retelling of what happened.

No personal data appears in any reply: PD 6.1.1 specifically flags compliance with the PDPA; the PDPA's own text was not checked this round [Original text not obtained]. Removing a negative review can only be done by asking the platform to handle offensive content under its own rules; we never edit the wording of a review [Conservative line (not statute text)].

Whether to republish a family-law client's review, reply to one, or write up a case study, and how — all of it is decided by a partner or director signing off in writing, item by item — this falls under the stop-and-escalate situations in 1.1, which a sign-off can decide. A sign-off cannot release a single one of the four rows on the right of the figure: information that could identify a child or young person involved in the proceedings must not be published, and this stays true even after the child turns 18 (CYPA s 112(1)(a), (1)(c)); not a word may be published of anything under a Family Justice Court order restricting publication (FJA s 10(4)(a), (5)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.4]. Custody and access proceedings in a divorce fall within s 112, in our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)], 80% confidence; family hearings are held in private without exception (FJA s 10(1)), so hearing details are treated as not for publication [Conservative line (not statute text)], 85% confidence. The offence falls on the person who publishes or distributes (s 112(5)(b)), and s 112(9) counts both websites and messaging systems as publishing: when a review goes onto the firm's page through our hands, and a reply goes out through our hands, we are the publisher. So for every family-law review and reply, someone we designate runs the de-identification check first (Appendix B.4); a hit means it is not sent for sign-off; even once a lawyer has signed, that does not cover our own responsibility as the publisher. A written sign-off resolves only the stop-and-escalate situations; it never turns something banned as Statute text into something publishable.

Family-law clients can still be asked. Add one extra line to the request letter: "Please do not include your children's names, schools, or any detail that could identify them." — this restricts identifying information, not the reviewer's opinion, and on this book's reading it does not count as dictating the content [Conservative line (not statute text)]. If a client writes it anyway: do not republish it, and do not repeat a single word of it in the reply; whether to ask the platform to handle it is left to the lawyer. Replies to family-law reviews are sent for sign-off one by one, and the 72-hour deadline still counts; if the sign-off has not come back, reply late rather than send the reply before it is signed.

How to sample requests, and the general wording for reply templates, are in → General Edition 6.5 Reviews: how to ask, how to reply, how to fill the empty slot.

6.6 Annual rankings, individual awards and long videos narrated by the lawyer

What you'll do in this section: for the annual law-firm rankings run jointly by a newspaper and a statistics firm, keep a calendar, ask about the next entry window, send only the participation link, never fill it in on anyone's behalf, and offer no reward; if the firm is listed, write only one sentence of fact plus a link to the original ranking. The Law Society's Practice Excellence Award is given to individual lawyers; nomination is free, and a win is written up on the lawyer's own page. Within 14 days of a thick page going live, pair it with one long video narrated by the lawyer, covering only procedure, the fee structure, and what the firm does and does not take on.

The Straits Times × Statista runs an annual "Singapore's Best Law Firms" ranking. Its 2027 edition's survey window, 2026-05-11 to 07-06, has already closed; the page reads "Self-recommendations will not be considered.", with no mention of any fee (checked 2026-09-29, see Appendix B.1). Pass on the participation link once the next survey window opens. Follow the five steps in → General Edition 6.6 Annual rankings and off-site asset decay; law firms add only the wording: once listed, the firm's page writes "listed in <ranking name> <year>" plus a link to the original ranking, copying the ranking's name from its own text, stating only the firm's own entry, adding no word like "the best", and never inferring from the ranking that the firm is stronger than another [Conservative line (not statute text)], 80% confidence, on the basis of the service-quality comparison implicit in r 43(1)(c). By default, do not write up an award or ranking placement that can simply be bought [Conservative line (not statute text)], 70% confidence. This ranking has not a single citation across L3's 30 questions (2026-09-29), nor across the 22 family-law questions (2026-09-23): it is worth doing because the page mentions no fee, runs once a year, and sits on an authoritative domain — not because it is already being cited; who gets listed is decided by the organiser and its voters, and all we guarantee is preparing material on time, sending the participation link, and keeping a record.

The Law Society's Practice Excellence Award is given to individual lawyers (first awarded in 2025, with a Family category). The Law Society's own text, in four sentences [Statute text; see Appendix A.5]: "Award recipients will receive a commemorative plaque and a special Practice Excellence emblem to showcase in marketing materials." "Nominations for the Practice Excellence Awards are reviewed by an independent selection committee appointed by the Society." "no fees are chargeable for this year’s nomination process." "The Nominator, or the number of nominations received, has no effect on a lawyer’s recognition for the purposes of the award(s)." Three things follow from this: the number of nominations does not affect the outcome, so we do not organise clients or colleagues into mass-nominating [Conservative line (not statute text)]; a win is written up on the winning lawyer's own page — year, the award's full name, who gave it, and the category, with the emblem used in marketing material exactly as the Law Society describes it; the firm's page writes only "<Name> of our firm received …", never writing it up as the firm winning [Conservative line (not statute text)].

The video's spec, acceptance criteria and the correlation it rests on follow → General Edition 6.7 Long videos narrated by the named expert; the person on camera is the same lawyer whose byline is on the thick page. Law firms add only two extra gates. First, the transcript is public-facing publicity — PCR r 2(1) treats any advertisement retrievable from the Internet as "publicity" [Statute text; see Appendix A.1] — so it goes through the same signatory and the same banned-word list as the thick page, with family-law videos additionally passing the de-identification check (6.1), and nothing is published before sign-off. Second, on fees, cover only the structure: the Council has ruled that listing a price list in a TV advertisement is unbefitting the dignity of the profession (PD 6.2.1 D) [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]; applying this to online video is our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)], so the camera never reads out the price list, and exact figures stay on the page. Do not cut the section on "which cases the firm does not take": PD 6.2.1 D(b)'s example of misleading publicity is exactly this — no experience of contested divorces, handling only uncontested ones, without saying so [Statute text; see Appendix A.3]; applying this to video is our own reading [Conservative line (not statute text)].

As with the annual ranking above, this item has no measured law-firm evidence behind it either: across the two law-firm measurement rounds, not a single YouTube citation turned up (public dataset, family law: 0/171, 2026-09-23; L3, across all three calls: 0/429, 2026-09-29). The only reason left to do it is the General Edition's cross-industry correlation, and that figure measures Google's AI Overviews, not these two legs. So when time is tight, it sits last in this chapter; if we do it, run the 14-day quote-back test anyway, and write the result into the monthly report exactly as it comes out.